Page 84 of Bind Me
For a long moment she didn’t reply.
“Gage hasn’t spoken to me in a long time,” Catherine said quietly.
“That’s between you and him.”
Catherine exhaled a short laugh that wasn’t amusement at all. Her expression changed, became almost human. “Do you think Oliver will use them? The photos?”
“I hope not.”
“Me, too,” Catherine said. “You’re a wife of the UR now. It wouldn’t be dignified.”
Bea held her gaze a moment longer, then turned back toward the light of the dinner.
RAFAEL
Gavin Trenor’s office wasn’t an office anymore. It was a borrowed room above a logistics firm, the kind of place men rented when they were pretending they hadn’t fallen. The stairwell smelled faintly of diesel. There was no receptionist, just a door with a temporary plaque.
Rafael had kept loose tabs since the dismissal. Men who lost status rarely lost resentment.
He knocked. Trenor opened the door with the reflex of a man accustomed to subordinates. The authority faded the instant he registered who stood there.
A smile assembled itself. “Mr. Griffin.”
They had never met. It didn’t matter.
“Trenor,” Rafael said. “Do you have a minute?”
He stepped back and gestured inside. Cain followed him in and glued himself to a wall; Voss stayed in the hall.
The room was small but bright. Rafael moved past the secondhand desk without asking and paused by the window, studying the container yard below. His fingers drifted across the sill, brushing away a thin line of dust. He rubbed the grit between his fingers before glancing back at Trenor.
“To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“Sit,” Rafael said, gesturing to the mismatched leather armchairs.
Trenor’s brows lifted. “This is my office.”
“Sit.”
The smile thinned. After a beat, he took a seat, slowly. Pretending it was voluntary.
“I’m going to ask you some questions.” Rafael lifted a cheap ballpoint pen, clicked once, twice, and set it back down in a slightly different place.
Trenor’s eyes flicked to the pen, then back to Rafael. His fingers stilled on the desk, as if resisting the urge to move it back. “And if I don’t answer?”
Rafael tilted his head. “Then I’ll ask them again somewhere less comfortable.”
Silence.
Trenor’s fingertips tapped on the desk like a nervous tic. “What is this about?”
“You were removed from your post.”
A flash of irritation crossed his face. “I resigned for health reasons.”
Rafael didn’t answer immediately. He drifted a few steps along the wall, and straightened a crooked calendar with two fingers. Over his shoulder he said, “We both know that’s not true.”
Trenor watched with visible irritation. “Men fall. Men return. And?”
