HIS WOLF TOLD ME EVERYTHING

Chapter 19: Bait at Midnight

The fake appointment took Edena four minutes to make and the rest of the evening to stop feeling sick about.

She sat cross-legged on the floor of the flat above the laundromat with her laptop on a cushion, the dryers thumping below like a slow heartbeat, and built it pixel by pixel. A screenshot of Hollis's private calendar, the one she'd taken from his tablet that first night. The same font. The same pale grey grid. The same tiny clock icon in the corner.

And one new entry, slipped neatly into an empty slot:

**H. Private. Old Harbor, Pier 9. Midnight.**

No other details. Nothing to check. Just the kind of entry a powerful man might keep from his assistant: dark, short, interesting.

She looked at it for a long time.

*It's very convincing,* Fiendh said. *If I were a criminal, I'd go.*

*You'd go anywhere with snacks.*

*That's true. Will there be snacks?*

Edena opened the thread with the unknown number. Every message from the blackmailer sat there in a neat column, cold and bold. **Liar.** **Now it costs you.** **Now I own him too.** **Leave the terrace door unlocked tonight.**

She'd done what they asked with the door. She hadn't told them what she'd seen.

Now she typed.

**You wanted his private schedule. Here's the one he hides from everyone.**

She attached the image. Her thumb hovered over the arrow.

If they came, she'd see them. A face. A car. A name. Something real to put in Hollis's hands besides a threat.

If they didn't come, she'd lost nothing.

She pressed send.

Then she got up and went to Madie's door and knocked.

---

"A stakeout," Madie said, for the third time, with her face lit up like a birthday cake. "An actual stakeout."

"Keep your voice down."

"We're in my car. It's a tin can. Nobody can hear us." Madie bounced in the driver's seat. "Babe, I've wanted to do a stakeout my entire life. I've watched every detective show ever made. I know exactly what to do."

"What do you do?"

"You sit very still and eat a lot."

Madie's car was a tiny, ancient, lime-green hatchback with a dent in the passenger door and a dashboard covered in nail-polish bottles that rolled around every time she turned a corner. It smelled of acetone and strawberry air freshener. It was parked in the deep shadow of a closed fish warehouse on the old harbor front, facing the long wooden finger of Pier 9 stretching out into the black water.

Madie had brought supplies. A family bag of crisps. Two bars of chocolate. A flask of tea. Sour sweets. A pack of biscuits. A sandwich so large it might have been a pillow.

And her ring light.

"Turn it off," Edena said.

"It's not on."

"It's plugged into the cigarette lighter."

"In case of emergency content." Madie patted it. "If someone shady shows up, I'm getting it in good light. Nobody believes blurry evidence. You taught me that."

"If someone shady shows up and you turn on a ring light, they'll see us from space."

Madie considered this. Then, with enormous reluctance, she unplugged the ring light and laid it gently in the back seat like a sleeping child.

*I like her,* Fiendh said. *She's like me, but with thumbs.*

---

They waited.

The harbor was quiet. Water slapped against the pilings. A buoy bell rang somewhere far out, slow and lonely. The lights of the big yachts across the bay glittered like a party they hadn't been invited to.

Madie lasted a very short time before she cracked.

"Okay, I have to ask." She crunched a crisp. "Who are we catching? Because you said 'someone's threatening me,' and then you made me park next to a fish warehouse, and I need context. Is it a man? Is it your ex? Is it Edwin? I'd love it to be Edwin. Is it a s*x tape?"

"It's not a s*x tape."

"Is it *worse* than a s*x tape?"

Edena looked out at the black water. At the pier, and the dark lapping underneath it.

"Yes." It came out barely above a whisper.

Madie stopped chewing.

"There's nothing worse than a s*x tape." Madie said it like a woman checking a law of physics.

"There is."

A long pause. The buoy bell rang again.

Madie put the crisps down. She wiped her fingers carefully on a napkin, one at a time, the way she did before she started a set of nails that really mattered.

"Is it about that badge?" she asked. "The one from the dryer. The one that made you look like you'd seen a ghost."

Edena didn't answer.

"Ivory Lodge Catering," Madie said. "I googled it. Fancy lake house. Rich kids' parties." She glanced sideways. "You never told me you worked a job like that."

"It was one night. A long time ago."

"And something happened."

"Something happened."

Madie looked at her for a long moment in the dim green glow of the dashboard. Then she reached over and squeezed Edena's hand, hard, with her sticky crisp fingers.

"Okay," she said. "You don't have to tell me. Not tonight. I'm still on the stakeout."

Edena's throat closed up. "Madie—"

"I'm on the stakeout," Madie repeated firmly, "without knowing why I'm on the stakeout. Do you know how much I love you? That's how much. That's crisp-fingers-holding-your-hand much." She let go and picked the crisps back up. "Now be quiet. I'm watching."

*I'd die for her,* Fiendh said. *I'd die for her and eat all her crisps at the funeral.*

---

Midnight came closer.

They ate the chocolate. They ate the biscuits. Madie started on the pillow-sandwich and offered Edena half, and Edena, whose stomach was in knots, ate it anyway.

*This is just waiting,* Fiendh complained. *Stakeouts are just waiting with extra steps. And no running. Why is there no running? I thought there would be a chase. You promised me crime.*

*I didn't promise you crime.*

*You implied crime.*

The pier stayed empty. Long and silver-grey in the moonlight. A single lamp at the far end, buzzing.

A cat crossed the harbor road. A taxi went past without slowing. Two drunk men sang their way along the seafront and were sick behind a bin, and Madie narrated the whole thing in a hushed, dramatic voice, like a wildlife presenter.

"And here," she whispered, "we see the male of the species, having consumed too much rum, attempting to impress his companion with song—"

"Madie."

"—his plumage is a stained football shirt—"

"*Madie.*"

"Sorry. I'm nervous. I narrate when I'm nervous."

Edena checked her phone. No reply from the blackmailer. Nothing. The thread sat there, silent, with her message at the bottom, delivered and read.

Read.

Somebody, somewhere, had seen it.

The clock on Madie's dashboard, which ran slightly fast and had done so for as long as Edena had known her, ticked over to midnight.

The buoy bell rang.

And at the far end of the harbor road, under a broken streetlight, a figure appeared.

Edena grabbed Madie's arm so hard Madie squeaked.

The figure was walking fast. Small. Slight. Hood up, hands jammed into the pocket of a dark sweatshirt, head down. They crossed the road without looking left or right and turned straight onto the planks of Pier 9.

Edena's heart was hammering against her ribs.

*Can you smell them?*

*Too far,* Fiendh breathed. *Wind's wrong again. The wind is ALWAYS wrong. I want to file a complaint with the wind.*

The figure walked halfway down the pier and stopped. Turned in a slow circle. Looked back toward the road, then out toward the water, then down at a phone, the screen lighting up a pale circle under the hood.

Looking for someone.

Waiting for someone.

"Is that them?" Madie whispered. "Is that the worse-than-a-s*x-tape person?"

"I don't know." Edena leaned so close to the windscreen her breath fogged the glass. "Turn your head. Come on. Turn your head..."

A gust of wind came in off the harbor and snatched at the figure's hood.

It fell back.

The lamp at the end of the pier lit up a narrow, tired face. Pale skin. Dark circles under the eyes like bruises. Hair scraped back in a hurried knot.

Edena knew that face.

She'd last seen it bent over a fabric swatch in the long dining room at the Rourke estate, being shouted at for mistaking eggshell for ivory.

"Oh my God," Madie breathed. "Who is it?"

Edena couldn't stop staring.

"Cary," she said. "That's Leona's assistant."