Page 51 of The Marriage Blunder

He went on, softer now. “She’s not a leak, Kenneth. She’s a conduit. And whoever is running her, they’ve been building this since before Vegas.”

I let the silence stretch, let the implications settle into the shape of something unkillable. Finally, I asked, “Do you think Carolyn started this on her own?”

Three seconds. “I don’t know,” Jude said. “I don’t want to think she had help from the beginning, but the infrastructure is too clean for a solo act.”

He sounded tired. Not exhausted, but worn in a way I recognized. The kind of fatigue that comes from discovering the problem you’re trying to solve is not just bigger than you thought, but possibly unsolvable.

I said, “Don’t do this alone.”

A half-laugh. “I know. I won’t.”

He didn’t argue, which told me more than any statement of intent could.

I said, “I need you, Jude.”

He paused. “I’m not going anywhere.”

We stayed on the line for another minute, not talking, just breathing together. I could feel his presence through the wire, the same as I did in the kitchen that morning, the same as I did in every room he had ever entered.

He was the only thing I trusted to be real in all of this.

When we hung up, the world felt sharper, if not safer.

I spent the next hour reviewing every piece of Mercer’s record I could access. Every event, every contract, every name that had ever crossed her radar. The connections multiplied, branched, then doubled back on themselves. It was beautiful, in the way that only a well-designed disaster could be.

At 5:30, Edward arrived with the hard copy of the audit. He said nothing, just set it on the desk and left. I paged through it: three credentials, three out-of-hours access points, all to the same shared folder.

I took a photo of the relevant pages and sent them to Miles and Lucas.

Within seconds, Lucas responded: “We’re on it.”

Miles, ever the tactician, replied, “Do not confront yet. Let’s see what she does next.”

I knew he was right, but I was running out of patience.

I watched the city transition from light to dark, the windows turning from mirrors to portals as the sun set and the skyline went to work. The office emptied out, but I stayed. There was a kind of ritual in it, a refusal to leave until the problem had been at least acknowledged, if not solved.

I poured a scotch—just one, just enough to taste—and let it sit, untouched, while I went back over the notes. The desk lamp cast a hard circle of light over the paper, turning everything outside it into shadow.

I thought about Jude, about the way he managed chaos by making himself smaller, by absorbing it until there was nothing left. I wondered if I was doing the same, or if, for once, I was actually learning from someone else’s approach.

At 7:00, my phone buzzed.

Unknown number. The message read: “You missed one.”

No signature, no context.

I stared at the words until they lost their meaning, then found it again. I closed my eyes. I counted to ten. When I opened them, the city was still there, waiting for the next move.

So was I.

Chapter Eleven

~ Jude ~

The city was a gradient of colors, blue at the edges, orange where the buildings caught the last of the sun, then purple in the transition to darkness. In the penthouse, the only light was a lamp at one end of the couch and the ambient overflow from a dozen screens.

I sat cross-legged on the L-shaped sectional, shoes off, pen behind my ear, glasses pushed up into my hair, and a pile of invoices fanned out to my right like a losing hand in a very expensive card game.