"I know."
"You should have told us."
"I'm telling you now."
Julian is already on his phone. "You should’ve told me it was this,” Julian says. “I have someone who can open it."
Ryan shakes his head. "He's not exactly legitimate."
"Neither is any of this," Julian says, looking at me. "Your call."
I think about the card. About patterns. About someone who knows when I cry.
"Call him," I say.
Maeve catches my eye across the room. She doesn't say anything about Beckett. I'm grateful. I don't have the energy to defend something I'm not sure I can defend.
"Only Adela and me," Julian says, phone to his ear, already moving toward the hallway. "It's in the city."
Maeve nods once. "Text us."
I hug her last, and longest. She holds on.
"Be careful," she says quietly, into my hair.
"I will."
An hour into the city. A building full of half-lit storefronts. Julian jimmies a back door and leads me down a dim hallway to the third door on the left.
Gary is exactly what the room suggests — mid-forties, multiple screens, the particular stillness of someone who spends most of their time alone with machines. Julian does the talking. Cash exchanges hands. Gary opens the laptop.
An hour passes. Then most of another.
Then Gary makes a sound.
"Got something."
He opens a folder. The screen loads.
It's dark. Too dark to see much at first.
Then I hear his voice.
A laugh — low, loose, the particular sound of someone relaxed in a way he never quite was with me. And then a woman's voice. The angle is unstable and handheld, and the image cuts in and out. A flash of skin. His jawline. The curve of a shoulder that isn't mine.
I don't see her face.
I don't see enough to be certain of anything — except his voice, which I know better than almost any sound in my life. And then there’s a flash of Cody’s lips on hers. I freeze.
"Adela—" Julian starts.
"How many more files?" I ask Gary.
He gestures. More money.
"No." I reach over and close the laptop. My hands are steady, which surprises me. "Thank you."
I walk out.
