The Hartwick meeting starts at 10:00." "Marcus." Richard's voice was very calm. "I'm not going to Hartwick today. I need you to do something for me and I need you to do it without telling anyone in the office. Not Helen, not the legal team, no one." There was a pause on the other end. Marcus Vale had been his lawyer for 19 years and he had only heard Richard speak in this exact tone twice before. Once during the takeover battle in 2014 and once on the night Richard's mother died. "Tell me," Marcus said.
"I need everything on my life insurance policy—every change made in the last two years, every signature, every adjustment to the beneficiary clause—and I need it in the next 90 minutes," Richard replied.
"Richard, what is happening?"
Richard looked down at Elijah, who was looking back up at him with the same steady eyes. "Something I should have noticed a long time ago," he said. Marcus did not waste time with more questions. He said only, "Ninety minutes. Stay where you are," and ended the call. Richard stood behind the cypress trees holding the silent phone in his hand. He could feel his own pulse in his fingertips. He had negotiated against governments. He had bought companies and sold them in the same week. He had walked into rooms full of people who wanted him to fail and walked out with their signatures on his paper. None of it had prepared him for the simple act of standing 20 feet from his own front door and not knowing who in his house wanted him alive. His phone rang. The screen lit up with a single word, Vivian. He almost did not answer, but he understood in the same calm and distant way he had understood the recording that not answering would tell her something. She would call the driver. The driver would walk up to the house. The plan would shift, and whatever advantage he had right now would disappear into the morning air. He pressed the green button. Vivian. Richard, where are you? The driver just texted me. He says he has been at the gate for almost 10 minutes. Her voice was warm, patient, slightly amused, the way a wife sounds when her husband has forgotten where he put his keys again. I came back inside, Richard said. I forgot a folder for the Hartwick meeting. I think I left it in the study. Oh, do you want me to come help you find it? No, stay where you are. I will be out in 2 minutes. Hurry, darling. You know how traffic gets. I know. He ended the call and looked down at Elijah who had not moved. She is in the house, Richard asked quietly. She was on the back patio 20 minutes ago, Elijah said. When I saw your car pulling around to the front, I came to find you. I did not see where she went after. Richard nodded slowly. He thought for a moment. Elijah, he said, I need to see her one more time. I need to see her with my own eyes before I do anything else. Do you understand why? The boy thought about it. Then he nodded. "Because if you don't see her," he said, "you might still believe she didn't do it." Richard looked at him for a long second. He realized that this child in a faded blue shirt with a cracked phone in his pocket had just described the exact shape of his hope in fewer words than Richard could have used. "Yes," Richard said, "exactly." They moved together along the back of the house, staying close to the wall, ducking under the low windows. Richard had not crouched like this since he was a boy himself, hiding from his father in the cornfield behind the small house in Macon where he had grown up. He was surprised at how easily his body remembered. They reached the corner of the south wing. From there through a screen of climbing jasmine, they could see the back patio, the long stretch of lawn that led to the gardener's shed, and the white wrought iron table where Vivian sometimes had her morning coffee. She was there. She was not alone. The man sitting across from her was the man whose voice had been on the recording. Richard knew it before he could explain how he knew it. He was tall, lean, somewhere in his early 40s with the kind of carefully kept hair that men have when they spend more time on their appearance than they admit. He was wearing a dark gray jacket over a black shirt, and his hands were resting on the table near hers, not touching, but close enough that anyone watching would understand. Vivian was smiling. She was wearing the light blue dress that Richard had bought her in Florence two summers ago. She had told him at the time that she would save it for something special. The man said something Richard could not hear. Vivian laughed softly and reached across the table and laid her hand on top of his. "By tonight," she said, just loud enough to carry across the lawn, "this will all be over." Richard did not move. He did not feel anger. He did not feel grief. He felt something stranger, something that did not have a name, something like the feeling of watching a photograph of yourself slowly catch fire from the corner inward. The man lifted her hand and kissed the inside of her wrist. "And then," he said, "we begin." Richard turned away from the screen of Jasmine. He looked down at Elijah who had also seen it, who had also heard it, and whose small face had gone very quiet. "Come with me," Richard said. They walked together back along the wall, around the corner, and through the side door that led into the laundry room. Richard knew this part of the house only vaguely. He had spent 26 years living here and could not have told anyone before this morning what the laundry room looked like. He found this fact almost funny in the cold and distant way he was finding many things funny right now. He took out his phone again and tapped a different name. "Anthony," he said when the line picked up. "I need you to listen carefully and not ask questions yet.
Are you at home?" "Yes, sir. I'm off today. You told me last week, remember? You said the company was sending a car from a different service because mine is in for service. I figured you got the dates mixed up, but I didn't want to call and bother you about it. Mr. Callaway, is something wrong?" Richard closed his eyes for a brief moment. There it was. The lie had been planted last week by someone who had access to his schedule, his phone, and his trust. "Anthony," he said. "Your car is not in for service, is it?" "No, sir.