“Yes.”
“And what was the most recent email?”
“Three days ago. Six words from H to Patterson.”
“Read it.”
“Has Cabot mentioned Henry?”
I looked across the parlor. Cabot had his hands folded one over the other on his knee. He was watching my face.
I held the phone an inch from my ear.
“Cabot.”
“Yes?”
“Patterson was being asked by someone identified as H whether you’d mentioned Henry.”
“Henry Harcourt Benton,” Cabot said. “There’s no other H in that orbit who’d be asking that question about that name. Henry’s the only Henry. He’s the only one the family asks people not to write about. He’s the only one I was steered away from socially first, then formally.”
I brought the phone back to my ear. “Eamon, Cabot confirms. H is Henry Harcourt Benton.”
“That tracks.”
“Anything else in the bundle?”
“One handwritten note paper-clipped to the back of the printouts. Patterson wrote it. Three words.”
“And?”
“He’s being moved.”
I repeated it out loud for Cabot.
“Henry,” he said. “He means Henry.”
“Dane, I need to go.” He was gone before I could say goodbye.
I turned my attention to Cabot. “Patterson wasn’t guessing about a connection between your work and Wiley’s. They actually touched. There’s a vendor inside a Harcourt foundation contract that sits on Wiley’s Onyx Bay map. There’s also an email from inside the Harcourt family—Henry—asking Patterson whether you’d said Henry’s name out loud. And there’s a note in Patterson’s handwriting that saysHe’s being moved.”
“Then Henry isn’t the architect,” Cabot said. “He’s the lever.”
“That’s my read.”
“He wasn’t just my editor,” Cabot said quietly. “He was trying to save someone.”
“He’s still your editor, and he may be trying to save more than one person.”
Cabot picked up his legal pad from the coffee table. He uncapped his pen. “What do you need from me?”
“Everything you have on Henry, including the small things. We even need what you didn’t think mattered.”
His pen hovered over the pad.
“You don’t have to do this right now,” I said.
“Yes, I do.”