The Pawnbroker King

Chapter Nine: Front Page Massacre

Selene drove them home herself.

She sent the security team ahead and took the wheel of the lead car without a word. Pippa fell asleep in the back seat within minutes, wrapped in a guard's jacket, the rope burns still raw on her wrists. The city slid past in the dark, wet and empty. Gideon sat beside his wife with blood drying on his shirt and the crimson ticket in his pocket, and neither of them spoke for twenty minutes.

At a red light on Canal Street, Selene finally turned to him.

"Are you going to tell me what you are?"

Gideon thought about it honestly. "Someone your mother trusted."

She studied his face in the red glow of the signal for a long moment. Then she nodded once, as if that answer would hold for now, and reached across the console to take his hand. The light turned green. She drove the rest of the way to Rustline one-handed, and she didn't let go.

By seven a.m., the city had a new story.

Pippa brought the Valemont Courier in from the doorstep and laid it on the kitchen table without a word. The front page carried a photograph from Corran shipyard, grainy and bright with flash. It showed Gideon standing over a heap of bloodied men in the fog, his shirt soaked red and his face hard. It had been cropped so tightly that there was no crane, no rope and no girl hanging above the water. The headline ran across the top in heavy type.

HARTWELL CEO'S HUSBAND LINKED TO DOCKSIDE MASSACRE.

According to the article, twenty dock workers had been savagely attacked by Gideon Mercer, a Rustline pawnbroker with "a history of violent associations," and two of them were in critical condition. It quoted an anonymous police source and a tearful neighbor of one victim. It never once mentioned a hostage.

Gideon read it twice. He had left twenty men with dislocated joints and broken wrists, and every one of them had been breathing. None of them had been critical when the ambulance pulled away.

By noon, the story was on every screen in Valemont, and Hartwell Medical's stock had fallen thirty-one percent.

Selene took the calls one after another at the kitchen table, her laptop balanced between a teapot and Pippa's schoolbooks. Two investors pulled out of Project Lumen before lunch. Lumen was the cancer therapy her mother had founded the company to build, eleven years of trials and the one thing Selene had ever called sacred, and now its funding had a hole in it the size of a building. She called her banks about the eight hundred million due in less than four weeks. The first one put her on hold. The second and third didn't answer at all.

At half past twelve, an email arrived from Bianca. Given the scandal, the board would meet again to reconsider the leadership of the company.

Pippa had the television on with the sound turned low. On the midday news, Miles Sorrell stood outside Sorrell Tower in a dark suit, looking grave. "I've known Selene for years," he told the reporters. "I'm deeply concerned for her safety. I only hope she gets out of that house before something worse happens." He paused just long enough for the cameras to catch his worried frown.

Pippa threw a cushion at the screen.

Then Selene's phone rang again, and the name on the screen made her hesitate. She put it on speaker and set it on the table.

"Selene." Raymond Hartwell's voice was thin and shaking. "Have you seen the papers? Everyone has seen the papers. Lydia can't even leave the house. Please, sweetheart, I'm begging you. Divorce that violent man before he ruins this family. Before he ruins you. Come home, and we'll fix this together."

Selene didn't answer right away. She looked across the table at Gideon.

Gideon sat with his hands folded and listened to the trembling voice of the man he had saved from prison two days earlier. In his pocket, the crimson ticket felt as heavy as a brick. He didn't know yet whether those two initials were real. He only knew that the man on the other end of the line had a name that fit them.

He said nothing at all.

"I'm not divorcing him, Dad," Selene said quietly, and she ended the call.

That afternoon, she faced the press.

By three o'clock, the lobby of Hartwell Medical's headquarters was packed with cameras and shouting reporters. Selene stood at a podium in a charcoal suit, composed and pale, and Gideon stood a few steps behind her in a clean shirt. She didn't read from notes.

"My husband is not a violent man," she said. "The Courier printed half a picture, and I intend to find out where the other half went." A reporter shouted a question about divorce, and Selene looked straight into the lens. "No. I won't be distancing myself from him. Not today, and not ever."

The cameras were still rolling when the glass doors burst open.

Commissioner Harlan marched into the lobby with a dozen uniformed officers fanning out behind him, and the reporters scattered out of his way. He walked straight past the podium and past Selene, and he stopped in front of Gideon with a pair of handcuffs already open in his hand.

"Gideon Mercer," he announced, loud enough for every microphone in the room, "you are under arrest for attempted murder."

Selene stepped between them. "You can't..."

"I can, Mrs. Mercer." Harlan didn't even look at her. "Turn around, pawnbroker."

Gideon turned around. Through the glass wall of the lobby, he could see the street outside and a black Sorrell car parked at the opposite curb with its rear window lowered. Miles sat in the back seat, perfectly relaxed. When he saw Gideon looking, he lifted two fingers in a small, smiling salute.

The cuffs closed around Gideon's wrists with a cold double click. Harlan leaned in close, his breath sour with coffee and old cigarettes, and spoke so quietly that only Gideon could hear.

"Seventy-two hours in my cells, pawnbroker," he murmured. "By then, your shop will be empty."