Chapter 17: Suspended

The owner did not look at Soren's hand.

He looked at the phone in mine.

"Put it away, please," he said. "Nobody here has anything to say to a camera tonight."

"It's off," I said.

"Good. Mr. Lund, go home. Miss Ostrowski, my lawyer will bring you papers in the morning. You will find them generous."

He turned and walked back up the stairs, and Brady's agent went after him like a dog.

Soren and I stood in the tunnel and listened to the heels fade.

"I'm not going to sign anything he sends," I said.

"I know."

"Then why do I feel like I'm being handled?"

"Because you are."

I took the towel off his knuckles.

They were split open across two fingers, and the whole hand was swelling.

"Get in the van," I said. "Babcia can take a cab."

She had already texted me three words in Polish, and I did not need a translation.

He lived twenty minutes up the shore road, and I drove it with both hands tight on the wheel.

He sat in the passenger seat with his bad hand in his lap.

Neither of us spoke.

In his kitchen, under the bare overhead bulb, I sat him on a stool and ran cold water over his hand.

"You could have just walked away," I said.

"I know."

"He said your name and mine in front of five thousand people, and you could have let me handle it."

"You'd have handled it," Soren said. "You'd have had your phone out and ruined him in a week."

"So?"

"So I wanted to do one thing for you that wasn't paperwork."

My throat closed.

I dried his knuckles with a dish towel and found a first aid kit under the sink.

I wrapped each finger carefully.

The paper from the morning was still on the counter beside the coffee maker, the copy with both our signatures.

"Say it," I said.

"Say what?"

"What you thought, in the tunnel. When I turned the phone on."

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