Chapter 6: Raymond Makes a Move
She didn't sit down, and she didn't run.
What Victoria did instead was reach into her handbag, pull out her phone, and dial.
She held it to her ear with a hand that wasn't entirely steady.
"Don't," Jonathan said.
She kept it to her ear.
"Victoria." His voice was harder now.
"Whatever you're about to do, it will not help you."
The call connected.
"Raymond," she said.
"We have a problem."
Jonathan reached for the call button on his bed rail.
He pressed it once.
"You need to leave the condo," Victoria said into the phone.
"Right now.
Take the—"
The door opened.
Not a nurse.
Two men in plain clothes, one holding credentials.
"Mrs.
Mercer." The taller one stepped forward.
"I'm Detective Arroyo, state attorney's office.
I need you to end that call."
Victoria lowered the phone slowly.
Her eyes went to Jonathan.
He saw her calculate — exit, denial, explanation — and find nothing.
"Raymond Castillo," Detective Arroyo said, "is currently being contacted by a second unit at the Streeterville address." He held out his hand.
"I'll need the phone, ma'am."
She gave it to him.
Her fingers were white.
What happened in the next twenty minutes was quiet and procedural and completely without drama, which was somehow worse than if she had screamed.
She was read her rights in a hospital room with a heart monitor still running and white lilies on the windowsill.
She was asked to gather her personal items.
She was escorted into the hallway.
At the door she stopped.
Turned back to Jonathan one final time.
"You were sick," she said.
"The heart damage is real.
You know that."
"I know," Jonathan said.
"I also know I would have recovered six months ago if the digoxin had stopped."
Her jaw tightened.
"The Malibu house," Jonathan said.
"Did you already put a deposit down?"
She said nothing.
"I hope not," he said.
"That would be a difficult thing to recover."
Detective Arroyo touched her elbow gently.
She walked out.
The door closed.
Lucas, who had been standing in the far corner of the room through all of it, let out a breath that sounded like it had been held for an hour.
"Is it over?" he asked.
"That part," Jonathan said.
Gerald Foss was already on his phone in the hallway, talking to someone at the state attorney's office about asset freezes and arraignment timelines.
Jonathan could hear the measured cadence of it through the door — the language of consequence being arranged.
He looked at the lilies on the windowsill.
He thought about his mother, who had actually loved lilies.
Who had died when Jonathan was thirty-one, before he had made his money, before any of this.
She had been a practical woman who believed that people showed you who they were if you paid attention.
He had not paid attention.
He would not make that mistake again.
His phone buzzed.
A message from a number he didn't recognize.
*You think this is finished?
She told me everything.
All of it.
Including what you did in 2019.
I wonder what your board of directors would think.*
Jonathan read it twice.
He showed it to Gerald, who had come back into the room.
Gerald read it.
His expression didn't change.
"Raymond," Jonathan said.
"Almost certainly," Gerald said.
"Do you know what he's referring to?
2019?"
"No," Jonathan said.
And then, after a pause: "But I'd like to know what he thinks he knows."
Gerald looked at him carefully.
"Jonathan.
Is there anything from 2019 I need to be aware of?"
Jonathan thought about 2019.
The plant expansion.
The Milwaukee zoning dispute.
The contractor who had walked off the job and later sued and lost.
"Nothing," Jonathan said.
"But someone told him there was."
Gerald set the phone on the table between them.
"Then we have a second problem," he said.
Outside, the city was fully awake now.
Traffic moved on Michigan Avenue thirty floors below.
Somewhere in this building, Victoria Mercer was being processed.
May you like
Somewhere across the city, Raymond Castillo was either running or talking to a lawyer.
And someone — a third person Jonathan hadn't identified yet — had given Raymond a weapon to use.
