“Let’s wait,” Sybil replied. “It’s sort of a miracle that we got him to participate, right? Let’s not blow the big moment without him.”
Zeke nodded, and so they waited. Minutes ticked past, and eventually, Zeke dropped the remote on the coffee table and flopped onto the oversized couch, and Sybil wanted to sit right next to him, to fold her feet—her pierced foot now fully healed but for a scar—onto his lap, to rest her head on his shoulder. Instead, she sank onto the opposite side, placed her socked feet up on the coffee table.
“This couch is so comfortable,” Sybil sighed. “Maybe we need to try sleeping out here.”
“Oh,” Zeke said. “I used to. I mean, not sleep. But I’d try. Nothing helped.”
Sybil dipped her neck back against the cushion and closed her eyes. Maybe Zeke was wrong. Maybe the couch could be the answer to everything. Maybe she was delirious though.
“You think we should check on him?” Zeke asked, breaking their silence.
Before Sybil could rise to go do so, she heard a door open down the hall, then Julian was in front of them, looking, well, Sybil had never seen him quite like this, looking a little frantic.
“Are you okay?” she said. “Here, come sit.”
“I have to go,” he replied, clipped, sharp.
“You can’t stay for cider? We haven’t even lit the tree up yet.”
“No,” he said, turning his back toward her, heading to the foyer in search of his coat. “Something has come up.”
Sybil jumped to her feet and trailed him.
“Is it Simone?”
“No.”
“Can I help?”
“Sybil,” he said to her in a tone she had never heard. Serious in a way that was even more serious than Julian usually sounded. “I say this respectfully, but you cannot help. You cannot fix everything, you cannot roll up your sleeves on every matter. Okay? Do you hear me?”
Sybil’s cheeks flushed. She didn’t dare meet Zeke’s eyes either. She nodded. “I was just trying to be—”
“I know what you were trying to be,” Julian said. “Not all of us need to be rescued.”
He spun the door handle, and then he was gone.
33
Night Twelve
Julian
Julian hadn’t meantto rip Sybil’s head off, but he didn’t have time to worry about her, and he certainly didn’t have time to protect her feelings. He was in work mode, despite his promises to Simone, and fuck it, the adrenaline coursing through him made him feel alive. The best he had since his heart attack. Everyone got it wrong, he thought. He shouldn’t have retired and become a genteel candy store proprietor. That was actually doing him more harm than the Bureau had. He’d been good at one thing his whole life, and it was chasing leads and closing cases. He was a fool to think that idling for the past four years was the key to a healthy heart.
There wasn’t any service in Zeke’s elevator, so he waited and waited as he ticked down the twenty-nine floors, stopping twice for two different dogs and their owners. As soon as they hit the lobby, he raced outside, his jacket still unbuttoned, his hands and head exposed to the elements. The temperature had dipped precipitously since he’d been inside. The wind waskicking up, the air smelled of snow. He turned uptown to flag a taxi, and his fingers were nearly numb within a minute.
The streets were dead, as if everyone had heeded the incoming storm warning but him and those few dog owners making a last-minute run before the snowdrifts piled up.
“Shit, shit, shit,” he said to himself, his breath a foggy plume around him. The CVS on the corner was open, so he ducked inside, the artificial heat an immediate reprieve. He should call Richard. But it was midnight, and Richard had remarried, had stepped into a different position within the Bureau, and now had little kids at home. Julian had given him such hell when he became a father again in his fifties. Richard had given him hell for having a heart attack at the same time that Richard was learning to swaddle a newborn all over again.
He’d call Richard tomorrow, first thing.
The cashier was eyeing him, probably wondering what this worried-looking Black man was doing loitering in the front of the store. He nodded at her, then made his way through the aisle. Grabbed a few necessities and a Coke because it might be a long night. He needed to be delicate about what happened next. He didn’t know who might be watching. But he did know that there was a tipping point between being careful and being paranoid, and he would step right to the precipice and not tilt over it.
He paid, the cashier not making eye contact, and wished her a wonderful evening. Outside now, the snow was dumping like God had turned on a hose. The sidewalks were damp and turning slippery, and he nearly landed on his back more than once, stopping his fall by grasping a parking meter. There was a man in a heavy parka, hood up, right behind him, and Julian froze for a moment, wondering if the man was too close, wonderingif he had gotten sloppy. He’d been meticulous in the years since retirement, obscuring his name on internet forums, being sure to leave no fingerprints anywhere he went. He knew how dangerous this dance was. But then the man passed by and rounded a corner, and Julian eased his grip on the parking meter and blessedly dipped into the subway station on the corner unscathed.
The train was delayed because the trains were always delayed. Fifteen minutes later, the red line screeched to a stop, and he stepped into a mostly deserted car. A few people loitered at the other end, but Julian sat in the far corner and opened his phone one more time. Just to be sure.
