Chapter 5: You Should Have Left
Grace was in the hallway when I came out.
I showed her the phone without saying anything.
She read it.
Her expression didn't shift, which was how I knew it was serious.
"Forward it to Reyes.
Right now, before you do anything else."
I did.
Reyes appeared in the doorway of the office thirty seconds later, read the message, and took the phone from me long enough to photograph the screen and note the timestamp.
"Unknown number," she said.
"We'll trace it.
In the meantime—" She handed the phone back.
"You said you have somewhere safe to stay?"
"Yes."
"Go there directly.
Don't stop.
Don't go back to the Voss property for any reason."
"I wasn't planning to."
"I know." She looked at me steadily.
"But I'm saying it anyway."
Grace steered me toward the back of the building, away from the main hall where guests were still milling in stunned clusters, some of them filming, some of them on their phones, all of them trying to make sense of a wedding that had become something else entirely.
I caught a glimpse of the flower wall someone had constructed for the reception photographs — white roses, hundreds of them, spelling out FOREVER in script.
A caterer was standing in front of it, holding a tray of champagne flutes, looking lost.
Rosalind was waiting near the back exit.
She had her coat on.
The manila envelope was gone — she'd handed it to Grace earlier — and without it she looked smaller.
Older.
She had been hiding for two years, and it showed in the way she stood, slightly turned toward the wall, a habit of making herself less visible.
"Ready?" Grace asked her.
"More than," Rosalind said.
We went out through the service entrance into the alley behind the church.
A car was waiting — Grace had arranged it, a plain sedan, not a car service Adrian would recognize.
We got in.
The driver pulled out without being told.
I sat in the back between Grace and Rosalind and watched the church disappear behind us.
"The text," Rosalind said quietly.
She had seen me show Grace the phone.
"Was it him?"
"Adrian is currently in a federal vehicle," Grace said.
"He doesn't have his phone."
"Celeste," I said.
Neither of them disagreed.
We drove for a while without speaking.
The city moved past the windows — ordinary Saturday morning traffic, people with coffee, a farmers' market on a corner, a man walking a dog the size of a small horse.
Everything completely normal.
Everything completely unaware.
"Tell me about page nine," Rosalind said.
I looked at her.
"Reyes's face changed when she read it," Rosalind said.
"I was watching through the window in the door.
I've never seen a federal agent's face change like that."
"It's a wire transfer record," I said.
"Fourteen years old.
It shows a payment of two point three million dollars from a private account held by Celeste Voss to a man named Thomas Whitmore."
Rosalind went very still.
"Thomas Whitmore," she said slowly.
"That was my husband's name."
"I know."
"My husband d*ed of a heart attack.
Four years ago.
He was fifty-one years old and completely healthy and then one morning he was gone." Her voice was careful.
Precise.
The voice of someone who had said these words many times in private and learned to say them without breaking.
"The doctors said it was sudden cardiac event.
No prior indicators."
"I know," I said again.
"That payment was made fourteen years ago.
Before I even met Thomas.
Before he became Adrian's business partner." She turned to look at me directly.
"What does it mean?"
"I don't know yet," I said.
"That's why I waited six weeks before handing it over.
I needed to find out if Thomas Whitmore had any prior connection to the Voss family before you met him."
"Did he?"
The car stopped at a light.
A child on the sidewalk pressed her face against a shop window, breath fogging the glass.
"Yes," I said.
"He did.
He worked for Celeste's first company.
Before it was dissolved.
Before she started over under a different structure." I paused.
"He left that company under disputed circumstances.
There was a settlement.
The terms were sealed."
Rosalind was quiet for a long moment.
"She paid him two point three million dollars," she said finally.
"And then fourteen years later, my husband became Adrian's partner.
And then he d*ed."
"I'm not saying I know what it means," I said carefully.
"But you think it means something."
"I think Reyes thinks it means something." I looked out the window.
"And I think that's why she expanded the warrant."
Grace's phone buzzed.
She looked at it, then looked at me.
"Philip Crane was just picked up near the Voss family storage facility in Westchester," she said.
"He had a bolt cutter and a company laptop that doesn't belong to him."
Celeste had moved fast.
But not fast enough.
"What was in the storage facility?" I asked.
"That," Grace said, "is what they're trying to find out right now."
My phone lit up again.
Same unknown number.
This time it wasn't four words.
It was a photograph.
Of the apartment where I'd been staying for the past three months.
The one no one was supposed to know about.
May you like
The one I'd rented under a name Adrian had never heard.
The photograph was taken from inside.
