“Would he?” said Tessa.

She had not intended to speak. The words slipped out, quiet and plain. Both men turned to look at her.

“I’m sorry,” she said, flushing. “I just mean, if my brother were stealing from someone I loved, I think I’d want someone to stop him. Before he did something he couldn’t take back. I think that might be what love looks like. Sometimes.”

Eli looked at her for a very long time.

“Miss Ruiz,” he said at last, and his voice was strange and soft, “I believe you may be the wisest person in this building.”

He turned back to Marcus.

“Call your detective.”

Waiting Room

Downstairs, the branch had resumed its ordinary rhythm, or tried to. Customers came and went. The printer chuckled to itself. A young mother with a stroller deposited a check at Window Two. But a different kind of silence hung beneath the usual noises, the silence of a place where something was happening that nobody had been told about.

Tessa came down the stairs with the printout folded in her pocket and her heart bumping. She had been instructed to return to her window and act normal, and she intended to do exactly that, though normal felt like a coat she had borrowed from someone much taller.

The lobby looked the same. The rain still ticked at the glass. The armchairs by the window were arranged as they always were. Big Walt stood near the door with his hands clasped, as though he were guarding a church.

Dale Whitaker was not in his chair.

She looked around quickly. A flicker of panic touched her chest. Then she saw him through the glass front of the lobby, outside, on the covered walkway just beyond the doors, with his back to the building and one shoulder hunched against the weather.

He was on his phone.

“He asked to step out for some air,” Walt murmured, appearing at her elbow without a sound. “I let him. He’s right there. I can see him through the glass the whole time. Didn’t seem like the sort to run.” He glanced at her. “Everything all right upstairs?”

“I think it will be,” Tessa said. Then, more quietly, “Walt, I think Marcus is calling the police.”

The old guard did not so much as blink. “Good,” he said. “I’d have done it an hour ago.”

She went to her window and slipped onto her stool. She laid her hands flat on the counter. Dale was pacing now, three steps one way, three steps back, the phone clamped to his ear. His free hand flapped in the air as he talked. Even through the glass she could see that his movements had changed. They were jerkier, faster. He looked like a man trying to talk his way out of a room that was shrinking.

She should not watch. She knew that. It was none of her business, and a teller who stared at customers was a teller who ended up in a performance review.

But she watched.

The glass was thick, and the rain was loud, and she could not hear a word. But there is a kind of language that does not need sound. She saw him put his free hand against his forehead. She saw him bend forward, as if someone had punched him. She saw him say something short, and then say it again, louder, and then stand rigid, listening, with his whole body gone slack.

He lowered the phone.

For a moment he did not move. He stood on the wet walkway with the phone dangling in his hand and his shoulders sagging, staring at nothing. In the gray light he looked suddenly much older than forty-six. He looked like a man at the bottom of a very deep hole, watching someone lower the lid.

Then he straightened. He wiped his face with his sleeve. He took a breath, and she watched him put the pleasant mask back on, piece by piece, the way Marcus had in the conference room, except that where Marcus’s mask had been an act of courage, Dale’s was an act of desperation.

He turned and pushed back through the doors, bringing a blast of cold air and the smell of rain. His eyes found hers across the lobby.

For one long second, they stared at each other.

“Everything okay in there?” he called, with a bright and brittle smile. “My uncle’s been gone a while.”

“He’s just finishing some paperwork,” Tessa said. “Shouldn’t be much longer.”

“Great,” said Dale. “That’s great. We’re in kind of a hurry.”

“I understand.”

“Do you?” He walked toward her slowly, still smiling. The smile did not reach his eyes. “I’m not sure you do, honey. I’m not sure anybody does.”

He stopped at the counter. He leaned in, and his voice dropped low.