Chapter 13: The Release

I called the number the photograph came from, and it rang until a recorded voice picked up.

I called again and got the same voice.

Dominic had his trousers on and was reaching for his shirt, the one with no buttons left.

"Don't," I said. "If they wanted to talk, they'd have picked up."

"Then what do they want?"

"The seat. Nine oaths by Saturday midnight, or he gets Fitz back in pieces. Pace wants me to panic."

"Are you?"

I looked at the photograph again.

Fitz sat in a plain wooden chair under a bare light, with his hands on his knees and his cap on the floor.

He looked tired, and he looked angry, and he did not look afraid.

"No," I said. "I'm furious."

"Good. So am I."

"Don't say 'so am I' to me. You're the reason Pace is close enough to do it."

He took that without a word.

We sat in my father's office until the window turned gray.

I didn't sleep, and neither did he.

At first light the night watchman knocked, an old man with a thermos, and I told him to stay in the doorway.

"Dominic," I said. "Sit at the desk."

He sat.

"I need a pen."

"Anneliese."

"I'm not asking you. I'm telling you what I need."

I didn't know what I needed yet.

I only knew that for five years he had decided things for me, and I wasn't going to do the same to him.

He didn't wait for me to decide, though.

He pulled a sheet of the hall's ledger paper from the drawer, uncapped the pen in the tray, and began to write in his square, careful hand.

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