Dominic's POV
I haven't had a drink in three years, and it takes eleven minutes to break the habit.
I stand in the kitchen at five in the morning with a bottle of Macallan and a glass, and I look at the amber light in it, and I think: This is what a man does.
I pour.
I drink.
It burns all the way down. It tastes of my father.
I pour again.
"Boss."
Marcus is in the doorway, in his parka, with his keys in his hand. I didn't hear the front door. I don't know how long he's been standing there.
"She's gone," I say.
"I saw her in the lobby."
"She didn't take you."
"She wouldn't."
"No."
He walks across the kitchen, takes the glass out of my hand and pours it into the sink.
"That's mine," I say.
"It was."
"Marcus."
"You can break my nose tomorrow." He sets the bottle on the high shelf where I can't reach without a chair. "Tonight, you're going to drink a pint of water and tell me exactly what she saw."
I sit down on a stool.
My hands are shaking so badly that I put them between my knees.
"Everything."
"The wall?"
"The wall. The photographs. The log." I laugh, short and ugly. "Your log. Day Four. D. says let her."
"Damn."
"She read it standing up. She didn't cry. She just... put it down. Very gently. As if it might break."
"What did she say?"
"That I'd kept her in a room for a month."
He doesn't answer.
He fills a glass from the tap and puts it in front of me. I drink it. It's cold and flat and tastes of nothing.
"I should've told her," I say.
"Yes."
"On the pier. At the boathouse. In the elevator."
"Yes."
"You told me."
"I did."
"You said she'd run."
"I said she might." He sits on the opposite stool. "I was wrong about one thing. I said she'd run, but she didn't. She stood there and read every page."
"What does that mean?"
"It means she needed to know."
I put my head in my hands.
"Four weeks," I say.
"Boss."
"I let her stand in front of me for four weeks."
"You were trying to protect her."
"Was I?"
"Yes."
"Or was I protecting myself?"
He's quiet.
It's the kind of silence that goes on until it's true.
"A bit of both," says Marcus.
***
At six, he lays his tablet on the counter.
I know the look. It's the one he wears when something has gone quietly, expensively wrong.
"There's something else."
"Tell me."
"I went down to the server room after Drummond left. I wanted to check the elevator logs. And I found..." He swipes. "Someone's been in the Lantern drive."
I go cold.
"Our drive?"
"The mirror. The offsite backup." He turns the screen. "Nine days ago. At 3:14 a.m. A remote login, using a technician's credentials. They copied the whole thing. Every file."
"Nine days."
"The night after Windward."
I think of a hill in Maine. A causeway. A waxed coat.
"What's in it?"
"Everything." He swallows. "The wall. The photographs. The log."
"The log."
"Day Four. She's Serena."
The kitchen seems to tilt.
"They knew," I whisper.
"They've had it nine days."
"Nine days."
"Yes."
"Nine days, and I stood in the boardroom with Augustus and Vance and told them my chief of staff was claustrophobic."
"Boss..."
"I let her go to Rockland." My voice is rising. "I let her walk alone in the Foundation. I let her go to bed in a studio with her own name on the door, and they knew."
"They didn't act."
"No."
"They could have. Any time." He leans forward. "They didn't. Why?"
I stare at him.
I think of a lawyer in my office, stroking his lapel.
She reminds me of a portrait.
A sly, cold, courteous voice. What did she say?
"They wanted to be sure," I say.
"Of what?"
"That it's her."
"Or?"
"Or they want something from her first."
Marcus nods.
"The ledger."
"Walter's ledger. The missing pages. The thing she's been looking for. If she's the one person who knows where it is..."
"They'd let her lead them to it."
"Like a dog on a string."
The sun is coming up.
A long, pale blade of light cuts across the marble counter, over the empty glass and the tablet and my shaking hands. Down in the street, a garbage truck rumbles. A city waking, as if nothing had happened.
I stand up.
"Where did she go?"
"I had a man on the front door. She took a cab to Astoria. Thirty-first Street. A brick building with a green awning."
"Odile Park."
"Fourth floor."
"Good."
"Boss?"
"She's safe there. Odile's got a lock the size of a car door." I rub my eyes. "I'll let her have the day. Put a man on the stairwell. Two on the street. Nobody touches her. If anyone so much as stands on the sidewalk for more than five minutes..."
"I know."
"And Marcus."
"Yes?"
"I need to talk to Tessa."
His eyebrows lift.
"Why Tessa?"
"Because if Vance has been watching Serena for nine days, he's been watching her through someone." I clench my fist on the counter. "And there are only three people in this city who know where Serena would run."
"Odile."
"Odile. And Tessa."
"And you."
I meet his eyes.
"And me," I say.
I take out my phone.
I look at her name.
I don't call. She asked me not to follow, and a call is a kind of following. Instead I open a message and type, with a thumb that doesn't feel like mine:
I'm sorry. I should have told you in the lobby. I'll wait for as long as you need. If you want me, I'm here. If you don't, Marcus will keep you safe anyway. You don't have to answer.
I read it eleven times.
I send it.
The little word Delivered appears under it, and nothing else.
"She won't answer," says Marcus.
"I know."
"She might."
"She might."
I put the phone face-up on the counter, where I can see it, and I stand there staring at it like a man at a tide-line, waiting for a sea that won't come.
Marcus clears his throat.
"I'll find Tessa."
"Try her phone."
He does. I hear it ring and ring through the little speaker, and go to voicemail, her bright young voice saying, Hi, it's Tess, leave it after the beep.
"Her location," I say.
He taps. His mouth goes thin.
"Boss."
"Where?"
"It's pinging off a tower on East Seventy-Third Street. Since four this morning." He looks up. "It's Vance's townhouse."
The kitchen is very quiet.
I think of a small dark girl in a camel coat, sitting on a studio floor with a mug of tea. I swear. I think of her red, bright eyes. He's been calling me every day.
"She went to him," I say.
"Or he sent for her."
"Same thing."
"Boss, she might be in trouble."
"She might be the trouble." My voice is perfectly flat. I hate it. "Marcus. Who knows that Serena is at Odile Park's?"
"You. Me. My man on the door."
"And Tessa."
"Does she know the address?"
Marcus checks. His face changes.
"Ms Quinn called Odile Park's landline twice yesterday afternoon. Eleven minutes, then six. After she left the studio." He looks up. "She's been inside that apartment. Or been told where it is."
I close my eyes.
A girl on a studio floor, red-eyed and fierce, saying tell me what you need. And a sister who needed to say: go somewhere safe.
"Yes," I say. "She knows."
I'm already pulling on my coat.