Serena's POV
They've put her in a room on the fourth floor of Bellevue with a drip in her arm and a cop on the door.
I stand in the doorway for a long time before I go in.
She's so small in the bed. Her face is the colour of candle wax, apart from a bruise on one cheekbone, plum-purple, shining. Her hair is tied back with a hospital band. A white bandage is taped across her left palm, where something sharp has opened it from heel to thumb. Her eyes are closed.
Dominic stands at the window with his back to me.
Marcus is outside in the corridor, on the phone, arguing with someone about a warrant.
"How is she?"
"Concussion. Two cracked ribs. A cut on her hand that needed eleven stitches." Dominic doesn't turn. "She walked from East Seventy-Third Street to the Tombs. Fifty blocks. With a hole in her hand."
"Why?"
"She says she was afraid to take a cab."
I cross the room.
I sit on the edge of the bed.
I take her good hand.
It's cold. It's smaller than I remember. The nails are bitten to the quick, the way they were when she was twelve.
"Tess," I say.
Her lashes flutter.
"Tessie. It's me."
Her eyes open.
They're unfocused at first, glazed with sedative. They drift to the ceiling, to the drip, to the window. Then they land on my face, and I watch her find it, slowly, the way you find a word in a language you haven't spoken for years.
"Rena."
"I'm here."
"You came."
"Of course I came."
"I thought you wouldn't." Her mouth trembles. "I thought you'd said it. I can't do it twice."
"I was wrong."
"You weren't."
"I was." I press her fingers to my cheek. "I was frightened, and I was angry, and I said the cruellest thing I could think of. And then I thought about it for two days."
"And?"
"And I'd rather be forgiven twice than right once."
She makes a sound.
It's half a laugh and half a sob. A tear slides sideways across her temple and into her hair.
"I got it," she says.
"What?"
"The box. I got it. I went in through the coal chute, like when we were kids. He's got an old Victorian safe in the cellar. The combination's his wife's birthday."
"Tessa."
"I knew it. He told me once, years ago, at a Christmas party. He was drunk." Her face lights, a fierce, small, feverish pride. "I just... I did the numbers, and it opened."
"You broke into Edmund Vance's house?"
"I told you," says my sister. "I told you I'd be useful."
I put my forehead against hers.
I don't know whether I'm laughing or crying. I think it's both.
"You idiot," I say. "You absolute, brave, ridiculous idiot."
"I know."
"He could have killed you."
"He nearly did."
The room goes cold.
"What happened?"
"Someone came in. A man." She shivers. "I heard the front door. I grabbed what I could and ran for the coal chute, and he caught my ankle. He had a ring. It cut my face." Her fingers go to the bruise. "But he dropped his phone. I stood on it. And then I ran."
"Who was it?"
"I don't know. A big man. Thick neck. He was swearing."
"Drummond."
"No. Drummond's in custody." Marcus has come in, with his phone in his hand. "It's another one. A name called Rusk. Ned Rusk. A former colleague. We think he took over when Mercer died."
Tessa shudders.
"There was one more thing," she says.
"What?"
"The envelope."
I go still.
"It was on the desk. A big brown one. It had your name on it."
"My name?"
"Your real name. S. Q. H. In Edmund's writing." Her breath catches. "It was sealed. I didn't have time. I grabbed it, and then I heard the door, and I had to choose. I could take the case with the texts, or the envelope."
"You took the texts."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be."
"I'm so sorry."
"Tessa, it's all right."
"No. It isn't. I think it was important. I think it was..." She swallows. "Rena, I think it's about you. About whether you're you."
My mouth goes dry.
I look at Dominic.
He has turned from the window. His eyes meet mine. We both understand the same thing at the same moment.
The toothbrush.
They tested it.
And they've known for weeks.
"What's in the case?" I say quietly.
Marcus lays a battered leather satchel on the end of the bed.
