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Chapter 174: The Confrontation at New Harbor
The first car stopped at the yard gate and stayed there with its engine running. The second, which had followed it along the river road, slowed almost to a halt, let its headlights pass across the wall of the records house, and then continued on toward the New Harbor docks without turning in. Leo watched it go on the tablet and said nothing about it. He had trained himself to count what he could confirm, and what he could confirm was one car, at the gate, with two men in it.They got out unhurriedly. One was tall and fair, in a dark overcoat, carrying a leather folder under his arm. The other was shorter and heavier, and he stayed a pace behind with his hands visible, which Leo noted and approved of in the abstract, the way one approves of good manners in an adversary. Neither had raised his voice. Neither looked toward the building as though he expected to be stopped.Ethan remained in the corridor outside the vault room, where Leo had told him to stay. He could hear the exchange thr
Chapter 173: The Race to Aldric
Leo made the first call before Ethan had finished speaking. He stood at the end of the table with the phone against his ear, giving the facility's custodian a series of short instructions in a voice that carried none of the urgency his hands betrayed, and when he lowered it, he had already crossed to the wall map and put a finger on the river road."Custodian confirms the papers are inside, logged and sealed, and nobody has entered since the transfer. Two of ours are in the building, two more outside." He turned. "That's what I know about the facility. What I know about Gerald is thinner. The team watching his house reported twenty minutes ago that a car left the estate gate and was joined at the corner by a second. They didn't think it mattered until the log from Lane's phone came in. They're on the east approach now. If they're heading where I think they're heading, they have the river road at about forty-five minutes.""Forty-five from now?""From this minute. I'm allowing for the
Chapter 172: Gerald's Backup
"That was an offer to buy the past," Catherine said, once the screen had gone dark. "He didn't want the company divided. He wanted the question closed."Ethan did not answer at once. He was looking at the phone as though it might still say something, and when he finally spoke, it was to Leo. "How did he know I'd read the note this morning? He said he wrote to a man who would have the sense to read it before doing anything else. He knew it had reached me. He knew I'd had time to arrange it.""He might have guessed.""He might. He sounded as if he'd been told."Leo had not moved from the doorway, and his face had settled into the particular stillness that Ethan had learned meant he was working. "I've been treating that note as a message," he said slowly. "Something designed to be read and answered. But the call came within the hour. Whoever wrote it knew roughly when it would be opened, and knew you'd have the sense to bring it to this table first. That isn't a guess about a man's chara
Chapter 171: The Call
"Ethan," Gerald said. "I thought you might let it ring out."It was the first time Ethan had heard that voice without a table, a lawyer or a camera between them, and it was exactly as he remembered it from the dinners where he had stood behind chairs: unhurried, courteous, pitched so that nobody had to lean in. In the archive room, Catherine had lowered herself back into her seat without a sound. Leo had not moved from the door. Ethan put the phone on the table and touched the screen so that the speaker caught it, then looked at Catherine. She nodded once, which was the only permission he needed."You wrote to the vault," he said."I wrote to a man who would have the sense to read it before he did anything else. I see he did." There was a faint pause, almost approving. "I'm not calling to threaten you. I'd have thought you'd noticed I've stopped doing that. It hasn't produced anything lately.""Then why are you calling?""Because we've both spent a great deal of money and a great many
Chapter 170: Gerald's Last Asset
Leo came back eleven minutes after he had left, and he came back walking faster than he usually allowed himself to. He had not brought the tablet this time. He had a single printed page, and he laid it in front of Ethan with the care of a man setting down something that might still be warm."This was caught in the mail screening at the secondary vault an hour ago," he said. "The operations manager there received it in the ordinary post and, as instructed since the examination began, passed it to my office without opening it further. I've read it. I want you to read it before I say anything about it."Catherine and Franklin Greer were still at the table, and neither of them moved. Ethan took the page.It was short, typed, and unsigned. It did not say Aldric's name, which he noticed first. It spoke instead of "the papers in your keeping," a phrase that could only mean one thing. Since the examination began, the private papers Aldric had left behind, the letters, the original witness reg
Chapter 169: Gerald Isolated
By nine the next morning, the archive room had returned to something close to its ordinary self. The whiteboard had been wiped, the warrant papers had been boxed and labelled, and Catherine had set a single page at the head of the table, the recall notice, with its court stamp still bright."For the record," she said, "the warrant is recalled, the Westmere complaint is dismissed, and the supervising court's order stands. Gerald's counsel has twenty-one days to raise his objections to the acceleration through the ordinary appeal. He can do that. What he can't do is use the same proceeding to put you in a cell, or file a second complaint on the same theory in the same district without explaining to the magistrate how he forgot what the examiners said about his own instrument.""A forged instrument has a way of limiting what a man can say about it," Franklin Greer remarked. He had arrived early, which for Greer meant an hour before anyone required him, and he was holding a cup of coffee
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