Chapter 13: Bait

Tierney answered before the dots had stopped.

Friday works. I'll bring Darren. Bring it in a bag, Miri, not a wire. I hate being recorded.

Under it, a second message came in.

I'll bring the key to Unit 114 too. You can finally have your iron back.

Declan read it over my shoulder in the diner parking lot.

"She said yes too fast," he said.

"She wants the million," I said. "And she wants me in a room."

"Then we make sure the room is ours."

He started the car, and he did not say anything else until we were home.

At nine he stood in the kitchen with his phone on speaker and the board chair on the line.

I stayed at the counter and listened.

"I'm telling you before the papers do," Declan said. "Three weeks before my wedding I slept with my wife's best friend."

The line stayed silent.

"Then I signed a three hundred thousand dollar invoice to hide it. It came out of company money."

"Declan," the chair said.

"I'm paying it back out of my own accounts today. If you want my seat, vote on it. I won't fight you."

"We'll meet Saturday morning," the chair said coldly, and hung up.

Declan put the phone down and breathed out through his teeth.

"That's one," he said.

"You didn't have to do it before Friday."

"Yes, I did." He looked at me. "She can't hold anything over a man who has already said it."

His hand was shaking on the counter.

I covered it with mine and felt the heat of his skin all the way up my arm.

He turned his hand over and held on, and neither of us let go for a long time.

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