Chapter 4: What Victor Hale Came to Deliver
Maya kept smiling.
It was the hardest thing she had ever done.
"Tell me you're not about to do something that gets my cousin's wedding on the evening news," she said.
"I'm not going to do anything here," Mason said.
"Not today."
"That is a very specific reassurance."
"It's the one I can offer."
He touched her elbow lightly and guided her toward the marquee, away from the hedge, away from Victor Hale and his untouched glass.
Inside, round tables were dressed in white linen, candles not yet lit, name cards in neat calligraphy.
A few guests had drifted in early to find their seats.
Mason stopped near the far wall, where the noise from outside was muffled and no one stood within earshot.
"How does Victor Hale know to be here?" Maya asked.
"He doesn't know you," Mason said.
"He knows me."
"How would he know you'd be here?
I only asked you yesterday."
Mason was quiet for a moment.
"Someone told him."
Maya felt something cold settle in her chest.
"One of your men."
He didn't answer.
He didn't need to.
"You think someone in your own security detail told this man where you'd be today."
"It's possible."
"And you brought these people to my family's wedding."
"Maya—"
"No." She stepped back.
"I need a moment to understand what you're telling me.
You may have a leak inside your security team, and that leak led a federal informant directly to an event where my mother is currently eating canapés."
Mason looked at her steadily.
"Yes."
She pressed her fingers to her temple.
"Fantastic."
"Nothing will happen here," he said.
"Victor is not a violent man.
He's a messenger."
"A messenger for whom?"
Before Mason could answer, a shadow fell across the entrance to the marquee.
Victor Hale stepped inside.
Up close he was older than he had looked from a distance — mid-fifties, grey at the temples, with the careful, watchful eyes of a man who had spent years learning to read rooms quickly.
He looked at Mason.
He didn't look at Maya at all.
"Reed," he said.
"You look well."
"Victor." Mason's voice carried no warmth and no hostility.
Pure neutral.
"This isn't the place."
"I agree." Victor reached into his jacket and produced a small white envelope.
He held it out.
"But the timing wasn't my choice."
Mason didn't take it immediately.
"Who sent you?"
"You already know."
A beat of silence.
Mason took the envelope.
Victor glanced at Maya then — just once, briefly, the way you glance at furniture — and then looked back at Mason.
"He says the arrangement expires at the end of the month.
After that, the terms change."
"Tell him the terms don't change," Mason said.
"Tell him I said that directly."
Victor almost smiled.
"I'll pass it along." He straightened his jacket.
"Enjoy the wedding."
He walked out.
Maya waited until his footsteps faded.
"What arrangement?"
Mason turned the envelope over in his hands.
He hadn't opened it.
"Mason." Her voice was quiet but firm.
"What arrangement?"
He looked up.
For the first time since she had known him — even in the small, contained way she had known him across a café counter — he looked like a man deciding how much of himself to show.
"Three years ago," he said, "I made an agreement with a man named Carver.
He controls the port logistics on the eastern seaboard.
The agreement kept a number of people safe — people who worked for me, people who had families."
"And now?"
"And now Carver wants to renegotiate." He set the envelope on the linen tablecloth.
"On terms that would require me to do something I won't do."
"What does he want you to do?"
Mason looked at her.
"Hand over someone's location."
"Whose?"
He was quiet for just a moment too long.
Maya's voice dropped.
"Mason.
Whose location?"
"Someone Carver believes I've been protecting," he said.
"Someone who testified against his operation two years ago and then disappeared."
The cold thing in Maya's chest spread outward.
"A witness."
"Yes."
"And do you know where this person is?"
Mason held her gaze.
"Yes."
Outside, the string quartet started again — something light and celebratory, entirely wrong for the conversation happening ten feet from the dance floor.
Maya sat down in the nearest chair because her legs had decided they were done standing.
"You're protecting a witness from a man who just sent a federal informant to my cousin's wedding," she said.
"To deliver a deadline."
"That's accurate."
"And if you don't hand over this person by the end of the month?"
Mason finally opened the envelope.
He read it once, folded it, and slid it into his jacket pocket.
"Then Carver stops being patient," he said.
"And he starts looking at the people around me instead."
Maya understood what that meant before he finished the sentence.
She looked up at him.
"He'll come after the people close to you."
"He'll look for leverage," Mason said.
"Yes."
The marquee felt very small suddenly.
Through the open entrance, she could see her mother laughing at something Aunt Judith had said, champagne glass raised, entirely unaware.
"I'm not close to you," Maya said.
"We met yesterday."
"Carver doesn't know that," Mason said.
"Victor Hale just watched me walk into a family wedding with you on my arm."
The string quartet played on.
Somewhere outside, Lily was probably being photographed, radiant and happy, holding Tom's hand.
Maya looked at Mason Reed and realized that the twenty-four hours she had agreed to had just become something else entirely.
"What do we do?" she asked.
Mason's expression didn't change.
May you like
But he sat down across from her, which was the first time she had ever seen him choose to be at the same level as another person.
"First," he said, "we get through this wedding."
