Chapter 8: What Remy Did Next
They had until morning.
That was Reeves's estimate — based on Remy Voss's pattern, based on the forty-minute head start Petra had, based on the fact that Remy would have people watching the bridge by dawn.
They moved Petra to a federal building on the north side of the city and spent the next four hours in a conference room with two prosecutors, a stenographer, and a pot of coffee that nobody touched after the first cup.
Mara was not in the room.
She sat in a hallway on a plastic chair and listened to the building's ventilation system and thought about nothing in particular.
At 4:30 in the morning, Julian came out.
He sat down in the chair next to hers.
"She's giving them everything," he said.
"Account numbers.
Transfer records.
Names of the three organization heads.
The name of the attorney who structured the shell companies." He paused.
"The name of the federal auditor who was paid to miss things."
"That last one will cause problems," Mara said.
"Yes." He looked at the wall across from them.
"It will also close the case."
They sat in silence for a moment.
"Your partner," Mara said.
"Daniel Reyes."
"Yes."
"How long ago?"
"Two years and three months." He said it the way you say a number you have said many times — precisely, without inflection, because the inflection had been worn smooth.
"He was meeting an informant.
The informant had been turned.
Remy's people were waiting." He stopped.
"I was supposed to be there.
I was late."
Mara didn't say anything.
There was nothing useful to say.
"I've been building this case since the week after his funeral," Julian said.
"Fourteen months of work.
Fourteen months of Remy Voss being careful and patient and always one step removed from anything provable." He turned to look at her.
"And then a waitress at a chophouse noticed a man sitting at the wrong angle."
"It wasn't —"
"I know it wasn't only that," he said.
"But it was the thing that kept me alive long enough for Petra to make a different choice." He paused.
"I don't take that lightly."
Mara looked at her hands.
"I want to ask you something," Julian said.
"All right."
"Why didn't you call the police?
Last night, at the restaurant.
Before you walked to Table Nine.
Why didn't you just call it in and let someone else handle it?"
She thought about it honestly.
"Because by the time anyone arrived, it would have been too late.
And because —" She stopped.
"Because?" he said.
"Because I've spent seven years watching things happen in that room and deciding they weren't my problem," she said.
"And I was tired of it."
Julian looked at her for a long moment.
Then his phone rang.
He looked at the screen.
His expression changed — not dramatically, not in a way most people would catch.
But she caught it.
"What?" she said.
"Remy Voss just walked into the federal building on Clement Street," he said.
"He walked in voluntarily.
He asked to speak to the duty prosecutor." He stood up.
"He's surrendering."
Mara stared at him.
"He knows Petra is here," Julian said.
"He knows what she's giving them.
He's calculating that a voluntary surrender gets him better terms than a warrant." He was already moving toward the conference room door.
"He's wrong about that.
But he doesn't know that yet."
He stopped with his hand on the door.
"Don't go home tonight," he said.
"We'll have someone take you somewhere safe until the processing is complete."
"How long?"
"Twenty-four hours.
Maybe less." He looked at her.
"Mara.
You're going to be all right."
"I know," she said.
He went through the door.
She sat in the plastic chair in the humming hallway and thought about Remy Voss walking into a federal building in the middle of the night, making the last calculation of a man who had spent nine years believing he was always the smartest person in the room.
She thought about Petra in a conference room, saying her brother's name into a stenographer's record.
She thought about Daniel Reyes, who had gone to meet an informant two years and three months ago and had not come home.
She thought about a Thursday in November, two martinis, and a man sitting three inches off from where he should have been.
May you like
The ventilation system hummed.
She closed her eyes.
