Dominic's POV
She is the best thing that has ever happened to my investigation, and I'd give anything to make her stop.
"Four documents," says Marcus.
He lays them on the glass desk at seven the next morning, in a row, like a hand of cards. It's Saturday. The office is empty. The sun is climbing over the East River, and my head is full of the sound of my wife not quite humming in a stairwell.
"She routed them last week," he says. "All different. All through different people."
I read the first.
It's a board-packet annex, addressed to Augustus Brandt's private office. Page forty-one of sixty-three. A paragraph so dull and dense that you'd need a lawyer to notice it.
Item 9(c). The trustee of the Estate of W. Quinn confirms that a safe-deposit box (no. 4417, Rockland Savings Bank) has been located and will be opened on Friday the 10th.
"There's no such box," I say.
"There's no such box."
I read the second.
A memo to the records clerk at Vance, Whitlock and Strand. Copied to Edmund's secretary, who has spent thirty years doing everything he says.
Original Ironbridge ledgers believed to be in off-site storage, Hale Archive, Red Hook, Bay 9. Pending retrieval.
The third is a phone log. A salvage company in Portland, calling Caleb's private cell. The Halcyon survey you commissioned. We've found something in the aft cabin section. Come in person.
"Caleb never commissioned a survey," I say.
"No."
"Did she fake the call?"
"A voice changer and a burner. It lasted ninety seconds."
The fourth is a printed letter. A storage firm in Queens, addressed to Tessa Quinn at the Foundation. Unit 114, registered to the Quinn estate, is scheduled for auction on the 12th unless claimed.
I stare at it.
"There's a unit 114?" I say.
"Yes. It exists. It's real. It's been paid for in cash every month for three years."
"By whom?"
"A woman in a hat. We never got a face."
My throat tightens.
"Tessa."
"Probably." He sits down. "She did it, boss. That's what the whole thing is, if you look at it. Four rumours. Four people. Each one told a slightly different story about where something is. She's seeded four different baits and she's waiting to see who bites."
I put the page down.
A canary trap.
Spies use it. Governments use it. Dad used it once, with the board's expense reports, when he thought someone was leaking. You give each suspect a different version of a secret, and when the secret turns up in the wrong place, you know which one talked.
Serena used to do crosswords in ink.
I think: She hasn't changed. She's still the cleverest person in any room.
I think: She's doing this alone.
"She's not stupid," says Marcus. "She hasn't told anyone. She's got a helper in Queens, some accountant. Odile Park."
"I know."
He blinks. "You know?"
"I've had a man on her for four days."
"I didn't authorise..."
"I did."
"Boss, with respect..."
"With respect, Marcus, I'm the boss." It comes out too sharp. I rub my face. "Sorry."
"It's fine."
"It isn't. I'm sorry." I look at the four pages. "How long has she been planning this?"
"A year? Two? There's a lot of work in it. The Lisbon notes, the covenant. The archive request. The real storage unit." He hesitates. "It's a very good plan, boss. Whoever she is, she isn't improvising."
"She isn't."
"And you want to let her run it."
"I want to help her."
He stares.
"Think about it," I say. "She's trying to work out which of the four of them killed her. I've been trying to work out the same thing for three years. She has bait. I have men."
"You want to wire the sites."
"All four. The Rockland bank. Red Hook. The salvage yard in Portland. Unit 114. If someone takes the bait, I want a photograph before she gets one."
"She'll know if she sees our people."
"She won't."
"She might."
"She'll think she's very lucky," I say, "and I'll let her."
He's quiet.
Then, grudgingly, with the face of a man who has been asked to rearrange a house fire: "I'll put someone on each."
"Who's best?"
"Oyelaran at Rockland. Stone in Portland. Me in Red Hook."
"And Queens?"
"Queens is yours."
I nod slowly.
I have a strange feeling in my chest, and it takes me a moment to recognise it.
Pride.
Foolish, absurd, unreasonable pride, for a woman who has come back from the dead to burn my life down, and has done it with such elegance that I'd stand in the flames to watch.
"Marcus."
"Boss."
"The man in the navy windbreaker. The one who took her toothbrush. Did you identify him?"
"Yes." He opens his notebook. "Ellis Drummond. Ex-NYPD. Sacked in 2011. Private investigator. He does what's necessary for a certain kind of client."
"Which client?"
"His biggest account for the last decade," says Marcus, "is Vance, Whitlock and Strand."
The room seems to tilt.
Vance.
He's a thin, patient, careful man with a mild voice, and he poured wine at my wedding.
"It might not be him," I say.
"It might not."
"A lawyer's investigator can be hired by anyone in the firm."
"It can."
"But it's Vance's name."
"Yes."
"It's a start."
"Boss." He closes the notebook. "I've got to ask something."
"Ask."
"The memo to the archive. The one about Red Hook. If she's working a trap, she knows what she wants Vance to do. She wants him to go to Bay Nine."
"Yes."
"Which means she's going to be there."
I look out at the river.
I think of her in a black dress and a silk scarf, with a smoky, foreign rasp, standing in the corner of a dim dining room while Edmund Vance said, in his silky lawyer's voice: a man named Quinn... took two hundred million with him.
I think of her face.
How very, very still it went.
"Yes," I say. "She'll be there."
"Then we need someone to cover her."
"I'll do it."
"Boss, you can't just..."
"I'll cover her."
He doesn't argue.
It's strange. In three years I've never once seen him do the thing he does now, which is give me a small, tired, absurdly kind smile, the smile of a man looking at a ship he loves heading into weather.
"For what it's worth," he says. "If she's the person you think she is, I think she's been lucky to have you."
"She doesn't know she has me."
"No."
"And if she finds out..."
"She'll try to kill you."
"Probably."
"Or kiss you."
"Marcus."
"I'm only saying the list is short."
I turn back to the glass.
It starts to rain. A slow, grey, late-autumn rain, rolling in from New Jersey across the water.
Somewhere out there are four men and women who've never worried about being caught.
Tonight I'll find out which of them is afraid.
***
The first fish bites at 1:58 a.m.
I'm in a rented car across the street from the Hale Archive in Red Hook, eating a stale sandwich and watching the rain run down the windshield.
My phone buzzes.
Movement at the loading bay, texts Marcus from a van two streets away. One man. Forty yards from your position.
I raise the binoculars.
There, between a stack of pallets and a rusted forklift, in a navy windbreaker, stands a heavy man with a flashlight and a crowbar.
Ellis Drummond.
I should be exultant.
Instead I'm counting.
There are two ways into the archive, and Drummond has taken the north.
That leaves the south alley.
A dark shape slips out from behind a dumpster and flattens itself against the brick, forty feet from the crowbar and perfectly, impossibly still.
A slight figure in a dark coat.
A silk scarf.
Red hair under a black cap.
My wife has come to watch her father's murderer rob his own bait.
And she's alone.