“Resolved would mean knowing who’s pulling what thread. We examine all of them until then.”
I looked at the coffee table.
“And Wiley’s text could be a redirect, but that seems the easy answer.”
Dane stepped in. “Regardless, somebody knows enough about him to text him on a number he didn’t intend to share. That’s its own data point.”
Wiley nodded.
Cabot spoke up. “The man across the street.”
“Yes,” Dane said.
“He was at the August gathering. He was one of the two people I couldn’t account for.”
“Two?” Dane asked.
“The man outside and Henry.”
“Oh, yes, the cousin.”
“I sat across from him at lunch in August,” Cabot said. “He passed me the salt, and he asked about a book I’d reviewed two years ago that nobody read. He had good manners and quiet hands. I liked him.”
Cabot paused.
“And the next morning, Eleanor took me aside and told me gently that Henry preferred his privacy. The morning after that, the family attorney called my editor about my piece in progress and asked, also gently, that I not mention Henry.”
“And you let it go?” Wiley asked.
“I let it go because I write society features. I’m not adversarial. If a family asks me to leave someone out, I leave them out. That’s how I keep getting invited back.”
“And now?”
“Now I’m sitting in a safehouse, and the only Harcourt nobody wanted me to write about is the only Harcourt I have nothing on.”
We were all quiet for a beat.
“Was he in the same room as the watcher in August?” Wiley asked.
Cabot said, “No, not that I saw, and he’s the only other person at that gathering I can’t account for in any meaningful way.”
Wiley set his pen down again.
“And we’re less than two weeks away from this wedding.”
“Yes.”
“And the chatter says it matters to Onyx Bay.”
“Yes.”
“Are they planning something violent?” Wiley’s reporting instincts took him right to the point.
“We don’t know what they’re planning,” I said.
“We know it’s a date with most of the family’s core in one place, with reduced security and minimal publicity, less than two weeks from now,” Dane said. “And we’re assuming that people who care about it planted a man across the street to confirm where we are. It’s a starting point.”
My phone buzzed against my hip. It was Eamon, calling me instead of Dane.