Linda Edgemont looked at the clock on the mantel for the third time in as many minutes. A quarter to eleven at night. It felt both later and earlier.
She’d been awake since before dawn, when the deputy in his black shirt and baseball cap had thumped on the door of her suite at Briar Bay. One knock among many, as other policemen roused the rest of the guests. She recalled stumbling to the suite’s door and barely following what the deputy had said to her. Not that he’d revealed much. It wasn’t until she’d joined the others in the pavilion that she learned that Nelson Bao, the younger, smaller Chinese man, had died.
Not just died. Found dead. Very different, that phrasing.
Those two words had repeated in her mind many times throughout the long day. After an abrupt trip home she’d been delivered to her house by midmorning. She had tried to work and given up after her fourth attempt at reading the same paragraph. The notion of sitting and watching television was absurd. Offensive. As though she would be disrespecting the dead man somehow.
Which was crazy. She hadn’t known Nelson Bao. She’d had relatives, even close friends, die over the years. Their passing had left her less troubled than the death of the Chinese man whom she’d met only a day before.
She knew why it bothered her so. There was a third word that threatened to reverberate in her brain, along with the other two.
Culpable.
The wine had helped some. Or at least buoyed her resolve. It was time to do what she’d been building up to—and dreading—for weeks.
She went to the kitchen and opened the bottommost drawer by the refrigerator. Hidden beneath the muffin tins and baking supplies was a simple flip phone.
The phone only had one number programmed into its memory, with a Maryland area code and no name assigned to it. The person at the other end wasn’t in Maryland, but that phone had been purchased there originally, just as hers had. Twins, like the set of walkie-talkies she and her brother had played with when they were children.
Linda pressed Call and listened to the phone at the other end ring.
“Yes?”
Ed’s answering startled her. She’d expected voice mail at this hour, two in the morning on the East Coast.
They didn’t use names. That had been one of Ed’s first instructions, when he’d handed her the phone. But she knew his voice. It was husky and a little Noo Yawk, which Linda had once found charming.
“I need to speak with you,” she said.
“Here we are.”
“Have you . . . do you know what happened last night?”
“Oh, yeah,” said Ed. “I’ve been on the phone all day, handling the fallout.”
“So it’s done, then? The deal’s canceled?”
“What? No, of course not. It’s just a setback.”
“A setback,” she said.
There was a long silence. Ed gave in first.
“It was an accident,” he said. “That’s all.”
Linda’s head ached. She took another moment to select the right words, cautious not to blurt out something best left unsaid, like a name or an amount. Or an accusation that had nothing but her suspicions fueling it.
“It’s not being treated like an accident anymore,” she said. “Officially.”
“Is that direct information?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. That doesn’t mean they’re right. They have to make sure every theory is checked off. Procedure. You know how these things roll.” He sounded as though he were persuading himself.
“I think we should stop. That I should stop.”
“There’s no need. Nothing has changed.”
“I have. Or I need to.” Linda rubbed her temple. “It’s overdue.”
He hummed doubtfully. “Are you negotiating? At this late date—”
“No. It’s not about getting more. I don’t even want what I already have.”
It was Ed’s turn to take a pause. Maybe she’d said too much.
“If you need to stop, of course that’s what we’ll do.” He coughed lightly. “You sound worried . . . There’s no reason to be concerned. I promise you. It’s just a tragedy at a terrible time for all of us. You’ll see.”
“Very well.”
“Let’s talk tomorrow. Whatever you need, we’ll make that happen.”
“Yes. Thank you.”
Linda hung up. She closed her eyes and inhaled slowly. It felt like the first deep breath she’d taken in weeks. Funny how stress caught up to you. Dealing with pressure for ages and ages, thinking you were just fine, and then all at once you were crushed in a vise of your own making.
Ed’s reassurances had helped. Of course Nelson Bao’s death was only an accident. With awful timing.
Having taken the first step, Linda felt prepared to take the worst one. Confessing to Sofia what she’d done.
That was a conversation so fraught that the mere idea of it had plagued Linda’s dreams. She continually invented reasons it shouldn’t happen. For a time she’d even thought she might be able to live with the situation, as terrible as it was. But no longer. Linda supposed that was the tiny blessing that had been born from this horrible week.
Sofia would be wounded. Furious. Learning the truth might be catastrophic to their friendship and likely Linda’s career as well. But without that confession, she couldn’t face Sofia again.
