Chapter 10: Sadie

I typed my answer back to Ellis.

"No."

Then I turned my phone off and drove home to Thames Street.

Bram was in the shop with a customer, a sailor getting his ship's name across his forearm.

He saw my face and set the machine down.

"Five minutes," he told the sailor. "Don't move."

In the back room I showed him the clip on the thumb drive, on the old laptop he uses for invoices.

He watched Sadie climb down my ladder three times.

He didn't say anything.

He went very still.

Then I showed him Ellis's texts.

He read them twice, and handed the phone back gently.

"What do you want to do?"

"I want to show it to her," I said. "Where she lives."

"Where does she live?"

"In the law library. Every Saturday. Ellis used to brag that his intern out-studied his associates."

Bram nodded slowly.

"Do you want me there?"

"I want you here," I said. "With Tilly. If Ellis sees you anywhere near Sadie, he'll say you threatened her."

"He'll say that anyway."

"Then let him say it about me."

On Saturday morning Bram made pancakes in his kitchen on the third floor.

He poured them into tugboat shapes for Tilly, which mostly came out like potatoes.

"This one's a potato," Tilly told him.

"It's a tug."

"It's a potato with a smokestack."

"Eat your tug," he said, and she giggled into her milk.

I left them arguing about whether crabs can hear.

The law school is downtown, eight blocks from Ellis's tower.

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