Page 65 of Crowe
She looked at it. Then she looked at me. She took it quickly and slipped it into the small clutch she was carrying, and her fingers closed over the clasp.
“Thank you, but they can’t help me,” she said. Her voice was very quiet.
“I know you don’t believe me, but they can,” I said. “Just… keep it somewhere safe.”
She nodded once. I nodded back. And then I turned and went back through the door into the ballroom.
Jackson was three feet from the door.
He looked at me. I looked at him. His expression was completely professional—composed, neutral, the face I imagine he wore when he was in operational mode.
“Hi,” I said.
“We’re going to talk about this,” he said, very quietly.
“I know. But did you hear what she said?” I asked.
“We all did.”
He put his hand on my back and steered me back toward the table. His touch was steady, but I was aware that the steadiness took some work; that underneath it, he was furious and frightened and relieved all at once. I also knew I was going to hear about all of it when we got to the room.
“For what it’s worth,” I said, quietly, as we walked, “I knew what I was doing.”
“I know you did,” he said. “That’s not the point.”
“Jackson—”
“Later,” he said.
Chapter twenty-one
Crowe
I’d been watching Corvane since Noah returned from the corridor. He hadn’t looked at Noah for the rest of the dinner portion of the evening, but I hadn’t missed the way he’d watched him the whole time he’d been up there talking, and it said something about him that he could listen to what Noah said with no shame or remorse, only hunger. The man had no conscience.
When the dinner portion of the evening was over, he stood and moved to the back of the room where other men were gathering in small groups. He’d moved through the room with the kind of authority and power that money bought. But even as he pretended to network and socialize, it was clear that he was aware of exactly where Noah was at every moment and was choosing when to make his move.
Noah and I stayed seated at our table, talking with donors who came over to thank Noah for giving his speech and tell him how brave they all thought he was. If their comments to him were any indication, I thought this fundraiser was going to be a huge success.
The room lights dimmed, and music began to play as we moved into the latter part of the evening. There was something odd about the shift from a speaker talking about the trauma of humans being trafficked to a social event with dancing and socializing, but as long as it raised plenty of money, I guess that was okay.
At that point, I clocked Corvane as he slowly made his way across the room to where we sat. He approached from the left, coming around the edge of the dance floor with a glass of scotch and a pleasant expression, and he stopped beside our table.
“Mr. Gentry,” he said. “That was a moving speech.”
Noah looked up at him, and I gripped his hand under the table. I felt him steady himself, as he pasted a smile on his face that gave nothing away. I was so proud of my boy. He had to be the strongest man I’d ever known.
“Thank you,” Noah said.
Corvane looked at me briefly, the assessing look of a man filing information, and then back at Noah. He smiled. It was a cold smile. The kind that made him look like a monster in a ten-thousand-dollar suit.
“It must be comforting,” he said pleasantly, “having so many people looking after you. All these”— his eyes moved across the room in a way that suggested he’d managed to spot each of our guys—“devoted friends.”
In my ear, I heard Hawk’s voice. “We’re watching.”
I said nothing.
“It’s a lot of effort,” Corvane continued, “for something that can’t last indefinitely. People have their own lives. Their own priorities.” He tilted his head slightly, the gesture of a man making a reasonable observation. “It’s sweet, really, the way you think they’ll always be there. But protection like this—” He paused, as if considering how to put it kindly, and then shook his head. “I’m a patient man, Mr. Gentry. I’ve always found that patience is the most underrated virtue.”
