In the night room Page 0,36

if by sacred right.

Okay, he didn’t like them. We already knew this. But what, she wanted to know, did he actually make of them?

—Maybe I’m a paranoid left-wing conspiracy junkie, but companies like that are my definition of evil. They interfere with politics wherever they want to gain advantage, they buy cooperation, they ruin the environment, they get up to dirty deals all over the world. You should consider, Willy, that your first husband might have been murdered because of his connection to Baltic.

For a second, Willy heard the ghostly wail of her daughter’s voice. The loss of her husband and daughter swarmed over her, and she began to shake. —Thanks very much, she said. This is hardly news. Whose side are you on, anyhow?

—I’m on your side, but I am concerned about you. No, hold on, don’t get all worked up, Willy.

So what did he want to tell her about Mitchell? It was the reason they were there, he might as well get it out.

—Nobody wants to see you drift into a marriage with a man who isn’t right for you. And that is what you seem to be doing, at least to me. Because, forgive me for what I’m about to say, but you don’t really know this man very well, and even worse, what he represents is absolutely counter to your values.

My values?

—Your boyfriend was in Special Forces before being taken on by the CIA, and when he blotted his copybook there, the Baltic Group was more than willing to snap him up. Are you hearing me? Mitchell Faber did something so bad that he had to be drummed out of the CIA. They’re really not talking about whatever he did, but it was something special, that’s for sure. Like a massacre, Willy, and I’m not exaggerating. To be buried so deep, it had to be something like that. Now he’s a kind of mercenary, except he has only one client and he gets paid really well.

Was he actually saying that Mitchell was responsible for the deaths of her husband and daughter? Was that what he was trying to tell her?

—Maybe indirectly, yes.

Now, to her horror, Tom’s life opened before her as a series of broad, sunlit avenues, while hers looked to be spiraling down into a cave, a cell, a speck.

She became aware that Tom had stopped talking. He was looking at her through narrowed eyes, and beneath his well-mannered blond hair his forehead looked corrugated.

—Willy, did you hear any of what I just said?

Everything important, yes.

—Because when you start telling me things about your daughter, I know you need professional assistance.

Willy shot to her feet in a flutter of limbs and other people’s scarves and jackets. It was time to get back, she had things to do on the estate, and the roads would be terrible. Could she call Tom for advice, or for help . . . ?

—I want you to call, he said. Willy?

She was already maneuvering through the crowd between the bar and the tables.

Then it was if she had fallen asleep the instant she entered Giles Coverley’s car, for without transition she went from running through a downpour toward the open back seat to the recognition that she was standing beneath an umbrella held by Rocky Santolini, as he pointed, in the torrential rain battering down on Hendersonia, to a messy obscurity of branches and limbs where the gable over Mitchell’s office window should have been. Beneath his own, double-sized, plaid umbrella, Giles was staring up at the same place, swearing with an astonishing eloquence. The Dellray men stood huddled at the front of the garage. Unprotected from the deluge, Roman Richard was yelling at Vincent Santolini. With his soaked clothing and streaming hair, he looked like a manatee. Willy thought she was going to faint, then that she would scream. She wanted to scream: screaming would make what was happening to her everyone else’s problem instead of hers. She flattened her hands over her mouth.

—We told you this could happen, Rocky said. He thought her horror had been caused by damage to her house.

Roman Richard swung his body sideways, extended an arm, and bellowed something at Rocky.

—I can’t deal with that guy. This is the deal. Out of respect for your husband, we could go up to that room, clear out the wreckage, and staple a sheet of plastic over the opening. Maybe we could save the carpet and whatever else in there ain’t already ruined. Only we need the