It's an old thing, brown, scuffed, with brass buckles. He undoes them. He takes out a clear plastic sleeve with two sheets of printed paper, and sets it on the blanket.
Two text messages. Printed from a phone. Time-stamped.
From: T. Quinn. To: E. Vance. 6:12 p.m. Lower aft cabin until ten. She'll be resting.
From: C. Hale. To: E. Vance. 8:57 p.m. Bringing the champagne down now.
Beneath them, a small black notebook in Vance's cramped, spidery hand. Page after page. Dates, meetings, cash payments.
A.B. at the house. Sunday. 4 p.m.
A.B. insists Cho be dealt with.
A.B. wants the girl watched. Says: she's too like her father.
I stop reading.
I read it again.
She's too like her father.
It's written eight months before the yacht.
I put my hand flat on the page.
"Serena," says Dominic.
"They knew," I whisper. "They knew from the very beginning that I'd be a danger. They'd been watching me for years."
"I know."
"Brandt held my hand at the funeral."
"I know."
"He said he'd never had a daughter."
"I know."
Tessa's good hand tightens on mine.
"I'm sorry I didn't get the envelope."
I look down at her.
She's grey and bruised and swollen-eyed, with a drip in her arm and a stranger's hospital gown, and she's looking at me with the whole of her heart in her face.
"You got this," I say.
"It's not enough."
"It's more than enough."
"Is it?"
"Tess." I lean down and kiss her forehead. "You went into his house."
Her lips twitch.
"I took a flashlight."
"A flashlight."
"A little one. From the kitchen drawer."
I laugh.
It cracks out of me, rough and astonished, and Dominic laughs too, and Marcus makes a noise like a man trying not to. For a moment the room is full of it, helpless, wet, ridiculous, a family around a hospital bed.
It's the best thing I've heard in three years.
It's still ringing in the air when my phone rings.
The new one. The burner Dominic gave me yesterday. Four people have the number.
I look at the screen.
Unknown.
My stomach drops.
Dominic is beside me in an instant. He nods.
I answer it.
I put it on speaker.
There's silence.
Then, warm and rich and unhurried, with the faint chink of a teacup against a saucer, a voice I've known since I was twenty-four.
"Good afternoon, Mrs Hale."
I don't breathe.
"Don't hang up. I'd rather you didn't. I'm only ringing to say how very glad I am that you survived the fire." A soft sigh. "It would have been such a waste."
"Augustus," says Dominic.
"My dear boy. You're there, too. How convenient."
"What do you want?"
"Nothing at all." The teacup chinks. "A small family matter. The board will meet on Monday, at ten, in the Hale Tower boardroom. An emergency session. I've called it myself."
"Why?"
"There's a motion on the agenda. To remove you as chief executive, Dominic, pending an investigation into your brother's affairs." A pause, fatherly and regretful. "I'd be very sorry. But the votes are, I fear, there."
"And?"
"And I'd like Mrs Hale to be present."
My skin goes cold.
"She holds eleven per cent of your bonds," says Augustus gently. "I think she's entitled to a voice. And I should so like to meet her properly. After all these years."
He hangs up.
The room is silent.
The little burner lies on the blanket between us, dead and black.
"He's lying," says Marcus.
"Which part?" says Dominic.
"He doesn't want her voice."
"No."
"What does he want?"
I look at the two texts on the sheet.
At the notebook.
At my sister's bandaged hand.
"He wants an audience," I say slowly. "For something."
Marcus's phone buzzes.
He glances at it. His face changes.
"What?" says Dominic.
"Torres." He turns the screen toward us.
Drummond released 20 mins ago. Bail posted by Vance, Whitlock and Strand. Judge friendly. I'm sorry. He walked.
I look at the blanket, at the two cold lines of print.
"Then he knows," I say. "He knows exactly where we are."
Out in the corridor, an elevator pings.
Footsteps. Heavy, unhurried, and coming our way.