“Then she moves before the wedding and we adjust. She has been inside the household for forty years without surfacing. We’re betting that doesn’t change.”
Eamon turned toward Farrow.
“You stay here. Wiley and Köhler are with you. Köhler is grieving. The two of you sit with him and let him talk. Write down what he says, but don’t push.”
“Understood,” Farrow said.
“And what will Eleanor know?” Cabot asked.
“Eleanor cannot be told yet. She wouldn’t be able to keep it from Maria. She hasn’t kept anything from Maria in forty years. Telling Eleanor is telling Maria, and that would mean losing everything we’ve built.”
“That conversation has to happen at some point,” Cabot said.
“It happens Thursday after the wedding, in a room she is led into by someone who isn’t Maria. That isn’t our job. Our job is to make sure she is alive to be there.”
Eamon turned to Wiley.
“You keep doing what you’re doing. You run Köhler’s account against the Onyx Bay map, and you run Maria and the story about her brother dying on the Gloucester boat. Build the spine of the piece you’ll write after this is over.”
“Done,” Wiley said.
Eamon laid both hands flat on the table.
“We need to find Maria’s people in the house and find the device. Then we neutralize it and set up federal to move on Maria without compromising the wedding itself.”
“And if we don’t find the device?” I asked.
He looked at me. “Then we tell Eleanor on Tuesday morning, and we cancel.”
“She won’t cancel,” Cabot said.
“Then we tell the bride’s father, who has been planning his daughter’s wedding for eighteen months and does not know any of this, and we let him tell Eleanor, and we let the family come apart in private rather than in public on a hall floor.”
“Six-day clock to a thermonuclear conversation,” Cabot said.
“Yes, but it’s all we have. Anything else?”
The room was silent.
Eamon stood, and the rest followed. The room emptied until it was only Farrow and me.
“You can shoot,” he said.
“My father had a Leica.”
He offered a small, brief smile.
“Tonight,” I said.
“Tonight.”
He came around the counter and stopped at my shoulder. He didn’t touch me, but he was close enough that I caught the coffee on his breath and the cherry vanilla cologne as he went past me to leave the room.
***
The day had been tense, but by midnight, the carriage house was quiet.
Samuel had walked in at six-forty p.m. with Vega behind him, carrying a cardboard box of cookbooks and a houseplant.