Simon should havejust shot himself. He didn’t know what the hell that was all about; he didn’t know where the numbers came from, and he didn’t know what the six numbers even meant. Too short to be a telephone number. But he knew that this had changed something forever. He stared at the phone in his hand and threw it down. It was fast becoming a habit with him.
He really wanted to throw it outside and forever shatter the window that linked him to this unknown world. But he also knew that this wouldn’t go away. He had reached this point of doing something that was rightanddoing that something right every damn time.
It had been two hours since he’d sent that text, and now he waited. Waited for the phone call that said the detective was downstairs. Finally it came.
“Send her up,” he said quietly. He didn’t even meet her at the elevator this time. When the elevator opened, he listened to the footsteps, grateful to hear only one set.
She walked to the couch, where he sat. “How did you know?”
He looked up at her, exhausted and drained. “I don’t even know what the numbers were for,” he said. “I don’t have the slightest idea what you did with them. I didn’t get any interpretation.”
“The numbers were the combination to open the safe of a pedophile,” she said quietly. “The same man who’s in the morgue.”
He stared at her in shock. “A safe?”
She nodded and didn’t say anything.
“I don’t know what the hell is going on,” he whispered, “but I got a message in my head that you needed these numbers, and I sent them to you. See? I get numbers in my head all the time. It’s how I make money when gambling, buying stocks, investing in real estate. I’ve always called itintuitionbut this?… I don’t know what to call it.”
“I was staring at the safe, figuring out how to get into it,” she said, “and I was wondering what the numbers were, asking my team member to see if we could get a safecracker in, but wondering if we could get in faster before all that.”
“And it worked?” he asked. Then he gave a broken laugh, lifted his whiskey glass, and threw back the rest of it, his eyes closed again.
“How much of that have you had to drink?”
“Not nearly enough,” he said defiantly, and he opened his eyes and glared at her.
She smiled at him. “You know? I almost believe you.”
“Almost?”
“Almost,” she said. “Because that was a pretty smooth trick.”
“How else would I have known?” he said.
“I presume no one knows about your parlor trick?”
“Would you tell anyone?” he challenged.
She frowned and stared at the carpet.
“No way in hell you would let anybody know,” he snapped. “Your job would go out the window. The public would view you completely differently, and your privacy would be nonexistent. Do you have any idea how terrifying all this is?”
She raised her gaze and looked at him steadily.
He didn’t feel so much the center of her gaze as much as her deep sense of goodness.
“If you have answers,” she said, “you are honor bound to hand them over.”
He cracked up with laughter. “Honor bound?” he snapped. “Like fucking hell.”
“Do you think swearing makes a difference in my world?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Why do you think your pretentious attitude makes any difference in mine?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “But I think you’ve been struggling against who you truly are for a lifetime.”
He stopped and stared, her words echoing his grandmother’s. “Like hell,” he said, but he wasn’t ready to concede anything. He just glared at her.