Chapter 6: Eleanor Marsh
Claire called my father from the elevator.
I stood beside her and listened to half the conversation β his questions, her answers, the sound of something shifting into place on the other end of the line.
"The drive is authenticated," she said when she hung up.
"Your father's team is already running the Singapore accounts.
The passport contact is known to Interpol." She paused.
"The video is real."
The elevator opened.
We walked through the lobby.
"What happens now?" I asked.
"Now the Dutch case becomes significantly stronger.
A recorded confession changes the extradition calculus entirely." She pushed through the glass door into the cold air.
"Celeste's attorney will have been told about the drive within the hour.
Nathan's cooperation will be factored into his sentencing recommendation." She stopped on the pavement and looked at me.
"Vivienne.
This is over."
I looked up at the building we had just left.
Fourteen floors up, Nathan Ashford was sitting in a room with his lawyers, trading the last thing he had for a slightly smaller cage.
"Not yet," I said.
Claire tilted her head.
"Celeste doesn't know about the drive," I said.
"She doesn't know Nathan gave it up.
She's still in there thinking she's managed the situation." I turned to Claire.
"I want to be in the room when she finds out."
"That's irregular."
"I know."
Claire studied me for a moment.
"I'll make a call."
She made the call.
---
The federal holding facility was not what I had imagined.
It was clean, institutional, aggressively ordinary.
A guard led us down a corridor to an observation room with a glass panel looking into an interview room.
Celeste was already seated at the table inside.
She looked composed.
Her hair was neat.
Her posture was straight.
She was wearing the same clothes from the night before but she had somehow made them look deliberate, like a choice rather than a consequence.
Her attorney leaned down and spoke quietly in her ear.
I watched her face.
For a moment, nothing changed.
Then her attorney placed a document on the table in front of her.
She looked at it.
Her eyes moved across the page.
Her posture did not collapse.
She was too controlled for that.
But her right hand, resting on the table, curled slowly inward until her fingers were pressed against her palm.
She looked up at her attorney.
"He gave them the drive," she said.
Her voice was flat.
Her attorney said something I couldn't hear through the glass.
"He gave them the drive," she said again.
Louder this time.
Not a question.
She stood up.
"That drive was insured," she said.
"I had insurance on him.
I had insurance on everything.
He was not supposed toβ" She stopped.
Looked at the glass panel.
She could not see me.
The glass was one-way.
But she looked directly at where I was standing.
"She did this," Celeste said.
Her voice was very quiet now.
"She was supposed to be nothing.
She was supposed to be furniture."
Her attorney touched her arm.
She sat back down.
She placed both hands flat on the table and she did not move again.
I stood on my side of the glass and I watched her understand that the woman she had called furniture had been the one thing in that house she should never have underestimated.
I did not feel triumphant.
May you like
I felt something quieter than that.
I felt finished.
