“Well, they’re not around anymore. So I mostly listen to myself these days.”
She doesn’t offer her condolences, but something about her pause this time feels like a shared grief, and he respects it, letting them both linger in it for a while. In the silence, he recalls watching his father grade papers at the dinner table, his mother coming home at six in the morning in her blue scrubs. Somehow, they still managed to walk him to school every morning, still both showed up at his graduation, still helped him move into his college dorm. It didn’t seem like that long ago when they were both healthy and strong.
Eddie,his mother used to say as she twisted her braids up into a tight bun.People like us, we have to work twice as hard to get half the reward. But we still show up, don’t we? And we show them, don’t we?
“Listen, Miss Lang,” Edward says gently, tucking away his old wounds. “I may not know what exactly is going on here, but I know there’s something wrong in the undercurrents of this city. Deaths with evidence that doesn’t make any sense. Ties between these corporations that I can’t explain. I get a lot of cold shoulders from people, a lot of half-baked answers.And maybe I’m just new to the force and don’t know any better. But I know you loved your mother. And I know you wouldn’t have called me back, you wouldn’t have come here, if you didn’t think you could help me. Now, you don’t have to give me anything. I’m impressed you even showed up. But if there isanything at allthat you feel willing to give, I’d appreciate it, more than you could know.”
There’s a slight shuffling in the seat behind him, and he wonders for a second if Sam is getting up. On the screen, the driver wanders the street, still searching for the woman. As he surveys the scene, the barrel of a pistol come into view from a window behind him. There is a pop, the man careens forward, blood sprays against the window. The woman comes out from a doorway and continues to head down the sidewalk.
At last, Sam answers Edward. “I know those names,” she says. “Ashley Hanover. Henry Maclan too, and Kane Zhukov.”
He nods in the darkness, trying to stay calm. “Do you know who killed them?”
There is the sound of something sliding open behind him, and he tenses, thinks for a second that she might be drawing a weapon on him. But when he looks to his side, he sees her slender hand holding something out for him, a pocket folder held closed with a rubber band.
He takes it and looks into the pocket, his heart thudding in his chest. There are several packets of papers, along with a miniature video recorder.
He sucks his breath in sharply.
There are ledgers of Grand Central’s balance sheets, showing shipments of sand—thousands of kilos—being moved through the port without permits. Of profits from the sale of that sand being left off the books. There are tax documents and contracts showing payments being made illegally to Mayor Grayson. There are letters between Diamond Taylor and the mayor, private requests for permit requirements to be waived. There are paper trails for massive contributions made from Diamond to the mayor’s reelection campaign, all routed through shell donors.
Edward finally takes out the video recorder, holds it out, and pushesPLAY.
A clip comes on, showing a man shivering on the floor with a woman crouching next to him. And even though Edward hasn’t seen the woman often, he recognizes her immediately. Diamond Taylor, the head of Grand Central.
You’ve done a bad thing, Zhukov,she says.
He listens to the sobbing man on the tape, the hairs rising on the back of his neck. He sees Will Taylor distinctly on the clip too, hears him address his mother.
And beside Will stands Sam.
Sam too was there when Zhukov died. Edward watches quietly as Diamond dismisses her.
She was responsible for Maclan’s death.
He is sitting right in front of a killer.
The recording finishes playing and the device goes dark. Edward continues staring down at it in stunned silence. There is a blurring at the corners of his vision, like this theater isn’t real and this meeting isn’t real and something very strange is happening.
Up on the theater’s screen, the dead man’s cohort has discovered his body splayed on the sidewalk. The camera cuts to the woman’s silhouette in the floors above, her gun still drawn. She lifts it. Instead of pointing it down at them, she turns it on herself.
Edward finally manages to clear his throat. “Why,” he says hoarsely, “are you incriminating yourself to me?”
“Because you’re not going to arrest me,” she says. “Not if you want your evidence. Not if you want to know the full story of what’s going on under this city. And certainly not if you want someone on the inside to help you, moving forward.”
She’s making a deal with him. She is offering herself to him as a plant. And Edward suddenly realizes how much more she must know than what she’s letting on—and that, even with the folder in his hands, he is not going to leave this theater alive unless he meets Sam’s requests. He swallows, stays calm and still.
“What are your terms, then?” he asks.
“First,” Sam says, “Diamond Taylor has a friend of mine in her custody. In two days, there will be a prisoner exchange between Grand Central and Lumines at Diamond’s estate, during which time she’s going to kill my friend. If I’m going to have a chance to save him, I need you to make your move against Diamond and Will at that exchange.”
“Who’s your friend?”
“Ari Rathod.”
Ari Rathod.He knows the name, has been paying attention to thisLumines associate for a while now, has accumulated a folder of photos showing him at various high-profile events in the city. A date for the chief’s daughter. A close friend of Senator Doherty. A frequent guest at exclusive dinners. Edward has often caught himself lingering on the young man’s face, unable to look away, wanting to know more.
“What do you need?” he now asks.
