Chapter 16: The Silent Original

Chantal came up in the elevator between two guards.

Her navy coat was soaked through, and her hair hung in wet strings around her face.

She held a laptop against her chest with both arms.

She stopped in the doorway when she saw Nina standing beside Caleb in her stocking feet.

"I'm sorry," she said. "It's two in the morning."

"Come in before you drip on my floor," Nina said.

Chantal walked to the table and set the laptop down next to the envelopes.

She did not look at them.

"Desmond froze my accounts at six o'clock," she said.

"He changed the locks on the house at seven. He told the staff I wasn't to be let in, and then he went to his gala rehearsal."

"So how did you get the file?" Caleb asked.

"I never gave back the key to his father's study. He forgot that I had it."

"You went in tonight?"

"While he was standing in the ballroom, telling the florist where to put the roses." Her mouth twisted.

"The drive was in a desk drawer. I copied it onto this and put the drive back exactly as it was."

Nina stepped forward and opened the laptop.

A video window sat in the middle of the screen, paused on a dark road.

Chantal turned her head away.

"I can't watch it again," she said.

"You don't have to," Caleb said.

"What happens now?"

"Now you go to the hotel Bernard booked, and a guard stays at your door."

"Not a cell?"

"Not yet."

She nodded, and she looked at Nina for the first time.

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