Chapter 11: Three Years

I played the recording three times before the sun came up.

Penelope did not leave, and she did not tell me it would be fine.

She sat on the next chair and said, "Bail review is at ten. She'll be on the courthouse steps."

"Then I'll be there."

"I know," she said. "I'm coming with you."

The steps were already packed at nine-thirty.

Cameras, folding chairs, the white T-shirts, a hundred signs.

I came up the middle in the gray suit with the cracked phone in my bandaged hand.

Penelope walked half a step behind me.

Someone shouted my name, and then a whole crowd did.

"Wesley! Is it true you had her arrested?"

"Mr. Thornton, did you launder Northlight money?"

"Sir, do you have a statement?"

"I do," I said.

I walked to the bottom of the steps, where the microphones were thickest.

At the top, Sonia's car had just pulled up.

She stepped out in a black dress with her hair pinned back and an ankle monitor showing above one heel.

Jace was not with her.

Her lawyer came behind, already talking.

She saw me and smiled for the cameras.

"Wes," she said, sweetly. "Have you come to apologize?"

"I came to play something."

I held the phone up to the nearest microphone and pressed the file.

Her voice carried across the whole plaza.

"Keep your voice down, Harlan. He signs whatever I slide across the table."

Beck's answer came through the speakers.

"Three years pretending you don't know who he is?"

"Three years. He still thinks I don't know."

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