His eyes change. “What date?”
“December first.” The words are glue in my mouth. Idread the argument that’s coming. The days of awkward family dinners, Collette picking up on the tension and neither of us knowing what to tell her.
He’s still sitting in his computer chair. His eyes gaze downward, and there’s a long pause. Then he nods.
“I was doing a little snooping into this case. I hope you don’t mind. This billionaire you’re tracking down—he’s gotten himself into some sketchy shit, yeah?”
I’m so shocked that at first, I can’t think of a response. I was expecting a fight. A passive-aggressive huff as he turned back to his desk. A preplanned monologue about why I should give up on this and all future vigilante endeavors.
I was not prepared for Waylen to ask me questions. I didn’t anticipate the interest he shows me now.
“Tell me what you’re planning,” he says. “Tell me how you’re going to make him pay.”
It’s been years since he’s asked me about a case, and I find that I’m still eager to talk to him about it. I tell him about Bertram’s dodgy love life, how I’m the only one who can make him fry for the murder of his missing fiancée. How he’ll be exposed as a fraud and lose everything. And the whole media machine will wonder who brought down one of the tech world’s most powerful men, but only Waylen will know it was me.
For just one moment, our diverging worlds meet. I want him to still love what we used to do together. He wants me to come home to him. It isn’t often that we get both.
“Promise me,” he says.
“What?” I ask.
“Promise that this is the last one. After this, you’ll quit.”
If I can’t solve this case, there are no stakes that the world will see. There will be no news outlets reporting my failure. Nobody in the world is expecting to hear about it, which is the case for most of the projects I take on. Even when I’ve succeeded, I’m never the one who takes credit.
I don’t answer him.
Waylen and I know the real stakes. All these years, Waylen has been waiting for me to let one slip through the cracks. He’s been waiting for me to finally meet the client I can’t help, and give up on the case I can’t solve. Because then, I’ll be all his.
Thirteen
To: ProfJArtler@Yale
From: Jennifer Smith
Dear Professor Artler,
I’m a journalist writing a piece on Bertram Casimir. It’s my understanding that he’s a former student of yours. He’s cited you as a big inspiration. I would love to set up a time to chat, if you’re available.
Sincerely,
Jennifer Smith
I send the email at three a.m., when I’m sure I’m the only one awake. I’ve sent the same email to half a dozen professors at Yale. It’s desperate, but one of them must have worked with Bertram while he was a student there.
Never overlook a lead, no matter how small. While Elodiechases Bertram’s love life, I’ll dig into his academic one. He may be a reclusive billionaire now, but he was a run-of-the-mill upper-class college boy just a few years ago.
CEOs, millionaires, and tycoons pay big bucks to scrub their past lives from the internet, but if you look, there’s always a crumb left behind.
—
“So, was Waylen mad?” Elodie asks.
“What?” I realize only now that I’ve been staring off into space, my mind numb. I’m exhausted. I slept horribly last night, disturbed by weird dreams of Bertram Casimir throwing Annie’s body from a jagged seaside cliff. In one bizarre dream, as Annie’s body fell in slow motion, he offered his hand to me to tango along the edge.
“When you told him that you had to work on December first.” We’re in Elodie’s car, about to turn onto the block of Erin’s condo complex.
“Oh, that,” I say. “No, he understands.”
