Three years and five days after the gala, Neil Kilbride of Talbot Fund raised his price the second Callum Rourke walked into the room.
Mara had six of seven pages signed and the pen still in her hand. She had about thirty seconds to decide how much of Ines Haldane's money a lie was worth.
And who had told him where to find her?
"Neil," Callum said, delighted, as if they had arranged it. "They said you were up here. I didn't believe them." He shook Kilbride's hand and kept the other on the back of Kilbride's chair. Kilbride studied the tablecloth.
Sienna came in behind him in navy, phone in her hand, and stopped at the door.
Mara had counted the days on the drive in without meaning to. The number had sat in the car with her the whole way.
"And this is Ines's new girl," Callum said. "Mara. We've met. I'm told you carry her coats."
"Only the heavy ones."
He laughed. He had always liked it when she was quick. On the sideboard, her Fairweather key card lay beside the water jug where she had put it down to find her reading glasses. Callum picked it up, turned it over, and held it out.
"You'll want this."
She took it. He had already turned back to Kilbride.
"Neil, since you're here. Between friends. The refinancing is nearly done. Weeks, not months. Par for everyone, interest to the day." He straightened his cuff. "I'd hate to see anyone sell at a discount and watch it come back whole."
"There is no refinancing," Mara said. "Kestrel is eleven months late. The lenders have read the same budget I have."
"Then Mr. Rourke is lying to me in front of a witness," Kilbride said, mildly, to the table. He was a man who had never once been in a hurry to be right.
"I'm being optimistic," Callum said. "It's a gift."
Kilbride uncapped his own pen and capped it again. "Seventy-one."
Sixty-four cents had been Friday's number, agreed by phone, on a hundred and eight million dollars of face value. Seven cents more was seven and a half million.
She could step into the corridor and call Ines. Then Kilbride would have twenty minutes to think and Callum would have twenty minutes to be charming at him. By the end of it the slice would be on a different table, or sitting in Talbot's drawer as a favor to a friend.
Callum was not even looking at her. He was looking at Sienna, who was looking at the carpet.
No hand at her stomach. There never would be one again, and everyone in the room knew it. Rourke Line had put out one paragraph on a Monday morning in November, the sixth, three years ago, and then the magazines had run the photograph from the stage for a week. Green silk, one hand low, and under it the headline about the baby they had lost.
Mara had read every cover standing up in a gas station on the coast road.
For one second she was sorry, plainly, the way you are sorry for anyone who has been handed a statement to read in a hospital corridor. Then she put it down where she put everything else. Sienna had stood on that stage, and Sienna had let her stand at the bottom of it.
Sienna looked away first.
"Seventy-one," Mara said. "Wire by five today. Sign it now."
Kilbride signed. Callum watched him do it, and his smile stayed exactly where it was, which was how she knew it was costing him.
"Well," he said. "Generous of Ines." He held the door for his wife.
The page Kilbride had signed said Breakwater Partners, and below it, on the second line, M. Ashdown, Managing Partner. Kilbride had read it as a courtesy title. The market read Breakwater as Ines's, an old woman's checkbook with a young woman to carry it.
Mara let them.
Fourteen months of buying, and thirty-two percent before lunch. Forty-one percent now. Cash left: $112 million.
Whoever held more than half of the $1.2 billion Kestrel loan decided whether Rourke Line got its extension or lost every share pledged against it, and the loan matured on Monday, 16 November, at five in the afternoon. Nine points. She could see the number from here.
Ines called from the car, on the second ring.
"Seven and a half million," Ines said. It was not a question, which meant it was worse.
"He told Kilbride the refinancing was done."
"Is it?"
"No."
"Then he spent my money on a sentence." The line hissed. "It's raining here. It costs nothing. Next time, let him pay for his own weather." She hung up.
Room 1104 at the Fairweather faced the harbor, and Mara had her shoes off and her laptop open to the Breakwater ledger when she heard the paper.
A soft scrape, low on the door. She crossed the carpet and found a sheet lying on the threshold, folded in thirds.
Heavy cream stock. She knew the weight with her thumb before she unfolded it. It was the paper Rourke Line used for press releases, the paper she had signed off on a thousand times.
She opened the door. The corridor was empty, lit, silent, a trolley at the far end with its wheels turned in.
Typed. No letterhead. No name.
*Vossberg's 12% goes to Callum Friday at noon. Low Tide.*
Only someone inside Rourke Line owned that paper. Only someone inside knew what Everett Vossberg, chairman of Harlow Mercantile Bank, held in the loan, and which Friday mattered.
Forty-one percent without Vossberg, nine short of half. Vossberg had stood godfather at Callum's christening.