Chapter 19: Leland: Six O'Clock

Leland's POV

Hugh was staying in a long-stay hotel by the airport.

His window looked out on a loading dock.

I knocked at ten at night, and he opened the door standing up.

He had stopped pretending around me, and I found I preferred it.

"You came," he said. "Sit."

"I'll stand."

"Suit yourself."

He crossed to the window on his own legs, easily.

I remembered two years of him in the chair, wincing for my benefit.

"Imogen sent you," he said.

"Nobody sent me. I heard you're calling the papers."

"At six, with the footage." He held up his phone.

"A reporter I've known since school. A private army, an heiress who staged her own kidnapping.

"It makes a good front page."

I looked at the screen.

The clip was grainy and dark, taken from a pole camera at the dock gate.

Men with long coats and radios.

Imogen stood in the doorway with her wrists in front of her.

A man behind her held a coil of cord.

Hugh had cut it so you could not see him in the frame.

"You edited out yourself."

"I'm not the story."

"You're the only man at that gate who could walk."

"Which is why nobody will look at me." He smiled.

"I need you to take back your statement, Leland. Say the police pushed you.

"You were tired, you were confused, you signed what they wrote. Then I'll hold the footage."

"And Imogen?"

"She'll be fine. Her name will be in the mud for a month."

I thought of the first life.

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