Charlie recalled lying on the rug of Salt’s house, with a hidden room and a safe only steps away. Where all his most valuable possessions would be kept, including ones that were never supposed to be found. That was what she needed to get into.
Just in case Vince came back, Charlie ripped a piece of paper from the back of his notebook and used her pencil to write him a message.
I found the letter you didn’t send me. Call me if you find this. And don’t do anything stupid.
Love, Char
She left the note on the mattress. Then she flipped off the lights and carefully closed the hotel room door, keeping her head down as she crossed the parking lot.
29
THE PAST
Vince sat at the bar, every part of him alert to the crush of people around him, to the smell of sweat and the sweet rot of syrupy drinks sunk down into the grooves of the floor. The music was turned up loud enough to discourage much in the way of conversation, but to the right of him, a guy was trying, shouting at another guy about a video game where you built a house underwater.
That’s the whole point, the guy was yelling. To survive. Build your base. You’ve got to get ready for when they launch the update and the sharks come.
It had been a month and a half since he’d left Salt’s house, and every day he was away from the place he simultaneously hated it more and missed it. He felt homesick for what had never been his home. And for the one person who had mattered to him most, and was gone.
The hardest part was having so much time to think. To have to make his own decisions. To wrestle with the guilt of being alive when by all rights he shouldn’t have been. Vince was used to measuring out his life in small moments, never letting himself look much ahead, and never daring to look behind.
Here we are, on a boat.
Here we are, with a knife.
Here we are, in the bedroom of a CFO in the middle of the night.
And now Vince had to make plans if he was going to survive. He had something he could use to bring down the old man, but he couldn’t use it on his own. Better to pass it off to Knight Singh, with his web of connections and his dislike of Salt. The item was in the messenger bag slung across Vince’s shoulder, and he wanted nothing more than to be rid of it.
Maybe Vince could have a future where he wasn’t constantly looking over his shoulder. That thought brought a rush of guilt with it.
The problem was that Vince wasn’t used to the setting-things-up part. He’d been all about the execution.
“Another?” the bartender asked.
Vince had allowed himself to be talked into a pumpkin beer, having no idea what to order in a place like this. Adeline would have had champagne with vodka to “wake it up.” Salt would have had a single malt from a place that Vince was certain he’d butcher the pronunciation of, and which was likely to dig deeply into his cash reserves.
Remy had always had whatever everyone else was having. But Vince didn’t have to act like Remy anymore.
The pumpkin beer had the virtue of being cheap. Unfortunately, in Vince’s opinion, that was its singular virtue. “I think I’ll try something else.”
While the bartender went through what they had on tap and Vince chose something at random, he noticed two gloamists walking in. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw them spread out, their gaze sweeping the room, trying to spot someone with the description Vince had given. He supposed that they were attempting to be subtle, allowing their shadows to seem dormant, but Vince clocked them immediately. There was an energy to them, a dark swirling at the edges, like smoke trickling out from hidden hot embers beneath char.
Knight Singh had promised to meet him alone. He’d lied. Which meant that Vince had very probably walked into a trap.
He’d chosen this place because it was crowded, and was glad of it now. There couldn’t be many other people in the room—if any—without shadows. But so long as he stayed part of the crush at the bar, what he was lacking wouldn’t be apparent.
Vince was glad he’d only described himself to Knight as “wearing a red scarf”—one which was still resting in his bag, waiting to be put on.
He turned to the woman standing beside him. If he was part of a conversation, he’d give the gloamists another reason to overlook him. Around his age, her cheeks were flushed from the warmth of the room. She signaled to the bartender, who seemed to be aggressively ignoring her. Her licorice-black hair hung down her back and a tattoo of scarab beetles formed a collar just beneath her throat.
Across the room, one gloamist had positioned himself near the entrance, and another was standing in front of an empty booth. Knight must be on his way.