Chapter 4: The Man Who Had Been Watching
"Who?" Emma said.
Richard didn't answer immediately.
He stood and walked to the window.
The city spread out below — patient, indifferent, full of people who had no idea this conversation was happening.
"His name is Gareth Soll," Richard said.
"He was my business partner for nine years."
"Was."
"We parted ways three years ago." A pause.
"Not amicably."
Emma set the key down on the desk.
"What does he have to do with my father?"
Richard turned from the window.
"Gareth was with me the night of the accident.
He was in the car."
The room went very still.
"He got out before it went off the bridge," Richard continued.
"His door opened.
Mine didn't.
He stood on the bank and watched my car go into the water."
Emma stared at him.
"He didn't try to help you?"
"He told the police he couldn't swim.
He told me the same thing, in the hospital, with tears on his face." Richard's voice was flat.
Factual.
The way a person speaks about something they have processed so many times it no longer surprises them.
"I believed him.
For nine years, I believed him."
"And then?"
"And then, three years ago, I found out he had been a competitive swimmer in university.
Regional champion.
Two years running."
The silence between them had weight.
"He let you drown," Emma said.
"Leo didn't."
Emma looked down at the key in her hand.
"What does Gareth want?"
"The message tonight was from my lawyer.
Gareth has filed a legal claim." Richard came back to the desk and sat down.
"He says that Leo Cole — your father — made a verbal agreement with him on the riverbank that night.
He claims Leo promised him something in exchange for directing him to where my car went in."
Emma's head came up.
"That's a lie."
"I know it is."
"My father would never—"
"Emma." Richard's voice was steady.
"I know.
But Gareth has a witness.
Someone who says they were there."
Her hands were flat on the desk now.
"What is he claiming Leo promised him?"
Richard slid a document across the desk.
A legal filing, dense with formal language.
But the claim at the center of it was simple enough.
Gareth Soll was asserting that Leo Cole had promised him access to a safety deposit box — the contents of which, he claimed, belonged to him by prior arrangement with Leo — in exchange for guiding the rescuer to Richard's location.
Emma read it twice.
Then she looked at the key on the desk.
"He wants what's in the box," she said.
"Yes."
"Do you know what's in it?"
"No.
Leo never told me.
The key came with the envelope.
I've had it for eleven years and I never opened it because—" Richard stopped.
He looked at her directly.
"Because it wasn't mine to open.
The letter made that clear.
It was for you."
Emma picked up the key again.
It was light.
Ordinary.
The paper tag had a number on it and the name of a bank branch — a small local branch on the east side of the city.
"This is my father's," she said.
"Yes."
"And this man — Gareth — he's known about it for how long?"
"His filing references events from twelve years ago.
He has been watching this for a long time, Emma.
Waiting for the right moment." Richard leaned forward.
"The right moment, apparently, was tonight.
When you walked into that ballroom and said your father's name."
Emma set the key down very carefully.
"He was there tonight," she said.
It wasn't a question.
Richard's jaw tightened.
"Third table from the stage.
He left twenty minutes after you and I sat down together."
She thought about the ballroom.
The glittering room full of strangers.
Someone at a table watching her be dragged toward the exit.
Watching her shout a name.
Watching everything change.
"He recognized my father's name," she said.
"He recognized yours.
I suspect he's known who you were for longer than either of us realized."
Emma stood up.
She wasn't shaking.
Something had settled in her — not calm exactly, but something harder than calm.
"Then we need to open that box," she said, "before he finds a way to stop us."
Richard looked at her for a long moment.
Then he nodded once.
"The branch opens at nine," he said.
"I'll have my lawyer meet us there."
Emma picked up the photograph from the desk — the one of Leo as a young man, standing outside the small house, the woman beside him holding an infant.
"Richard." She turned it toward him.
"You never told me.
Who is the woman?"
He looked at the photograph.
May you like
Something crossed his face — recognition, and then something more complicated.
"I was hoping," he said slowly, "that you might already know."
