Dominic's POV
The room is behind my study, behind a bookcase, behind a lock that opens to a thumbprint and my mother's birthday.
I haven't let anyone in for three years but Marcus.
It's eleven feet by fourteen. No windows. A whiteboard, a steel desk, two laptops, a kettle. On the longest wall, in rows, pinned by red thread, are four faces and a map of the coast of Maine.
Caleb. Tessa. Edmund Vance. Dominic Hale.
I put my own face on the wall the night I made it.
Marcus took it down once. I put it back.
"Okay," he says at six the next morning. He's rolled up his sleeves and found a marker. He looks as if he hasn't slept and has decided not to mind. "Let's go through it."
"Go."
"One. The feed." He taps a printout. "It was routed through a switch in our own server room, which means someone inside gave them access. A technician badge, a key card, something. We're checking the logs. But the endpoint was a secure server belonging to Vance, Whitlock and Strand."
"Vance."
"Or somebody in his office."
"It's the same thing."
"Not legally."
"I'm not interested in legally."
"I know." He caps the marker. "Two. The man in the windbreaker."
"Drummond."
"Drummond took the box marked Rena. I followed him to Brooklyn. He didn't open it. He delivered it, unopened, in a Starbucks cup holder, to a man in a black Audi. I didn't get the plate."
"You lost him."
"I lost him."
"Marcus."
"I'm sorry, boss."
I rub my eyes. "Three."
"Three." He picks up a second sheet. "Mercer."
The name drops into the room like a cold stone.
Rourke "Dutch" Mercer. Navy EOD, twelve years. Dishonourably discharged in 2016 for selling explosive training materials. A private contractor. A man with a talent for taking things apart and putting them together in new ways.
Dead. Two years ago last August. A boating accident off Block Island, a man alone on a thirty-foot cabin cruiser, found drifting with a hole in the hull.
"I've traced his money," says Marcus.
I look at him.
"You said you couldn't."
"I couldn't. I needed someone who could read a Cayman trust deed." He puts a photograph on the board, a small black-and-white image of a woman with a sharp bob and sharper cheekbones. "I think you know her."
"Odile Park."
"She's been working this for years. Different angle. Same man." He swallows. "She and Vera Lowell, they're together on this. I don't know how long. But she cleaned a wire transfer that no one else could crack."
"Show me."
He pins a sheet beside the face.
A transfer slip. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, wired four months before Mercer died, from a numbered account in the Cayman Islands to a Maine credit union. Under the account name, in small italics: The Larkspur Trust.
It means nothing to me.
"What's Larkspur?"
"A discretionary trust. Offshore. Set up nineteen years ago. The trustee is a firm in George Town." He draws a breath. "But the settlor, Boss, the person who funded it..."
"Say it."
"Is the Hale Family Trust."
The room goes very quiet.
The Hale Family Trust.
My father's. Mine. Caleb's. A family vehicle, ancient and unglamorous, an anchor for taxes and inheritances and the kind of money nobody argues about.
I know exactly who manages it.
"Vance," I say.
"The trustee of record is Edmund Vance."
"So it's not a guess."
"It's not a guess." He taps the slip. "Two signatures authorised the Mercer payment. One of them's Vance. And the other..."
I wait.
"I can't read the other," says Marcus. "It's just initials. A. B."
I don't move.
"A. B.," I say.
"Yes."
"There are, what, thirty A.B.s on our payroll?"
"Thirty-one."
"It could be anyone."
"It could."
I stare at the photograph of the slip, the cramped black loop of the B, the long, careful downstroke of the A.
I've seen that signature all my life.
On birthday cheques. On a letter I got at ten, when I broke my arm. On the bottom of every document my father ever signed, in his room at Windward, with a glass of port.
Augustus.
A. B.
I can't say it aloud.
It sits in my throat like a stone.
"It could be anyone," I say again.
Marcus says nothing. He's too good a friend to argue with a drowning man.
"I want to see Vance," I say. "Today."
***
He arrives at nine in a dove-grey suit with a tie like a drop of ink.
"My dear Dominic."
"Edmund."
"I'm told you had a trying evening."
"Sit down."
He sits. He crosses one thin leg over the other, folds his hands on his knee, and looks at me with mild, courteous attention, like a man who has been waiting a long time for a client to say something interesting.
"I'll be direct," I say. "Last night, someone put a smoke canister in my elevator."
"Good heavens."
"They also rerouted the camera feed to a server at your firm."
A pause.
It's a very small one.
I'd miss it if I hadn't spent three years watching his face.
"Ah," says Vance.
"You know about it?"
"I know about the audit. Not the canister, naturally." He lifts a hand, apologetic. "We were asked by the board to run a security review of Hale Tower. Three weeks ago. A third party, to test redundancies, camera coverage, that sort of thing. The feed was meant to go to our compliance team."
"On whose authority?"
"The chairman's."
I don't blink.
"Augustus asked you to audit my building?"
"He signed the authorisation himself. Quite properly. A routine matter." He smiles. "I'm sorry if it caused distress. I'm sure the technicians never meant to..."
"Delete the footage."
"I'm sorry?"
"My chief of staff is claustrophobic. She had a panic attack. I'd rather not have it archived in a law office." I keep my voice dry, a little embarrassed, a man protecting the privacy of an employee. "Delete it, Edmund. Please."
"Of course."
"Today."
"Of course. Naturally." He tilts his head. "A remarkable woman, Ms Lowell. I've been meaning to say."
"Have you."
"She reminds me of someone."
My heart beats once, very hard.
"Everyone says that."
"Do they?" He rises, smooths his jacket, and gives me a long, bright, curious look. "It's the way she holds her head. And the voice, of course, that dreadful rasp, but under it, an older music. Don't you think?"
"I don't hear it."
"No?"
"No."
"A pity. I'd have thought you'd be the first." He picks up his briefcase. "Never mind. I'll see that the footage is dealt with."
"Thank you."
"Not at all."
He goes to the door.
He stops.
"Dominic. A small thing. Out of curiosity."
"Yes?"
"What did she say?"
The room freezes.
"In the elevator." His voice is soft, mild, with a curl of amusement. "My compliance people mentioned the audio. They said she was upset, and spoke very quietly. A name, perhaps."
I look at him.
He smiles.
"I'm sure it was nothing," says Edmund Vance, and goes out.
I stand at the desk with my hands flat on the glass.
On the other side of my wall, in a room I can see through the blinds, a woman in a grey blouse lifts a cup of coffee to her lips and doesn't know that every word she said in the dark is sitting in a lawyer's office on Madison Avenue.
Marcus is in the doorway.
I didn't hear him come in.
"The authorisation," he says quietly. "I pulled it from the board record. It's signed by the chairman."
"What date?"
He hesitates.
"The day before you hired her, boss. The day before you ever met her."
I close my eyes.
"Augustus," I whisper.
"Maybe he had a reason."
"Maybe."
"Maybe it's a coincidence."
"Marcus."
"Yes?"
"There are no coincidences left."