Page 64 of The Marriage Blunder

Kenneth laughed, the real one. He took my glass, set it on the counter, then pulled me in by the lapel of my shirt. The kiss was slow, and unhurried, and tasted faintly of everything we’d just survived.

The city was alive outside the window, but for a while, all I heard was the soft sound of his breath and the press of his body against mine.

I let myself have it. All of it.

We stood that way for a long time, just breathing.

The phone lit up behind us on the counter. I pulled away just enough to see it. A message, from Delancy, time-stamped two minutes ago. To both of us. “Found the fourth ghost event. You’re going to want to sit down. The architect isn’t a stranger.”

The hair on my arms went up, but it was not fear, not really. Just the knowledge that the game was still on, and that we were, for once, ahead of it.

Kenneth saw the look on my face, smiled, and said, “Do you want to see who it is?”

I nodded.

He picked up the phone, unlocked it, and pulled me back in, arm around my waist, eyes on the screen. Whatever the next move was, we would make it together. And I wasn’t afraid of anything, not even myself.

Chapter Fourteen

~ Kenneth ~

The phone rang five minutes later. The caller ID said nothing, but the rhythm was pure Delancy: never early, never late, and always just as you were about to convince yourself the world would not end today.

I answered. “James.”

“Jude on?” Delancy’s voice was not tired, but it wasn’t rested, either.

“He’s here.”

“Put me on speaker.”

I did. Jude didn’t look up, but I saw his shoulders stiffen, the way they always did when he was about to find out who died on the next page of a horror novel.

Delancy didn’t preamble. “I have the event.”

I set my pen down.

“It’s a private dinner,” he said. “Fourteen weeks ago. The invoice was run through a shell called Montauk Planning—sounded like every other event company in Manhattan, but it’s a pass-through. The trail goes cold at a Delaware LLC.”

Jude started typing, fingers moving so fast I thought I’d imagined it.

Delancy continued, “I drilled the LLC. It dead-ends at a law firm that specializes in business privacy. But the real point of contact is a single person. Your executive assistant.”

The words hung in the room.

I blinked once, slow, to make sure I’d heard them.

Jude stopped typing.

Delancy said, “Edward Taylor. Six years with you. Runs your calendar, access to every personnel file, knows every contract coming and going. He’s the architect. He didn’t just enable the operation—he built it. He’s the one who pointed Carolyn at Voss, and at Mercer. The credential used to create the bcc was his.”

My hands were very still on the desk.

I said nothing.

Delancy did not stop. “Motive is financial. There’s a fourteen-month-old wire from an account linked to Aldous Pryce. That’s your competitor—”

“I know who he is,” I said. My voice was steady, which was good, because my pulse was working hard to pretend it wasn’t.