Serena's POV
The Starlite Diner is a chrome box on Raymond Boulevard with a neon star on the roof and a smell of grease and burnt coffee. A bell tinkles over the door. Five booths, a counter, a pie case with a cracked glass lid. A waitress in a pink uniform is reading a paperback by the till.
It's ten to six, and the whole place is empty but for three people in the back booth.
I know Cho at once.
She's small, compact, in a navy raincoat that's seen better decades, with grey in her cropped black hair and the kind of face that has stopped expecting good news. Beside her sits a woman in a pink fleece, thirty-five or so, with Rourke Mercer's heavy jaw and her own red-rimmed eyes, twisting a paper napkin to shreds.
Dominic has his baseball cap pulled low. I've got a grey wig and a pair of glasses Odile found in a drawer. We look, I think, like two people hiding from a very bad divorce.
"Mrs Hale," says Cho.
She stands.
She holds out her hand, and I take it, and for a moment neither of us speaks. Her grip is dry and hard and brief.
"You look like your photographs," she says.
"I look nothing like them."
"You've got the same eyes."
I smile. It wobbles.
"This is Dawn," says Cho.
The woman in the pink fleece looks up.
"I'm sorry," she says, at once, in a thin, shaky voice. "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry for what my brother did."
"Dawn."
"I didn't know. I swear to God. I didn't know until last year. I thought he was a diver. He told me he did salvage."
"Dawn," I say. "Sit down."
She sits.
I slide in beside her. Dominic takes the end of the booth, with his back to the wall and his eyes on the door.
"I'm not here to blame you," I say. "I'm here because you rang a woman at the FBI and asked her to bring me."
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because he asked me to." She wipes her nose with the shredded napkin. "Rourke. Before he died. He said, if anyone ever comes looking, be kind to them. He said he'd done a thing he couldn't undo."
"What thing?"
"He wouldn't say." She swallows. "Until the voicemail."
Cho puts a small black phone on the table.
It's a cheap thing, with a cracked screen and a sticker of a cartoon cat. A relic.
"It's the only copy," says Dawn. "I keep it in a freezer bag. In the sugar tin."
"May I?" says Cho.
Dawn nods.
Cho presses a button.
***
There's a click.
A hiss of static, and a long, heavy rush, like wind in a tunnel. A payphone. Somewhere in the background, a road, the whine of a truck. And then a man's voice, hoarse and low and slightly drunk.
Dawnie. It's me.
I stop breathing.
Don't call back. This is a phone box. I'm at a gas station in Providence. I'm not coming home for a while.
A cough. A swallow.
Listen. Keep the unit key. The one on the green cord. It's in the sugar tin, you know the one. Give it to nobody. Nobody, Dawn. Not the cops. Not the lawyer. Not even if he comes with flowers. Wait until somebody comes who's not scared of him.
A pause.
I did a bad thing. For money. A big bad thing. A boat.
Dominic's hand has closed on the edge of the table.
They said I was done. They said it's all over, Rourke, we're square. But the lawyer's been asking where I live. He's been in my building. And last week I saw a guy outside, a big guy with a windbreaker, and I thought, that's it, that's the end of me.
A long silence.
The static pulses.
I'm a loose end, Dawn.
I look at Dawn.
She's staring at the table, her mouth quivering, tears sliding down her cheeks one at a time.
I never saw the old man's face. Not once. He only ever came at night, always with the lawyer. He had a voice like a priest. Very kind. Very polite. A breath. He said grace, Dawn. Before the money. He said grace over the envelope, like it was Thanksgiving.
Beside me, Dominic makes a small sound.
He wore a pin. A gold anchor, here, on his coat. I saw it once when the light caught. I remember thinking, that's a funny thing for a man who's never been near a boat.
Dominic's face has gone the colour of paper.
That's all I know. The lawyer calls him Mr B.
A click.
A dial tone.
It goes on for a long time.
Nobody speaks.
A waitress turns a page.
On the table, Dominic's hands are flat and absolutely still. His knuckles are white. His eyes are open. He's looking at the little black phone as if it were a gun, and I realise he's not breathing.
"Dom," I whisper.
"I'm fine."
"You're not."
"I'm fine." His voice is perfectly even. "A gold anchor."
"Yes."
"He's worn it every day since I was a boy. His father gave it to him on the day he joined the firm. It's the only thing he's never lost." He lifts his eyes to mine. They're a flat, calm, terrible grey. "I used to hold it in my hand when I was six. I used to ask if he was a sailor."
"What did he say?"
"He said, No, Dom. But I know how to keep a ship."
I put my hand over his.
He doesn't move.
It's cold, and perfectly still, and I think: this is what it looks like when a man's whole life comes loose.
"It's not enough," says Cho quietly.
"What?"
"The voicemail. It's a dead man's word. A defence lawyer would tear it apart in ten minutes. No chain of custody. No identification. An anchor pin." She spreads her hands. "I believe every syllable. But I can't take it to a grand jury."
"What would you need?"
"What's in the unit."
We turn to Dawn.
She fumbles in her fleece. She puts a small, grubby, green-corded key on the table, and pushes it across the Formica with one finger, as if it might burn.
"Bayonne," she says. "Two streets from the Kill Van Kull. Unit eighteen. It's a Safe-Stor. I've never been inside."
"Why not?"
"I was afraid of what I'd see."
I pick up the key.
It's warm from her pocket, and very light.
"Thank you," I say.
"Don't." She shakes her head. "Just... find him. Find who did it. And tell me he's sorry. Rourke. Tell me he felt it."
"He felt it," says Dominic, hoarsely.
We all turn.
He's looking at the phone.
"I heard it in his voice," he says. "He felt it every day."
Dawn begins, quietly, to cry.
***
We leave at ten past seven.
It's dark. A fine rain has begun, drifting down through the sodium lights, glittering on the parking lot. Cho's grey Ford sits at the far end by the dumpsters, her one concession to caution: a car nobody knows. Dominic opens the passenger door for me, and I get in the back, and Cho slides behind the wheel.
"Bayonne's twenty minutes," she says. "I'll take the Turnpike."
"Agent Cho."
"Hannah."
"Hannah." I put the key in my pocket. "Why did you wait three years?"
"Because I was alone." She starts the engine. "Because a woman with no evidence and a closed file doesn't get to knock on a billionaire's door. And because I thought you were dead."
"I was."
"No." She glances at me in the mirror. A thin, tired smile. "You were asleep."
I laugh.
The car rolls out of the lot, into Raymond Boulevard, and merges with the traffic. The wipers beat. Dominic is quiet beside her, staring at the road, one hand tight on the dashboard.
At the first light, I glance back.
A big black SUV is sitting at the curb behind us.
Lights off.
Engine on.
It wasn't there when we came out.
I look at Dominic.
He has seen it, too.
"Hannah," he says very softly.
"I see it."
"Don't turn."
"I've no intention of turning."
The lights change.
The SUV pulls out.
It comes up behind us, smooth and fast, and the headlights flash on, white, huge, filling the whole of the rear window like two suns.
"Get down," says Cho.
"What?"
"Get down!"
I throw myself across the back seat.
And the whole world explodes into glass.