Serena's POV
Your father begged, too.
I hear it in the car. I hear it in the elevator to the holding floor. I hear it while a woman in a blue uniform photographs my face and takes my rings, and while a man with a scanner rolls each of my fingers across a glass plate.
Your father begged, too. At the end of the pier. He said your name.
It was kind, the way he said it.
That's what I can't stop thinking.
Not cruel. Not triumphant. He spoke with the gentle regret of an old man at a bedside, a man giving a small sad piece of news. And then he straightened and patted my shoulder, and let them take me away.
He said your name.
I close my eyes.
I see a pier. A grey sea. A man in a cardigan, with ink on his fingers and a clean white handkerchief in his top pocket, on his knees on the wet boards.
I open them again.
I'm sitting in a small, bare room with a table, two chairs, a mirror, and a camera in the corner with a red light. The walls are painted institutional green. There's a smell of floor polish and old coffee. The cuffs have been removed, but my wrists feel as if they're still there.
INTERVIEW ROOM 3, says a small plastic sign.
I've been here two hours.
I haven't said a word.
The door opens.
It isn't Kowalski.
It's a thin figure in a dove-grey suit, carrying a leather folio, who sits down opposite me with a soft sigh, and sets it on the table, and folds his long white hands on top.
"Ms Lowell," says Edmund Vance. "How very distressing for you."
I say nothing.
"I took the liberty of coming at once." He glances at the mirror, and the red light, and smiles gently. "I've told the officers that this is a privileged conversation, so you needn't worry about being overheard. The recording's off."
"Is it?"
"Naturally."
I look at the red light.
It's still on.
He sees me look.
"Ah," he says. "Well. That's the thing about technology."
"What do you want, Edmund?"
"I'd like to help you."
"Would you."
"I'm a decent man, Ms Lowell. Whatever you may have heard." He opens the folio. "I know you're frightened. I know you've been very foolish. I'd like to find a way through it."
"The way through is a lawyer."
"I am a lawyer."
"Mine."
"Hmm." He takes out a sheaf of papers. "I'm afraid the position is rather more serious than you realise. Do you know what the penalty for identity fraud is?"
"Tell me."
"Fifteen years. Securities fraud, another twenty. Conspiracy, ten. Federal sentencing's remarkably consecutive." He sighs. "You'd be sixty-eight before you came out, and that's if the judge was kind."
"I haven't committed fraud."
"No?"
"My passport is real."
"Your passport is a very good copy of a real one. It belonged to a young woman who died in a car crash in Halifax in 2009, and whose death certificate was somehow never filed." His eyes are quite kind. "A very clever piece of work, Ms Lowell. I admire it."
My blood has gone cold.
I didn't make that passport.
Odile did.
It was a necessity. It was the only way to exist. And I thought, I really thought, that it was clean.
"I can prove nothing," I say.
"I'm sure you can't."
"Then neither can you."
"Oh, my dear." He shakes his head. "I don't have to. You do."
I stare at him.
"I've made enquiries about Serena Hale's records." He turns a page. "Her medical file at Mass General. Dental. Her fingerprints, taken in 2011 for a museum security clearance. All of it archived. All of it perfectly preserved. And all of it, I'm afraid, destroyed on Friday, in a water leak at a storage facility in Worcester."
The room tilts.
"A leak."
"A tragic accident."
"Friday."
"So unlucky." He smooths the paper. "The only person who could prove you are who you say you are is, of course, Dominic. And a man who has knowingly concealed your identity from his board, in a case of potential fraud, isn't a reliable witness, is he? He's a co-conspirator."
"You're drowning him."
"I'm saving him."
"How?"
"By offering you a deal."
He lays a single page in front of me.
It's typed. Two paragraphs. A line for a signature, with a small yellow flag.
"You plead to one count of identity fraud," says Vance. "Misdemeanor. You admit that you misrepresented yourself. You transfer the Lowell Ridge bond position to the Hale Family Trust, for a fair price, at par. And you sign a statement that you have no connection to Serena Hale, whatsoever."
"No connection."
"None."
"And in return?"
"Probation. Two years. A fine. You'd keep your freedom. Mr Hale would keep his reputation." A soft, regretful smile. "I should hate to see either of you ruined."
I look at the page.
I think of a man on a pier in a cardigan.
I think of a tin box in a cellar in Portland, with a ledger in my father's old friend's hand. God forgive me.
I think of Augustus's voice, soft in my ear. He said your name.
"If I sign," I say slowly, "I'm saying I'm not Serena Hale."
"Yes."
"Forever. In a court of law. On the record."
"Yes."
"Then she'd really be dead."
"I'm afraid so."
"And you'd have won."
"I've no idea what you mean."
I pick up the page.
I fold it, once, down the middle. Then again. I look him in his clear, grey, fatherly eyes.
"Edmund."
"Yes, my dear?"
"My father used to say something about men like you."
"Did he?"
"He said, The man who offers to carry your bags is generally the man who intends to rob you at the end of the road." I fold it again. "I don't think he meant bags."
I put it in his hand.
"I'd like a public defender."
His face doesn't change.
It's remarkable, really. It's smooth and polite and unruffled. But I've spent three years studying the faces of liars, in boardrooms and on hospital pillows and in the dark of my own mirror, and I see it.
A small, cold flicker of calculation, a switch being turned.
"That's unfortunate," he says.
"I'm sure."
"I'd hoped we might be friends."
"I'd hoped you might be in prison."
He rises.
He picks up his folio with great care. He buttons his jacket. At the door, he turns, with his hand on the frame.
"Your sister," he says, "is very ill."
"What?"
"A concussion's a dangerous thing. I understand there may be some... complications." He sighs. "I've arranged for the best specialists. At the Hale Foundation. You needn't thank me."
My skin crawls.
"You leave her alone."
"I'd never dream of anything else."
"If you touch her..."
"My dear Ms Lowell. I'm a lawyer." The door swings open. "I can't touch anyone."
He goes out.
The door clicks shut behind him.
I sit.
I sit absolutely still, with my hands flat on the cold metal table, and my pulse thundering in my ears, and tears sliding down my face that I haven't noticed starting. I can't breathe. I can't think. The red light in the corner burns on like an eye.
Tess.
They've taken Tessa. Or they're about to. Or they have a man in the ward, with a syringe, and a smile.
I get up.
I hit the door with both fists.
"Let me out!" I scream. "Let me out! My sister's in danger! Please! Somebody!"
Nothing.
The corridor outside is silent.
I hit it again.
"Please!"
The lock turns.
Kowalski stands in the doorway, with his coat over his arm. He's looking at me with an expression I don't understand, a strange, tired, thoughtful frown.
"Ms Lowell."
"My sister..."
"Is fine." He stands aside. "She's under federal guard on the nineteenth floor of a safe building. Your lawyer's with her."
"I don't have a..."
"You do now." The moustache twitches. "Ms Lowell, I've been a cop for thirty-one years."
"I..."
"I've interviewed a lot of liars." He holds the door. "I'd like to tell you I've had my doubts about this one since the minute I read the file. But that would be a lie, too."
"What are you saying?"
"I'm saying you're free to go." He looks down at the paper in his hand. "Someone's posted bail."
"Who?"
"It's a very large amount," says Kowalski. "It's been wired from a Cayman account, in the name of a trust I don't recognise."
My knees give way.
"Whose?"
He shows me the name.
I read it three times.
The Larkspur Trust.