Linda put the phone back in the drawer and decided that she was ready to try sleeping. Tomorrow she would reach out to Sofia. Privately, away from the office and its many inquisitive eyes.
In the lightless den of his Brooklyn apartment, Ed Chiarra sat and stared at the phone as its tiny screen dimmed. Its ringing had woken his wife. She was used to him receiving calls at all hours, but the ringtone of the phone assigned to Linda Edgemont was different from his regular work phone. She’d glared at him while he got out of bed in his boxers, as he’d said “Yes” into the phone and then shut up until he’d found his sweats and left their bedroom. He knew she was angry at her sleep being disturbed and probably convincing herself right now that he was having an affair.
Which was almost insulting. If he’d wanted to spread it around, shouldn’t his wife of thirteen years think he’d be smarter about it than that? Keeping a cheap little burner phone in his suit jacket’s pocket like some plumber from Poughkeepsie?
That domestic concern wasn’t even close to being important right now. He knew that. He was just bitching to himself. Putting off what had to come next.
He went to his desk. His regular work phone was there, plugged into the charger. He called the number that was first in his contacts. James Hargreaves.
“Sir? Sorry to disturb you,” Ed said.
“I was awake,” said Hargreaves, with the voice that always reminded Chiarra of frozen tundra. Flat and well below zero.
“I just received a call from our Seattle asset. They’re very upset. They would like to withdraw.”
“Did they give a reason?”
“Not directly. But the events of the past day were . . . emotional.”
“Hold.”
There was a change in the pitch of the open line. Ed listened to the almost-silence for three full minutes. Staying calm. He knew what Hargreaves was doing. Listening to a voice record of the conversation Chiarra had just had with Linda Edgemont. Every call to a company phone—temporary burners definitely included—was recorded, regardless of whether the party at the other end was aware. Standard procedure for Paragon Consulting.
“All right,” Hargreaves said when he returned. “Maintain contact.”
“If our asset leaves—”
“Then they leave. We always viewed them as a temporary resource.”
“Okay. Sure.”
“Make it clear that their silence is still required. Keep all transaction records close at hand. We may have to apply some pressure to be certain.”
“Yessir. I will.”
Hargreaves closed the call.
Chiarra rolled his neck to loosen the muscles. He hadn’t realized he’d been so clenched. He’d thought—he didn’t know exactly what he’d thought would happen.
There were whispers about Hargreaves around their company. The head man kept himself at a remove. Never lunching with personnel, taking most meetings by videoconference long before and after Zoom was standard procedure for everyone in the world. He even floated in and out of the office at unpredictable hours. When Chiarra had first joined the firm, he figured that distance was some air-of-mystery affectation Hargreaves cultivated to keep things professional. But before long he’d realized that, no, the man really was apart from everyone else. By nature or by training. No one seemed to know for sure where Hargreaves had worked before he’d started Paragon.
Most of what they did was bread-and-butter: a little surveillance, some forensic accounting. For Chiarra’s part it was largely the same work he’d have been doing at any white-shoe firm, legal reviews of contracts and advising clients on their options. It was the other ten percent that was exciting, when he got to play a part in one of the company’s cover stories. The normal mood around Paragon was casual, even fun.
Then, on an otherwise average afternoon, some hard-faced operative like Emmet Tucker would turn up unannounced, walk into Hargreaves’s corner office, and shut the door. Everyone on the floor would become very subdued. Rumor had it that guys like Tucker only appeared when a job was going sideways. The office would wait, hushed, to see what mood prevailed. Scorched earth, he’d heard one of the senior staff call it once.
Maybe that’s why he was so tense, Chiarra thought. Why his knees felt rubbery as he stood. This job, running Linda Edgemont, had been a step up for him. Her withdrawal could be viewed as his failure.
Chiarra shook his head. That wouldn’t happen. He’d brought Linda in, and Paragon had gleaned great intel from her. Surely that was one in the win column.
Still, when he went into the office tomorrow, maybe he should gather a few records of his own. Some insurance. He could collect what he needed without leaving an online trail. Print a few pages and keep them close.
He nodded, feeling more at ease. Couldn’t hurt to be ready to scorch some earth himself, in case it looked like Hargreaves might be sending Tucker to knock on his door some dark night.