CHAPTER TWO:
THE OPEN GATES
Julian did not remember getting into the car.
One minute he was standing in his dark penthouse with a dead phone line in his ear, and the next he was on the Saw Mill Parkway at one in the morning with both hands locked on the wheel. He had passed three exits without seeing them.
His father’s house sat at the end of a private road in Bedford, behind a stone wall his mother had chosen in 1998. The gates were open. They were never open. Someone had been expecting him.
He left the car crooked on the gravel and took the front steps two at a time. The door opened before he reached it.
Richard Thorne stood in the hall in a gray cardigan and slippers, his white hair combed, his reading glasses in his hand. At sixty-eight he still stood like a man who was used to being obeyed. Only his eyes gave him away. They looked tired in a way Julian had never seen before.
“You drove too fast,” Richard said. “Come in. Close the door.”
“Where is she?”
“Not here. Lower your voice, Marta’s asleep upstairs.”
“I don’t care if the whole county hears me.” Julian pushed past him into the study. The lamp was already on. A single glass of whiskey sat untouched on the desk. “Elena called you at six fifty-two tonight. You talked for four minutes. Then she disappeared, and a forged divorce petition is sitting on my dining table. So start talking.”
Richard closed the study door and leaned against it. “Forged,” he said.
“You heard me.”
“You’re certain?”
It was not the question of a man who was surprised. Julian noticed that and filed it away, coldly, the way he would in a negotiation. “The signature’s wrong. Her t.”
Something crossed his father’s face, quick and unreadable. “I see.”
“That’s all you have to say?”
“That’s all I can say.” Richard came away from the door and lowered himself into the leather chair by the fireplace, carefully, like a man whose knees hurt. “Elena called me. She asked to see me. I met her. She was in good health, she was not coerced, and she asked me not to tell you where she was going. I gave her my word.”
“Your word.”
“Yes.”
“She’s my wife!”
“I’m aware of that.”
Julian stared at him. He had spent thirty-seven years watching this man handle boardrooms and senators and a hostile takeover in Rotterdam, and he knew exactly what it looked like when Richard Thorne decided a conversation was over. His shoulders eased. His voice went gentle. Julian had always found it reassuring. Tonight it made his skin crawl.
“What did she want?” he asked.
“To leave.”
“Why?”
“You’d have to ask her.”
“I can’t ask her. That’s the point.” Julian put both hands on the desk. “Dad. Look at me. Did she say anything about me? About us? Did she say why she went to you and not to me?”
For a moment Richard said nothing. The fire ticked in the grate. When he finally spoke, he chose each word as if it could be used against him later.
“I think,” he said, “you should ask yourself that last question. Why would she call me, and not you.”
The words landed harder than Julian expected. He straightened. “That’s cruel.”
“It’s honest. Something you’ll appreciate later.” Richard looked at the whiskey and didn’t touch it. “Go home, Julian. Sleep. Let the lawyers do their work in the morning. If the petition is forged, they’ll find out who forged it. If it isn’t, then you’ll have your answer that way.”
“You told me to let her go. On the phone.”
“I did.”
“Then you think she’s better off without me?”
“I think,” Richard said quietly, “that she is safer where she is.”
The silence after that was very long.
Safer.
Julian heard it and could not un-hear it. It sat in the room between them like a third person. “Safer from what?”
His father’s face closed. It was like watching a door shut. “I misspoke. Go home.”
“Safer from what, Dad?”
“That’s enough.”
“No. It isn’t.” Julian’s voice cracked, and he hated it. “You just told me she’s in danger, and you sat there and made me guess. If somebody’s threatening her—”
“Nobody is threatening her.”
“You said it was safer!”
“I said what I meant, and I’ve said all I’m going to.” Richard rose, and for a second he looked ancient, a stooped man in a cardigan. Then his back straightened, and he was the chairman again. “You’re exhausted. You’ve been in Zurich for three days. You’re not thinking clearly. I’ll have Owen drive you home.”
“I have my car.”
“Then I’ll have him walk you to it.”
He crossed to the door and opened it. Julian had already opened his mouth to argue when he saw the man standing in the hall.
Owen Kessler was in a dark overcoat, hands folded in front of him, expression polite and empty. Meridian’s head of security had a way of being present without being noticed. He had been part of the furniture of Julian’s life for eleven years, driving him to the airport, clearing rooms before events, once carrying a drunk Isabelle out of a gala without a single photographer catching it. Julian had never wondered where he came from.
“Mr. Thorne,” Owen said. “I’m sorry about the hour. Mr. Crane called me. He thought you might need someone.”
“Victor called you?”
“He was concerned. Your father phoned him after you rang.” Owen glanced at Richard, then back. “I’ll see you out.”
Julian looked at his father. Richard held his gaze without expression.
“Let him walk you,” Richard said.
Julian went. There was nothing else to do. Owen fell in half a step behind him, across the hall, down the steps, over the gravel, and stopped a polite distance from the driver’s door.
“If there’s anything I can do,” Owen said. “Anything at all. Mr. Crane asked me to make sure you know that.”
“Did Victor also tell you my wife left me?”
“No, sir.” A pause. “Has she?”
Julian searched his face for something, a flicker, a tell. He found only professional concern. He got into the car and drove out through the open gates without answering.
He made it as far as the end of the private road before he pulled over and put his forehead against the wheel.
Safer where she is.
He sat there for two full minutes with the engine running. Then he lifted his head, looked at his own hands, and made himself think it through.
Elena had called his father. Not Isabelle. Not her sister. His father, whom she had always been careful around. She had never said an unkind word about Richard, and she had never said a warm one either. Julian had once put it down to shyness.
And his father had known, before Julian ever spoke the word, that the petition might be forged.
He turned the car around.
It was half past two when he reached the lobby of his building. The night doorman, Emmett, a gray-haired man who had worked the desk for six years and always asked about Julian’s trips, stood up too fast when he saw him.
“Mr. Thorne. Sir. I heard there was some trouble.”
“Who told you that?”
“Well, nobody, sir. Only that Mr. Kessler was here earlier.” Emmett swallowed. “I assumed.”
Julian stopped walking. “Owen Kessler was here tonight?”
“Around seven-thirty, sir. He had the master key. Mr. Crane asked him to check the unit. It happens sometimes, you know, with the alarm system.” Emmett blinked. “He didn’t tell you?”
“What time did my wife leave?”
“Miss Elena? Quarter past six. Two bags, a black car waiting at the curb, not one of ours.” Emmett hesitated. “She stopped at the desk on the way out. She was very kind about it. She left something for you.”
Julian went cold. “What did she leave?”
“An envelope, sir. Cream-colored. Your name on the front, in her handwriting. I put it in the drawer to give you when you get back.” Emmett’s face began to change, slowly, as understanding came to him. “But Mr. Kessler said he’d take it up with him. Since he was going to your apartment anyway. I thought that was all right.”
Julian looked at the empty hands of the man in front of him.
There had been no envelope on the dining table. There had been a ring, a petition, and nothing else.
“Emmett,” he said, and his own voice sounded strange to him. “When Owen came back down, did he still have it?”
The doorman’s silence was enough.
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