Dominic's POV
She sits in my car like a woman in an interrogation room.
Back straight. Hands clenched in her lap. A puddle forming on the leather around her boots. She hasn't said a word since Red Hook, and neither have I.
The wipers drag back and forth. A slow, heavy rain, the kind that sounds like applause.
"You can ask," says Vera at last.
"I'd rather not."
"Why?"
"Because if I ask you what you were doing in my archive at two in the morning with a camera, you'll lie." I keep my eyes on the road. "And I don't want to know what you sound like when you lie to me."
Silence.
Then, very softly: "You've heard me lie before."
My hands tighten on the wheel.
"When?"
"In the interview," she says. "My mother."
"That's not a lie."
"No?"
"She died in March." I glance sideways. "I confirmed the certificate."
Her head turns. In the lights of passing cars I see her face, white, drawn, her red hair dark with rain. It looks nothing like the face I married, and everything about the way she's looking at me is exactly the same.
"You checked?"
"I check everyone."
"Even me."
"Especially you."
She turns away and looks at the window.
I should stop. I should say nothing. I should let her sit there in the dark, the way I've let a thousand things sit unspoken for three years.
I don't.
"The man in the windbreaker," I say. "His name is Ellis Drummond."
She goes very still.
"He's a private investigator. Ex-NYPD. He does a lot of work for a law firm in midtown."
"Which firm?"
"Vance, Whitlock and Strand."
I hear her breath catch.
She says, carefully: "Why are you telling me this?"
"Because you already know."
"I don't..."
"You were close enough to touch him, and you didn't run until he saw you. You were holding a camera like a woman who's been waiting a long time to use it." I let the car slow for a red light. "Whatever you're doing, Vera, do it with me. Not behind me."
The light turns green.
I don't move.
Somewhere behind us a horn goes, and falls silent.
"I can't," she says.
"Why?"
"Because I don't know who you are."
Her voice cracks on it.
It's the first honest thing she's said to me in ten days, and she says it to the rain.
I could break right now.
I could say, You know exactly who I am. I'm the man who put your name on a church wall. I'm the one who had the doctors check your fingerprints against every body they pulled out of the sea.
I could say, You counted seventeen steps.
Instead I put the car into gear and drive.
"All right," I say. "That's fair."
"Is it?"
"Nobody should trust me. I haven't earned it." I swallow. "But I'll tell you one more thing. Whoever you're hunting, I'm hunting too."
"You can't know that."
"I do."
"Dominic..."
"My wife is dead," I say.
I've said it so many times that it should have lost its shape.
It hasn't.
"She was killed three years ago on a boat my family owned, in front of eleven people who loved her, and I have not slept through a night since. I have people on this. I've had people on it every day for three years. I don't want a confession from you, Vera. I want the name."
She's quiet for a very long time.
"What if it's you?" she says.
The words fall into the car like a stone.
I keep my eyes on the road.
"I mean," she says, rapidly, "what if the name's... what if it's a Hale? What if you find it and it's your brother?"
"Then I'll arrest him myself."
"And if it's you?"
I look at her.
She's turned in the seat to face me. Her eyes are wet and enormous, and what I see in them is not accusation.
It's the oldest terror there is.
She's asking if she can believe me.
"If it's me," I say quietly, "I'll hand you the knife."
The rain beats on the roof.
She puts a hand to her mouth.
I keep driving.
***
I drop her at the fifty-ninth floor.
We ride up in silence. At the white door, she takes out her key, turns it, hesitates. She doesn't invite me in. I don't expect it.
"Thank you," she says. "For the ride."
"You're welcome."
"And the... other thing."
"I'll pretend it didn't happen."
"Is that a promise?"
"It's a courtesy." I let a corner of my mouth lift. "Go to sleep, Ms Lowell. Eat something."
"Is that an order?"
"It's a suggestion."
"I don't like your suggestions."
"You don't like anything I say."
"That isn't true."
It's so quiet I almost miss it.
She's looking at the floor, her hand on the doorknob, wet hair falling across her face. A stranger would hear nothing. A stranger would hear a woman being polite.
I hear my wife.
My whole body leans toward her before I can stop it.
I take half a step.
She lifts her head.
Her lips part.
We are four inches apart, under a yellow corridor light, and I can see the pulse in her throat above her silk scarf, fast and light as a bird's.
I think: Now.
I think: Say it.
My phone buzzes.
It's like a slap.
She steps back, a flush climbing her cheeks, and I swear under my breath and take the phone out of my pocket.
Marcus.
"Goodnight, Vera."
"Goodnight."
The white door closes.
I stand in the corridor with my heart going like a drum, and I answer the call.
"Tell me."
"Unit 114," says Marcus.
His voice is flat. Careful. Very much the voice of a man with a camera in his hand.
"Drummond arrived at 2:51. Cut the padlock. He was in there nineteen minutes."
"What did he take?"
"One box. Small. Cardboard. I got a clean shot of the label. It says RENA."
My stomach drops.
Rena.
Not Serena. Not Mrs Hale. It's what Tessa called her. It was the name on the side of every sketchbook she ever filled, the nickname her little sister scratched into her pencil case at nine years old.
"And the rest?"
"Ransacked. Boxes everywhere. Somebody was looking for papers." A pause. "Boss, that's not why I'm calling."
"Go on."
"Tessa's keycard was swiped at 3:02."
The corridor is very quiet.
"She came after he left," says Marcus. "She's inside right now. I can see her through the open door. She's sitting on the floor in the middle of all that mess, and she's holding something in her hands."
"What?"
"I can't see." He draws a breath. "But boss, she's reading it out loud."
"What does it say?"
"I can't tell. She's crying too hard."
I close my eyes.
Behind me, a white door, and a woman I'm trying not to love.
Ahead of me, an elevator, a car, a storage unit in Queens, and a girl I taught to sail, sitting in the wreckage of her sister's life with a secret in her hands.
"Stay there," I say. "Don't go in."
"Boss..."
"I mean it. I'll be there in twenty minutes."
I press the button.
The elevator doors slide open like a mouth.
And across the corridor, very softly, I hear a white door open an inch, and then close again.