I look at her. My best friend. Red-eyed, beaten-up, and furious.
“Okay,” I say. “You’re there.”
She nods, wipes her face again, straightens up, and takes a deep breath.
We sit on the bed, side by side. Mara’s hand finds mine and she squeezes. I squeeze back.
Two women in a dead mall, getting ready for a fight.
63
VI
We bringhim to an old storage closet at nine p.m.
I hear Rogue outside, casual and friendly like always. “Hey Tommy, Sting wants to talk to you about some trade stuff. You got a minute?” Tommy says sure. Of course he says sure. He’s Tommy. Helpful. Agreeable. Always got a minute.
He walks in and sees all of us.
Me at the table. Sting to my right. Armen to my left. Mara on the couch against the wall. Rogue closes the door behind Tommy but he stays in front of it.
Tommy’s eyes move across the room, quickly reading the situation. I watch him take in the configuration. Five people. One door. Rogue blocking it. This isn’t a trade meeting.
His face doesn’t change, that’s the tell. A normal person would look confused, would ask what’s going on. Tommy’s expression stays exactly the same. Open and calm.
“What’s this about?” he says, easy and relaxed.
“Sit down, Tommy,” I say.
He looks at me. For the first time since I’ve known him, I see something behind the friendly face. A flicker. It’s just a fraction of a second. Then it’s gone and he’s pulling out a chair and sitting across from me with his hands folded on the table.
“Sure,” he says. “What’s up?”
I put the two pages on the table, side by side. The property transfer from the city and the trade requisition from the Rot. I don’t say anything, I just let him look.
He looks.
His expression holds for about three seconds, then twitches. It’s subtle, something I might not notice if I hadn’t been looking. But it’s there, no doubt about it. He knows what he’s looking at and he knows what the two pages mean.
Regardless, he shrugs. “I don’t understand.” He remains friendly but his hands, folded on the table, have gone still in a way that folded hands shouldn’t. They’re the forced stillness of a man trying too hard.
I keep my voice level. “The handwriting on the left is from a property transfer signed by L. Fischer, city development officer. The handwriting on the right is from a trade requisition you signed last week. They’re the same.”
“That’s—” He laughs and shakes his head. “That’s a stretch. Handwriting? Lots of people write the same way.”
“Slashed sevens. Unique fours. The same lean on every capital. The same crossbar on the F.”
“Coincidence.”
“Is it a coincidence that you’ve been asking Mara about my father’s papers?”
His eyes move to Mara where she’s sitting on the couch with her arms crossed, her face hard. He sees the red eyes and knows what they mean.
“I was making conversation,” he says. “Mara’s my friend. I asked how her friend was doing. That’s normal.”
“You asked about missing pieces. How the story ends. Mara didn’t tell you about those things. She didn’t know about them. So where did you get that information, Tommy?”
Tommy’s posture changes. He sits back, his friendly lean gone. What replaces it is straighter, harder, the posture of a man who’s done pretending.
