He doesn’t have kids like I do. Neither does Gabriella. What the hell am I supposed to do? Help them? Like I just promised?
25
My phone rings immediately. It is Gabriella.
“I am freaking out,” she says. “I don’t know the answer to this one.”
“That was me yesterday,” I say, looking around the room.
“You said you would help me,” she says. “You said we would work together.”
“Let me call you back,” I say, hanging up.
Alistair finally looks up. He is grinning.
“You know this one,” he says.
“Yeah, I know this one,” I say. “How can you tell?”
“I’ve been playing board games against you my entire life,” he says. “I know when you’re looking at the board struggling to come up with your next move and when you have a good position or an unbeatable strategy.”
“The top of the boot,” I say. “The boot is Italy. What is at the top of Italy?”
“Switzerland?” he says.
“Monaco,” says Ed, unexpectedly. We all turn to look at him.
“That’s true,” I say. “But I mean within Italy.”
“Genoa,” he continues. “Also San Marino and Bologna.”
“Jesus,” says Detective Jay. “That’s pretty amazing. Are you some kind of geography savant?”
“Bologna!” says Alistair. “It’s a reference to Little Bologna. That little restaurant. We used to go there all the time.”
“And why did we used to go there all the time?”
“Because it was right below Dad’s old office.”
Understanding dawns in his eyes.
“That was the office that he was renting when he and Mom first started dating,” he says. “The one she made him repaint like fifty times because she could never settle on a color she liked.”
“He always had a perpetual migraine on account of the paint smell,” I say. “Not that he ever dared to complain.”
“So one of these boxes is in that office?” says Detective Rutledge.
“Yep,” I say. “Listen, Alistair, you go ahead and tell Gabriella. Wait for her here and then the two of you can walk over to Hell’s Kitchen together. It’s going to take you a while.”
“Where are you going?” he asks.
“I want to check up on my daughters,” I say. I look at Ed and Mel, my two new best friends. “I guess you guys are coming with me, huh? Will you be okay, Alistair? Will you be safe alone?”
“I’ve got my own guys,” says Alistair, gesturing outside where two more security guards are waiting. “And I’m sure Gabriella will have hers.”
I make a quick phone call to the security agency, letting them know that Olivia has already been attacked once and that we need tighter security around the twins. I call Ben and tell him to meet me at the school, letting him know that there has been an emergency. I call the school and tell them to have Olivia and Jane waiting when I arrive. I call downstairs to one of the accountants and tell them to get ten thousand in cash and put it in a briefcase. When I leave my office, Jay and Rutledge are discussing where they should get lunch.
It is slightly maddening that Bernard has told Gabriella that I am manipulating everything to put myself in a better position, but I don’t know what to do about it. It’s typical Bernard. He’s always been exceedingly paranoid and cynical, a perverse contradiction to his otherwise extremely analytical mind.
People who are good at narrowing down the world to sets of critical, quantifiable information are always the same people who crave simple, clear answers to the incomprehensible madness of existence. And there is always someone unscrupulous to provide those answers. Look it up: engineers, dentists, and surgeons are the most likely professions to become terrorists. These people are always happy to have a right answer that makes the squirmy horribleness of uncertainty disappear, even if that right answer is utter bullshit or a self-serving justification for violence or selfishness, like Bernard’s decision that Henley’s death is somehow fake and only meant to help me consolidate my own power. Bernard would have made a great engineer, if he wasn’t such a useless gambling addict.
Well, fuck Bernard. Maybe he would feel differently if someone in a wolf mask broke the arm of one of his boys.
I hop on the train and head to Jane and Olivia’s school with Ed and Mel in tow. We make quite a conspicuous threesome. It is easy to tell that they are my security detail. The train is empty at this time of day but they refuse to sit. Instead, they stand on either side of me like sentinels, looking suspiciously at every person who gets on or off the train.
What kind of weirdo needs security goons but takes the fucking train?
We get off at the stop nearest the girls’ school and I practically run to the front desk. Ben is already waiting for me, his brow furrowed.
“What the hell?” he says. “What is this emergency? Does this have to do with Henley?”
“Dude,” I say. “Just shut up and do what I say.”
Ed’s phone rings and he picks it up. He has a hurried conversation and then he runs outside, returning with two more bodyguards that look exactly like him. We all crowd around the front desk.
“Where are they?” I ask the woman staffing the desk, tapping my fingers impatiently on the counter. “They should be here already.”
“I don’t know where the girls are,” she says, catching on to my panic.
I almost call the cops again when Olivia and Jane both come sauntering down the hall, looking irritated.
“Where the hell were you?” I ask, gathering them into a hug and nearly crying with frustration and anxiety.
“We were in speech class,” says Olivia, keeping her sling protected from my squeezing arm.
“We were right in the middle of a debate,” adds Jane. “We had to finish
