Chapter 15: The Briefcase

Miriam's POV

Declan came back from Wacker Street without his phone.

He stood in the shop doorway with coffee stains on his sleeve and told me every word.

I listened to all of it, and I did not look away.

"She knew," he said. "She knew from the lobby."

"Did she say anything we can use?"

"She said friends give gifts."

I put down the scissors.

"Then we use what we have," I said. "She still thinks I'm coming to pay her."

"You're not scared?"

"I'm terrified." I picked up the scissors again. "I'm also making a centerpiece."

He laughed, once, and the sound surprised both of us.

McMahon's flagship opened at seven.

The room was white stone and gold light, with eighty guests and a photographer from a food magazine, and a long window onto the river.

I wore the green dress Declan had said he loved, and my hands would not stop moving.

Hazel stood by the bar in a black dress with her hands in her pockets.

"Detectives are in the kitchen," she said, without moving her lips. "The Chicago one hates the canapés."

"Is the mic live?"

"The flowers are live."

I checked the back room one last time.

It had a round table, six chairs, and my white ranunculus in a glass vase in the middle.

Nobody would ever have guessed that it listened.

At seven twenty, Declan's mother came in on his father's arm.

She walked past me.

She stopped at table one, where a place card said Tierney Whitaker, and she straightened the card and patted the empty chair.

"Mom," Declan said quietly.

"She was the only one who called me this week," his mother said. "Everyone else just announced things."

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