Chapter 12: Lantern

Ingrid pushed the closet door open with one finger.

Cavan sat cross-legged on the floor between her coats and his empty suit bag.

A black case lay open in front of him, with a radio, a headset and a folded map of Duluth harbor.

He wore the headset around his neck.

He looked up at her, and she watched the whole man change.

The gentle father went out of his face.

What stayed was the stranger from the warehouse, calm and cold and entirely in charge.

"Ingrid," he said.

"You're the Warden," she said.

The radio hissed softly between them.

"Say again, Warden?" Eugene asked from the speaker. "Everything all right?"

"Stay on the channel, Eugene," Cavan said. He did not look away from her. "How long have you been standing there?"

"Long enough."

She lifted her right hand.

It held a cheap grey phone with a cracked corner, the phone from her coat pocket.

"Lantern checked in at midnight," she said. "I wrote the message myself."

For a long moment, nobody breathed.

Cavan looked at the phone.

He looked at her face, the tired mascara, his own shirt hanging off her shoulders.

"You're Lantern," he said.

His voice was almost soft.

"Two years," Ingrid said. "Every invoice, every email, every container number. It was me."

Eugene's voice crackled out of the radio, thin with shock.

"Holy hell," he said.

"Eugene. Off the channel," Cavan said.

"Roger. Going dark."

The speaker clicked off.

They stood in the silence.

Then Cavan began to laugh.

It was a low, helpless, astonished laugh, and he put the heel of his hand against his eyes.

"I married Lantern," he said.

"I spent two years trying to find you. I married into your company to find you."

"And you were in the next room."

"You thought you were hunting me?"

"I thought you were a mole in the accounting department with a grudge."

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