I went to my room.
Lay on the east-facing bed in the grey pre-dawn light and thought about a kitchen at three in the morning and cold marble and warm hands and a man who had stood in a hallway because he wasn't going to be on the other side of the building.
I fell asleep before the city had fully committed to morning.
My phone woke me.
Not Lucas. Diane. Her name on the screen at what turned out to be nine AM London time which meant four in the morning Washington time which meant she hadn't slept either.
I answered.
"The Clerkenwell documents," she said, without preamble because Diane Reeves had never used a preamble in her professional life. "We've been through the photographs overnight. There are fifteen years of UK transactions in those cabinets and every single one is documented with original signatures." A pause that had weight in it. "Aria. Two of the signatures on the UK payment records we've seen them before. On the drives from the beach house."
I sat up.
"They match," I said. "Which means the same people who authorized corrupt verdicts in US courts also authorized payments through Vale and Mercer's UK operation." Another pause. "This isn't just a US case anymore. This is international financial crime, judicial corruption across two jurisdictions, and conspiracy charges that are going to require coordination between the DOJ and the Crown Prosecution Service."
"How big," I said.
"Bigger than I thought when I started," she said. "And I started thinking it was significant."
I looked at the east-facing window. The grey London morning doing its thing.
"Diane," I said. "We have a secondary problem."
I told her about the vehicle. The shell company. Gerald's compromised communications. The likelihood that someone had known we were coming before we arrived.
She was quiet for a moment that was longer than her usual pauses.
"Get the physical documents out of that warehouse," she said. "Today. I don't care how hire a moving company, call the Metropolitan Police, whatever Lucas's security people can arrange. Get them out and into a secure facility before end of day."
"And us," I said.
"Stay in the apartment," she said. "Don't go anywhere without Lucas's security team until I can get federal protection coordinated with the UK authorities." A pause. "How is Lucas."
I looked at the door.
"Handling it," I said.
"He's been handling things since before this case started," she said. "Make sure someone is handling him."
She hung up.
I sat on the edge of the bed in the grey London morning and held my phone and thought about that.
Make sure someone is handling him.
I got up. Went to the kitchen.
Lucas was already there showered, dressed, phone to his ear, a legal pad in front of him covered in notes. He looked up when I came in and held up one finger finish the call.
I looked at the legal pad.
Metropolitan Police liaison. Secure storage facility. Chain of custody protocol. Transportation logistics. All of it already in motion before nine AM on a morning when he'd been awake since three.
He ended the call.
"Diane called," I said.
"I know," he said. "She called me first."
"Of course she did." I sat down across from him. "The documents."
"Being moved this afternoon," he said. "Metropolitan Police are coordinating with my security team. Chain of custody will be established before end of day." He looked at his legal pad. "The Crown Prosecution Service wants a meeting tomorrow morning. Edward Ashworth will be there. Diane is sending a DOJ representative on the first available flight."
I looked at him.
Showered, dressed, legal pad full, three calls already made, documents being moved, international law enforcement being coordinated all before I'd had a chance to process being woken by Diane.
"Lucas," I said.
He looked up.
"Have you eaten," I said.
A pause.
"No," he said.
"Right." I stood up. "Move."
He looked at me.
"Move," I said. "Sit somewhere that isn't the legal pad. I'll make something."
He looked at the legal pad. Then at me.
"You cook," he said.
"Everyone cooks," I said. "Move."
He moved.
I went to the fridge and found things and made something that bore a reasonable resemblance to eggs and toast and brought it to the table and set it in front of him and sat down across from him and watched him eat it with the expression of a man who had not realized he was hungry until food appeared in front of him.
"How is it," I said.
"Good," he said.
"You don't have to say that."
"It's actually good," he said. He looked at his plate. "Where did you learn to cook."
"My mother," I said. "She said a woman who can't feed herself is depending on the world to be kinder than it usually is."
Lucas looked at me.
"I like her more every time you tell me something she said," he said.
I looked at the table.
"She's going to like you," I said. "She already does. She told me." I paused. "She said you have good hands."
Lucas looked at his hands.
