how badly you want the truth.”
Elias crouched beside him. “I can make you answer.”
“No,” I said.
Everyone looked at me.
My father had not raised me to be cruel. He had raised me to be precise.
I knelt in front of Rusk, close enough to see the broken red veins in his eyes.
“You came here because Elias had something you needed. You used me because my father’s name still opens a door somewhere. You are not finished, which means you are not in control.”
Rusk’s smile faded.
“The shooter ran,” I said. “The phone failed. You are on the floor. So here is what happens now. You tell me what you know before the police come, or I let Elias’s people turn you over to every enemy you made while pretending to be untouchable.”
Scar-brow made a low approving sound.
Rusk looked from me to Elias, then to Adelaide.
For the first time, he seemed older than his reputation.
“Dock Eleven,” he said. “Midnight. Graham’s file is being auctioned to the highest bidder. Your father will come if he thinks the file surfaced. He always did love walking into traps for children.”
“For children?” I asked.
His eyes found mine again.
“Not just you, Sparrow.”
A chill moved through the corridor.
Before I could ask, Scar-brow hauled him upright. Police sirens wailed outside, drawing closer through the rain.
Elias looked at me. “You should leave.”
I almost laughed.
“Seven years ago, people decided my life for me. They gave me a name, a job, a city, and a grave to cry over. I am done leaving rooms before the answers arrive.”
“Dock Eleven will be dangerous.”
“So was your dinner. You’re welcome.”
Despite the blood on his mouth, something like a smile threatened and disappeared.
Adelaide touched his sleeve. “Elias, don’t go. If Graham is alive, there are agencies, lawyers, channels—”
“Channels buried him,” I said.
Her hand fell.
The police took Rusk through a back entrance to avoid the guests. The waiter, whose name was Milo, kept thanking me until his voice cracked. Tessa arrived from The Blue Lantern wrapped in my coat, having apparently followed sirens and common sense in opposite directions.
“You kissed Elias Voss,” she said, staring at my mouth, his face, the guards, the police. “Please tell me this is one of those situations where the explanation makes it less insane.”
“It doesn’t.”
She handed me my coat. “Of course not.”
At 11:34 p.m., Elias and I stood in a warehouse office overlooking Dock Eleven.
Rain hammered the roof. Below us, shipping containers sat stacked in blue and rust-red walls. Floodlights threw hard shadows across puddles. The Cooper River moved black beyond the cranes.
Elias had changed into a dark coat. I had dried my hair badly with a hotel towel and found an old gray sweater in Tessa’s trunk. Scar-brow, whose name was Callum, checked the cameras with two of Elias’s men.
“You don’t have to be here,” Elias said.
“You keep saying that like it will become useful.”
He glanced at me. “Your father saved my life once.”
The admission landed quietly.
“When?”
“I was twenty-three. Reckless. Certain my name made me bulletproof. Graham intercepted a threat tied to my mother’s business and warned me. I ignored him. He dragged
