Chapter 15: The Note

Ansel's POV

At four in the morning I called my lawyer and woke her up.

"Draw up an assignment," I said. "All three shells. Every note on Amesbury Freight's debt, into the name of Joanna MacAteer."

"Ansel."

"Today."

"That is two years of the best work you've done, and you're giving it to a woman you've been sleeping with for a week and a half."

"I'm not giving it to her. I'm giving it back."

"To whom?"

"To the person it was always about."

She was quiet for a while.

Then she said, "If she calls those notes, Hawke Logistics takes a loss it can survive and you lose your leverage over Amesbury."

"I know."

"You'd never get it back."

"I know that too."

I signed the papers at a quarter to seven, with the notary standing in my kitchen in a coat over her pajamas.

The black car was parked outside Lila's friend's building when I got there.

I had known it would be.

Jo had left the keys with the doorman in an envelope with no note.

I held the envelope on the sidewalk for a moment before I went in.

I rode up in the elevator with the leather folder under my arm and my coat unbuttoned.

I knocked on the door of 6C.

Lila opened it in an enormous sweatshirt, with her hair in a knot.

"You look awful," she said.

"I've had a night."

"So has she. She didn't sleep, and she's been on the phone with somebody about whether she can lose her law license."

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