Chapter 17: Escrow

Nate's POV

I had spent two years believing Jo needed the door open.

On Monday morning, on the sidewalk, she took my sleeve and pulled me out from behind the door.

I stood beside her while Blaine Lowry went white, and I understood that I had been wrong about the one thing I'd been most careful about.

She never wanted me outside waiting.

She wanted me next to her where she could see me.

I thought about that all day, and I did not get any work done.

At five I told her I had an errand, and she looked up from her screen with a pencil in her teeth.

"A real one?"

"Reasonably."

"If it's the pot, I want to hear about it."

"You'll hear it tonight."

The man in the grey hoodie was where he had been all week, on the railing across the street with his camera in his lap.

He saw me coming and started to stand.

"Sit," I said. "I'm not here to take your camera."

He sat.

He was perhaps thirty, tired in the face, with a cold sore on his lip and a paper bag from a bakery.

"I'm on a public sidewalk," he said.

"You are. I'm on one too." I sat on the railing beside him. "How much does she pay you?"

"Who?"

"Two hundred a day, I'd guess. She has to keep it under a number somebody would notice."

He looked at me for a long moment.

"Two-fifty."

"For how long?"

"Since the party. She said it was for the series." He shrugged. "I do weddings. This pays better than weddings."

"Does it come on time?"

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