“I’m not finished,” Ranveer says. “There’s one more thing about your father that nobody else in the world besides you could possibly know. Isn’t there?”
Quinn can feel her face drain of all expression and the nausea rise up in her gut. She now knows exactly where this going.
“I don’t want to do this anymore,” she says. “I want you to stop.”
“You were with your father when he died. It was the middle of the night. Nobody expected him to live as long as he did, and the hospice nurse had to go out to get more morphine. Your brother and your stepmother were asleep downstairs. They’d asked you to wake them if his condition changed, and you promised them that you would.”
“Stop it.”
“But you didn’t.”
“I said stop.”
Quinn wants to reach across the table and make him stop, but instead she puts her hand over her mouth. She finds she is powerless to do anything but listen as the man across from her reveals her darkest and most shameful secret.
“There was a baby monitor in the room, and you reached over and calmly switched it off. And then—very slowly—you closed the valve on his oxygen tank. He opened his eyes and looked at you, and you could see the fear in them. You held his hand and you kissed his forehead and you stroked his wispy white hair. He didn’t smell like your father anymore. He smelled like excrement. He smelled like death. You talked to him and you wiped the tears from the corners of his eyes and from where they pooled up against the plastic tubing. His mouth moved, but he couldn’t speak. You promised him that everything was going to be OK, and that one day he would be with your mother again, and eventually with you and your brother, and that everything would go back to how it was. You sang him the songs he sang to you and your brother when you were little, and you kept singing until his ragged breathing finally stopped. And then you put his hand down on top of the comforter, opened the valve on the oxygen tank, switched the baby monitor back on, and went downstairs to wake everyone up. You told them that you’d fallen asleep in the chair, and when you woke up, he was gone. You lied to them because you wanted his last moments to be yours. You felt like you deserved them. He gave your brother everything, and your stepmother only married him for his money. You wanted something from him that nobody else would ever be able to have, so you took it.”
Quinn lowers her chin to her chest as she begins to weep, and when she feels Ranveer’s hand on top of hers, she does not pull away. Her sobs reverberate throughout the concrete room as she grieves.
“He was suffering,” she says between convulsions. “It was what he would have wanted.”
“I know.”
“He wouldn’t have made it through the night. I was just—”
“It’s OK.”
When she finally opens her eyes, she sees Ranveer looking at her in a way that nobody has looked at her in a very long time. Maybe ever. There is no judgment or embarrassment or discomfort in his expression. He is not dissociating or looking for ways to put distance between them. He is not making jokes or otherwise trying to expedite her emotion. Instead, he is sitting right there with her, sharing in her pain, and Quinn realizes that it is perhaps the most human moment of her entire life.
Quinn takes her hand back. “I’m not a murderer,” she tells the man across from her.
Ranveer watches her for a moment, and she cannot tell what he is thinking. “Do you know the story of the scorpion and the turtle?” he finally asks.
“What?”
“It’s an old Persian fable.”
Quinn leans back and blots her eyes with her sleeve.
“A scorpion wishes to cross a river,” Ranveer begins, “but cannot swim. It turns to a nearby turtle and asks for a ride. The turtle, knowing the scorpion’s nature, refuses. But the scorpion points out that if it were to kill the turtle, they would both drown. The turtle sees the logic in the scorpion’s argument and agrees. Halfway across the river, the scorpion buries its stinger deep into the soft flesh of the turtle’s neck. As they both sink below the current, the turtle asks the scorpion why. Do you know what the scorpion says?”
They watch each other across the cold steel surface of the table, the silence between them protracting, until the stillness in the room is shattered by sudden commotion outside. The yelling and barking of orders is loud enough to penetrate the thick metal door, and they both reflexively stand, Ranveer lunging for his case, and Quinn making one last attempt to clean up her face.
The heavy metal slab is swung open with surprising ease, and before it can slam against the wall, the room is full of masked figures in dark body armor behind blinding strobes. The plasma dots on the ends of the submachine guns are meant to stun and blind anyone inside without the concussion and violence of flashbang grenades. Three men are on top of Ranveer before anyone can speak. The heavy case drops, the flashes stop, and he is bent roughly over the table and cuffed.
Eberlein is screaming somewhere down the hall. For a moment, his voice gets louder, then it fades rapidly into the distance. When everyone has declared the room clear, Alessandro Moretti steps inside, surveying the situation while holstering his pistol. He is wearing a Kevlar vest and his shirtsleeves are rolled up. His eyes are baggy but bright, and Quinn can see that these are the moments he lives for—the rush that makes all the paperwork and bureaucracy worthwhile.
He nods at Quinn and smiles at her for perhaps the very first time.
“Well done, Mitchell.”
“Thank—” She clears her throat. “Thank you, sir.”
“You OK?”
“Fine.
