Chapter 12 CHAPTER TWELVE

David was at his own apartment at half past eleven, which was briefly puzzling to Theo until he recalled that David had driven across the city twice in the morning: once to drop off supplies at a second location, and once to see a contact who owed him access to some property records.

He walked into the door with a paper bag containing food that neither of them would remember getting to eat, placed it on the counter and stood in the doorway of the kitchen, looking at Theo, as a man who is preparing himself for something difficult.

Theo was seated at the table, silent. Now the laptop had to be shut. His hands lay flat on the surface in front of him, and he was looking at the wall with a fixed blankness in his eye, as though his mind was busy somewhere well behind his eyes.

“You sound so calm,” David said hesitantly.

Theo responded, "I am calm.”

David sat in a chair, turned it around and placed his arms across its back. He studied Theo like he studied crime scene photographs; looking for the thing that didn't fit. “That's what I'm afraid of," David said.

Theo studied him then. “I can't fall apart now, I don't have that luxury.”

“There's no pressure on you to fall apart," David said. "I'm asking you to be human. There's a difference." He bent his head a little closer. “You learn your uncle has been murdered, you survive an attack, and you blow up a thirty year cover-up in one morning, and you are sitting there just like you filed a report on the routine expense.”

Theo's jaw shifted. A muscle was moved on his side of the face. “What should I do, David?”

“I want you to realize that this is very big," David said. “That's it, just say it out loud.”

Theo was silent for a lengthy period. His hand was flat on the tabletop. “My uncle had to die in an unmarked grave," he said finally, his voice even, "Because he was a good journalist who would not stop asking questions. For thirty years the people that put him there have had a mansion, they have been attending charity galas and sitting on civic boards.” He paused. “I'm angry. I'm furious in a way, I can't even say. But if I let it out now, I will lose my focus. And I can't afford to lose my focus.”

For a second David's gaze lingered, after which he nods slowly. He took a sandwich from the paper bag and put it in front of Theo. “Eat some food. Journalists need fuel too.”

Theo almost smiled. Almost.

Elena Whitmore learned about the situation through the housekeeper.

Towards mid-morning, she had descended to the entrance hall to see Mrs. Hargrove standing with her coat on and her handbag in both hands, her face the color of old paper.

"Mrs. Hargrove?" Elena frowned. "What's happened?"

Mrs. Hargrove's mouth moved without making a sound. “There are people, Miss Elena, government people, they called twenty minutes ago on the household line, and they are asking for access to the property for a warrant. Her voice dropped. "A federal warrant."

Elena was very quiet. "A federal warrant for what?

"They did not say specifically. But I heard your father on the phone in the study, and the tone of it, Miss Elena" She stopped herself. “I think it would be best if I were not here today.” Mrs. Hargrove said.

She walked around the corner and to the front door, opened it and was out.

Elena was in the entrance hall by herself. The house was silent around her as the house was when her father had gone and left a room. It held silence.

She walked to the study door. Closed. Low voices, indistinguishable words, behind it.

Elena pushed her hand against the wood. The morning before she had been told by her father that Theo had taken some money and gone away. It was a buyout, he had declared. A quiet exit. It had been delivered with finality and with practiced ease; she had accepted it without thinking, not because it made any sense, but because she didn't want to give way to doubt, since she had never been able to.

But a federal warrant was not the shape of a quiet exit.

Elena moved aside from the door. Her green eyes wandered up the stairs, out the front door and back into the study. She pulled her phone out of her cardigan's pocket and wrapped her fingers around it.

She didn't call her dad.

She didn't call Richard.

She scrolled to the number she'd not dialed during the past three years of marriage, because she didn't need to. She had always been in the same walls as that number.

Theo's number.

It was on her thumb. One of the voices in the study increased slightly and then dropped.

Elena closed her mouth, tightening her teeth. She thought about Mrs. Hargrove's face. She thought about the term federal. She remembered how Theo had looked at her that morning in the doorway, not hatefully, but in a more subtly, more devastating way.

She did not call.

Not yet.

She didn't even put the phone away, though. She stood in the hallway of her family's mansion, she held it in both hands and for the first time, she felt she was standing on a floor that might not support her weight.

Her father's voice was lowered to a pitch she knew as a child, very young, to be afraid of.

Elena hold the phone tightly.

Something was coming. No matter what Theo had done, no matter what her father was trying to keep from breaking out of on the other side of that door. It was already too big for these walls.

She could feel it pressing in.

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