"That's a specific thing to notice," he said.
"My mother notices specific things," I said. "It's where I get it from."
He looked at me with both dimples.
"The dinner," he said. "When we get home. I want Eleanor to come."
I stared at him.
"To our dinner," I said.
"Not the date dinner," he said. "A different dinner. All of us." He looked at his plate. "I want to make a proper meal. At the beach house. Eleanor, Jamie" He stopped. "If that's"
"Yes," I said.
He looked up.
"Yes," I said again. "Obviously yes."
He looked at me with the expression he had when something had landed better than he'd expected and he was trying not to show how much that meant.
He wasn't entirely succeeding.
I looked at my eggs.
Outside London was fully committed to its morning now the grey resolute, the city audible even forty-something floors up, the park in the distance doing its green thing with whatever light the clouds allowed.
My phone buzzed.
I looked at the screen.
Unknown number. London area code.
I answered.
Silence.
Then a voice low, measured, the specific cadence of someone reading from a prepared statement they wanted to sound spontaneous.
"Ms. Stone. You've been very busy. You and Mr. Vale both." A pause. "The Clerkenwell documents. The Ashworth and Reed instrument. Quite thorough."
I looked at Lucas.
He read my face and was on his feet before I'd moved.
"I'm going to need you to listen carefully," the voice said. "Because what I'm about to tell you is going to determine how the next few days go for everyone involved."
"Who is this," I said.
"Someone who knows considerably more about your situation than you're comfortable with." A pause. "Someone who was in that courtroom when you won the Whitfield case. Someone who has been watching since before the beach house."
Lucas was beside me now. Close. His hand out he wanted the phone on speaker without announcing it.
I tilted it.
"Here is what's going to happen," the voice said. "You're going to walk away from the Crown Prosecution meeting tomorrow. You're going to tell Diane Reeves that the UK evidence is compromised and cannot be used. And you're going to leave London by end of week."
I looked at Lucas.
He was looking at the phone with the focused alert stillness of someone cataloguing every detail of what they were hearing.
"And if we don't," I said.
A pause.
"Then tomorrow morning," the voice said, "instead of a CPS meeting, Mr. Vale is going to find out what it feels like when someone he can't protect gets hurt."
The line went dead.
I lowered the phone.
Lucas looked at me.
Neither of us spoke for a moment.
Outside London did its morning thing with complete indifference.
"They're not talking about you," I said. It wasn't a question.
"No," Lucas said. His voice was very even. "They're not."
"Jamie," I said.
"Yes," he said.
I looked at him at the jaw tension and the stillness and the specific quality of a man containing something that was not calm at all but was presenting as calm because that was what the moment required.
"Lucas," I said.
"I need to make a call," he said.
"I know." I put my hand on his arm. "Make it. I'll be here."
He looked at my hand on his arm.
Then he picked up his phone and stepped to the window and made the call and I sat at the kitchen table in a Mayfair apartment forty-something floors above London and listened to him speak in the low controlled voice.
They had found the one thing that could reach him.
They had found Jamie.
And whoever was on the other end of that call had been in the courtroom the day we won.
Had been watching since before the beach house.
Had known things they shouldn't have known and had been patient about using them.
Patient.
The way Lucas was patient.
The way Harmon was patient.
The way people were patient when they were playing a long game and had decided the moment had finally arrived.
I looked at the phone on the table.
The unknown London number.
And thought about everything we knew about the people connected to Vale and Mercer's UK operation and the one detail that had been sitting at the edge of my thinking since the vehicle outside Clerkenwell and hadn't fully assembled itself until this moment.
Someone had been in that courtroom.
Someone who knew the Whitfield verdict the moment it came in.
Someone who had known the London address before we arrived.
Someone with access to information that should have been secure.
Someone who wasn't Gerald.
Someone who wasn't Diane.
Someone who wasn't Edward Ashworth or Lucas's security contact.
Someone who had been there from the beginning.
I picked up my phone.
Opened my contacts.
Stared at a name.
Put the phone face down on the table.
Looked at the London morning.
Someone who was in that courtroom.