Chapter 8: The Husband in the Hangar

Leonard came through the side door of the hangar alone, with rain on his shoulders and his phone in his hand.

No driver, no tie, no Celia.

He stopped when he saw Bruce standing between us.

"Donovan," he said. "You're not answering my calls."

"I resigned," Bruce said.

"I read your text. I didn't accept it."

"It didn't need accepting."

Leonard looked past him at me.

His eyes went to the new gauze on my hands and the flight suit under my black dress.

"I saw the broadcast," he said. "Four times."

"That's the one you should have watched in the first week."

"A woman on a roof said Sentinel hung up on her."

"She said it with a recording," I said.

His jaw tightened.

For six years I had watched that man take a bad number and turn it into a good one.

Tonight I watched him fail.

"I asked Celia for the logs from the fourteenth," he said. "The ops line recordings."

"And?"

"She said the power outage corrupted the server. The files are gone."

I laughed.

I couldn't help it, and it came out ugly.

"Gone."

"It's plausible, Gianna."

"Leonard, you built that line. You told me once it saved every call on three separate servers. You said it at a dinner for sixty."

He opened his mouth.

He shut it.

"It was a fire," he said, finally. "Things fail in fires."

"Then ask the woman on the roof for her phone," I said. "She kept hers."

His face went tight.

"Don't make this a witch hunt. Celia has been with me for fifteen years."

"She has been with you since Stanford," I said. "She has been in my place in your life since before I met you."

"That isn't fair."

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