Sam leaned forward. “Please, Tom. Do it right now. They could be questioning her for all we know.”
Tom nodded, rose, and left the room.
To Elliott, Sam said, “How did you know I was here?”
“Dani called me.”
“How did she know?”
“She said the cops came to her house to get access to city and company records. She must have used the cameras and seen you being arrested.”
They were silent until the door opened and Tom strode back inside. “They were questioning her.”
“What did they ask?” Sam asked.
“I don’t know. They won’t tell me. And they won’t release her.”
“This is insane. What’s going on here?”
Tom crossed his arms. “I don’t know, but it’s outside my expertise. I’ve been in touch with Victor Levy’s office. He’s flying in from LA right now.”
“Who?”
Tom furrowed his brow. “The celebrity attorney. Don’t you know—”
“I don’t need an attorney,” Sam muttered. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”
Tom took a sharp breath and exhaled. “Sam, you know I respect you greatly. Your intellect. What you’ve accomplished. Your character. But what you’re dealing with here is dangerous.” He pointed toward the door. “They don’t know you. They are going to follow the evidence. And if it says you’re guilty, they will take that over your word, no matter what.”
“Well, frankly, I don’t see how the evidence can say I’m guilty if I’m not.”
“Back up,” Elliott said. “Tell us what happened last night.”
“We should wait for Levy to get here,” Tom said.
“No,” Elliott shot back, “we shouldn’t. I know and trust everyone in this room. Some celebrity attorney—forget it. For all we know, he’ll leak everything to the press just to get his own name out there.”
Sam took Tom’s silence as some indication that he agreed with Elliott.
“Last night,” Sam began, “I came home after the meeting.”
“The meeting in the lab, with the six of us,” Elliott said.
“Right. I was supposed to have dinner at Nora’s house. Adeline and I were both going to go over. But it was too late for dinner when I got home. Adeline and Ryan had already ordered take-out.”
Elliott nodded. “Then what happened?”
“We went over to Nora’s anyway.”
Elliott looked confused. But Tom nodded. “Because you had to.”
“Yes,” Sam whispered. “Because we had to.”
Elliott’s gaze shifted between Sam and Tom.
The attorney, still looking at Sam, said, “Because of the pictures.”
“Yes.”
Elliott stood. “What pictures?”
“Nora and I had been seeing each other.”
Elliott’s jaw dropped. “What? How long? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“For a while. We just… we wanted to keep it private until we knew where it was going.”
“But you couldn’t hide it anymore,” Tom said.
Elliott turned and stared at Tom. “You knew about this?”
“Of course. He informed Absolom legal when he got the blackmail message.”
“Blackmail?”
“We slipped up,” Sam said. “Last week at the conference in Davos, Nora and I had dinner, and we were walking back to the hotel, and it was freezing cold, and I leaned over and kissed her and…” Sam shook his head, the memory of that night overtaking him—the way Nora’s soft lips had felt on his, the white steam of her hot breath in the frigid night, his arms around her, lifting her gently off the cobblestones.
It was more than the memory that gripped him. It was how it felt in his mind, how he had felt that night on the narrow street under the yellow glow of the lanterns, leaning in to kiss her, feeling like himself again for the first time in years. He had realized something then: a part of him that he thought he had buried with his wife was still very much alive. And clawing its way to the surface.
Tom, perhaps assuming Sam couldn’t, supplied the rest. “A photographer snapped some pictures of them. He emailed Sam. The subject was: Love in Absolom. Said it was a touching story the world deserved to hear. He was going to sell it to the tabloids unless Sam wanted the pictures for himself.” Tom shook his head. “Legally, there was nothing we could do. We could buy the pictures, but that’s still no guarantee, and a story like that is always going to get out eventually.”