Chapter 8: The Headline

By six in the morning there were forty photographers on the sidewalk outside Granger Tower.

I saw them from the penthouse window with a cup of Rhodri's coffee in my hands.

Forty, and four vans with satellite dishes, and a woman in a red coat doing a stand-up with the river behind her.

"They'll leave," Rhodri said.

"They won't."

"No." He stood beside me in a clean white shirt, unbuttoned at the throat, with his hair still wet. "They won't."

On his phone the headline had been copied onto six sites by dawn.

The contract's first page had been scanned crooked.

My signature was there, and his.

So was the line at the bottom that read, In consideration of the sum of six million dollars.

Chisolm had been very thorough.

He had not forgotten the number.

"Leontine's lawyer is on the way," Rhodri said.

"She'll photograph your arm and your face. You file the report this morning, and then we go through the front door."

"We?"

He turned to me.

"I broke rule three last night," he said. "I think I'm going to break it again in front of the whole city."

My heart did a small foolish thing.

Leontine's lawyer was a short, calm woman in a gray suit.

She photographed every mark with a ruler beside it and did not say one sympathetic word.

I could have kissed her.

At nine o'clock Rhodri took my hand in the elevator.

Our fingers laced without anyone deciding.

I thought, so this is what it looks like when someone stops following the rules for you.

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