The Chronos offices occupied a full square block in the Central Business District, just off Canal, in a building designated for Girard Industries. Heavy security discouraged most visitors, and if anyone managed to get through, two floors of apparent telemarketers would’ve bored them away. Most days, my dad worked from that building. But today, I’d been called to his home office.
I liked to call it the throne room. He didn’t like it at all.
“Poe is where?”
“Tennessee.” Dad wore his usual poker face. “ICU at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He was hurt, badly, but is expected to recover.”
“How—”
“I don’t know how, Hallie. Just that he had a terrible knife injury and almost bled to death. But he didn’t.”
I blew out a deep breath. Dad’s words rolled through my brain like the crawler at the bottom of a news broadcast.
“When’s he coming back to New Orleans?” I asked.
Dad’s eyes closed briefly, and he pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger.
“Dad?”
“No idea.” He dropped his hand. “But if I let him come back, things are going to change.”
If. I wanted to let loose, like Godzilla on an unsuspecting city, but people crossed oceans to avoid Paul Girard’s anger. Not a good idea to cause more if I wanted to get Poe back.
“No one else has the same skill he does,” I said, trying to reason. “Are you really willing to let him walk?”
“Possibly, yes.”
“Can we talk about why?”
My father went to the mahogany liquor cabinet, took a few ice cubes from the ice bucket, and dropped them into a glass. He poured a glass half full of amber-colored liquid. It was only on the rocks because lunchtime hadn’t rolled around yet. After that, it was straight-up.
“Poe’s loyalties have come into question.”
“Who would he be loyal to besides us?”
Dad set his glass down firmly and wiped his mouth with his thumb. His hands went to his hips, pushing back his suit jacket, exposing the lines of his holster.
“No,” I said. “No way. Not Poe.”
The cutting edge of betrayal overrode the feeling of dread she usually conjured up.
My mother.
“How did you find out?” I asked.
“She called. As a courtesy.”
I could imagine how courteous that conversation had been.
Dad and I didn’t talk about her, and only in business terms when we did. She’d done a bunk when I was ten, though she’d stayed at Chronos. I rarely went on jobs for her and had started to refuse them altogether, so a couple of years ago, she’d “made things easier for all of us” by choosing to operate out of her own office. She’d only made things easier for herself.
Teague Girard might be able to give up her family, but she’d sure as hell stick around for science.
“Why? Why would Poe do that?”
“I think you should sit down,” Dad said.
My head came up sharply. Weakness wasn’t in Paul Girard’s vocabulary, yet he sounded unsure.