Everett Vossberg would sell his twelve percent tomorrow at noon, and Mara had until the last beam went up to stop him.
The invitation in her coat pocket said Ines Haldane and guest. Ines had sent it with no note. Mara walked through the Kestrel gate on a stranger's name, past the guard who used to wave her through, and he checked the list twice.
Which of these six hundred people had put the paper under her door?
The Kestrel Terminal stood over the pier like a steel animal, cranes at its shoulders, the last beam hanging in the air on its cable with a spruce branch tied to the top. A white tent ran the length of the quay. Photographers stood behind a rope. She had cut the ribbon on the first phase herself, years ago, in a borrowed hard hat.
In her bag, folded in thirds, was the second envelope. It had come on Tuesday, same cream stock, no note. One page, a cost sheet with the Rourke Line header. Kestrel's real cost: $2.1 billion. The figure Rourke Line had given its lenders: $1.4 billion.
Seven hundred million dollars, and Vossberg's bank had lent against the smaller number.
"Mara."
Silas Pryce came out of the crowd with a glass in each hand and no one to give the second one to. Fifty-two, chief financial officer, the man who had once stayed until two in the morning to fix her footnotes. He looked at her and then at the photographers, and he put both glasses on a passing tray.
He took her hand and squeezed it, hard, once.
"Not everyone here forgot you," he said, and was gone before she could answer.
She stood there with the pressure still in her fingers. Only the finance office kept that sheet. Silas was kind, and he was frightened, and he had just told her something with his hand because he could not say it with his mouth.
Silas was Low Tide. She was nearly sure.
Vossberg stood alone at the end of the quay with his back to the tent, watching the water slap the pilings. Sixty-eight, dark overcoat, no phone in his hand. The only banker in the city who still wore a hat.
"Mrs. Rourke." He took it off. "I had heard you were in town."
"Ashdown," she said. "Once, Mr. Vossberg. After that I'll answer to anything."
She put the sheet in his hand.
He read it the way old bankers read, top to bottom, lips closed. She watched the color leave his face in stages, like a tide going out. When he reached the bottom he turned it over, looking for more, and there was none.
"Where did you get this?"
"Someone who thinks you should have it."
"Callum told me fourteen." His voice had not risen. "I sat at his father's table. I stood in a church and promised to look after that boy."
"Then look after your twelve percent."
He folded the sheet along its creases and put it inside his coat, over the heart. "Who are you working for, Mrs. Ashdown? Haldane? Someone else?"
"I'm working for the woman who read page nine."
He looked at her for a long time. "That isn't an answer."
"It's the one I have until noon tomorrow."
It took security eleven minutes to find her. Two men in black jackets, then a third, and then Sienna Rourke, thirty-one, in a cream coat, walking toward the cameras with her chin up.
"We're so grateful Ms. Ashdown could join us," Sienna said, to the rope, to the lenses, to the whole bright morning. "Gentlemen, please see her out."
They walked Mara the length of the press line. Flashes, a shouted question, her own name. Sienna fell in beside her for four steps, smiling at nothing.
"Don't come back through the front," she said, so low that only Mara could hear.
Mara took it for what it sounded like. A woman with his ring on her hand, telling her where the door was.
Behind them the last beam began to rise. A microphone thumped. Callum's voice rolled out over the quay, warm and unhurried, and she heard the laugh arrive before the joke finished.
"My ex always did love a party."
Six hundred people laughed. Phones came up like lights in windows.
She did not turn around. She counted the security men's steps to the gate instead. Forty-one.
By seven the video had a name. By nine it had a song under it. Mara watched it once in the Fairweather with the sound off, a woman in a grey coat being walked past a rope while a crowd opened its mouth.
Odette called at 9:20, on her break. Mara could hear the ER behind her, a monitor, a cart with a bad wheel.
"Mar. Mar, I saw it."
"I'm fine."
"I didn't ask. Rory was on the pier, did you know that? He was up in the crane cab. He watched the whole thing."
"Is Rosie asleep?"
"Don't." Odette's voice cracked and she steamrolled over it. "Forty guys in hi-vis on that quay, and when your husband got the laugh, every one of them laughed. Rory took his hard hat off, Mar. Just him. And he can't say a word, because Kestrel signs his checks, so he stood there holding his hat like somebody had died."
Mara looked at her own hand on the table. The one Silas had squeezed. It was steady.
"Tell Rory to put the hat back on," she said. "He'll get a sunburn."
Odette made a sound that was half a laugh and half something else. "You are the worst person to love. You know that?"
"Go back to work."
The phone lit at 12:01 on the dark table. A number she did not have saved, and did not need to.
*Mrs. Ashdown. Harlow will sell its twelve percent to Breakwater at par, one hundred cents, $144 million, by noon today. After noon, it goes to Callum. E. Vossberg.*
She opened the ledger. Forty-one percent. Cash: $112 million.
Vossberg wanted $144 million by noon, and Mara had twelve hours to find the thirty-two million she was short.