Chapter 8: The Rumor

The elevator doors closed on Dexter's hand, and I took out my phone before they hit the lobby.

"What did you sign in September?" I typed to my husband.

He called a few seconds later.

I took it in the stairwell, between the seventeenth and eighteenth floors, with my back against cold concrete.

"Who told you?" Ewan said.

"Dexter. In the elevator, looking grim."

I heard a car door close on his end.

"Briony, I'm on my way to the airport. My co-investor has called me to New York, and I'm back Thursday morning for your presentation."

"That isn't an answer."

"No," he said. "It isn't."

"Is it another woman?"

"It's not a woman."

"Is it money?"

"It's work I signed before I knew your name," he said slowly.

"I can't tell it properly in a stairwell or over a phone.

"I need to be in front of you with every page in my hands."

"That sounds like a threat."

"It's the opposite. I'm asking for three days."

The stairwell light hummed.

I could hear my own pulse in my ears.

Every sensible part of me said a man who asks for time has something to hide.

Another part, the part that had stood on a rail with a train coming, knew he had never lied to me yet.

He had only not said.

"Thursday," I said. "Before you touch me."

"Before I touch you," Ewan said. "I swear it."

I hung up and went back to my floor.

By two o'clock the photograph was on the board.

It hung in the middle of the Studio B corkboard where we pinned sketches and takeout menus, printed on glossy paper and slightly blurry.

It had been shot from above.

It showed a broad man in a canvas coat carrying a cardboard box, with a woman in a wedding dress beside him.

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