Page 63 of By Any Means

“Jesus Christ, hey, hey, hey⁠—”

The not-a-butler steadied him upright as though he were a bowling pin. He didn’t let go.

Black cowboy eyes stared, interrogative. “You’re Sumner’s friend.” A statement, not a question.

“Uhh… Hiram? Yep. Yeah.” He’d have said yes even if he wasn’t, given the situation, though Hiram’s was the last name he’d expected to hear right now. Was the man acquainted with damned near everybody in New York?

“Mm. Pain in my ass,” Brasher muttered.

Laurie sympathized. “How d’you— Wait just a minute.” Memory sparked, and suddenly, Laurie knew why the man seemed so familiar, cop or no cop. “I knew I’d seen you before. It was you at⁠—”

He shut his mouth. Brasher, at Boone’s, the very place Irving had been murdered. Brasher, there as Irving had given Laurie a light and taken him home. Brasher, who was certainly some kind of ex-cop, maybe the mob, maybe both. How far had he gone to protect August’s secret?

Brasher raised eyebrows in warning. “Think you’re mistaken about that, Mr. Tulley.”

Laurie glared. “I’m not, and we both know it.” If you’re going to kill me, just get it over with.

Brasher shook him. “Don’t be stupid. You’re mistaken. It was Everard’s Baths.” In one smooth movement, he let Laurie go, turned to the door, and yanked it open.

“What? Wait⁠—”

But Brasher was gone, leaving Laurie swaying a little on his feet, unmoored.

21

CHARY

“Between friends, Mr. Wright,” Tjofabier Raberding said, sipping his tea, “you must see the irony in it: your shareholders finding your recent scandal bitter on their tongues and turning to me for reprieve.”

Prick, Chary thought, rebelliously.

Raberding was in Maine, presently seated across from Chary at the dining-room table and politely eating a blueberry-cheese galette Chary had intended Mrs. Simon make for Laurie—Laurie the deceiving traitor—and looking smugly aware he’d upended absolutely everything.

Because he had.

“I might,” Chary said, even as he trembled from belted-down fury, “if I understood us to be friends. Or if you had ever been so popular as to find yourself truly a target of any newspaper.” He smiled tightly.

Raberding returned a similarly insincere smile. The only reason he himself had avoided the scandal of August’s death was his obscurity. August had been his claim to celebrity; without him, nobody had cared about a newcomer glass heir with eyes on monopoly. New money. In some circles, those words still held weight.

“Perhaps also if,” Chary went on, “I believed any one of my shareholders were in fact selling. I haven’t had so much as a telegram, and it’s already Tuesday. The papers must have run their stories, haven’t they, over the weekend?”

Raberding’s lips curled over the fork as he took a bite of galette; he swallowed it down without chewing. “Why else would I have come all this way?”

Chary looked away so he wouldn’t glare. This was wallpaper, a fabrication. Raberding was really there, nosing around, because he’d gotten word that August was alive. He hadn’t said a word about August, but they both knew it: the jig was well and truly up.

But even if August could no longer stay there, he would be safe. Brasher would keep him safe.

Raberding went on. “You’re unusually verbose today, Charles. I remembered you with a stutter.”

“Yes. It’s still with me, in fact.” But not, apparently, when he was blindingly angry. “Much like you.” August had died in order to evade this man’s reach, and now he was there, and it was Chary’s fault; he hadn’t made Laurie Tulley leave.

Raberding hummed consideringly. “You may have to accustom yourself to more of my presence in the very near future. Especially once Mr. Tulley’s story comes out. The whole story.”

Chary wondered how he could politely say Over my rotting corpse. Did the man think August would simply welcome him back? Welcome the same man who had once left August drugged and bleeding in his bed, for Chary to find, and bellow for Brasher?

“Ah, yes,” Chary said. “One story of many. Regardless, the answer is still no, Mr. Raberding. You won’t get a single share from me, no matter what’s printed.” Or who prints it or writes it.

Raberding smiled. “We’ll see what Laurie says, won’t we?” He looked around expectantly. “Where are your staff? Is there not more coffee?”