Yes, I answered, keeping it quiet. Call it a severance payment. The last thing I intend to place in their hands. I handed over the card. Then I drew myself straight and addressed the investors, none of whom had stirred, all of whom were watching me with something between awe and bewilderment.
"Gentlemen, my apologies for the disruption," I said, setting my cuffs back in order. "Huh, the evening, I'm afraid, has run its course." I walked to the window and stood there looking out over the Houston lights laid out below. When the officers read them their rights behind me, I didn't turn around. when they were escorted out in handcuffs through a room full of people they had been performing for all night.
I didn't turn for that either. The old man in the glass held my attention instead. He was hollowed out, but his spine hadn't given. Something in the line of his shoulders told you he hadn't carried himself that way in a long while. The four officers, two in uniform from the Houston Police Department, two in suits bearing federal credentials, worked with the kind of quiet, controlled precision that needs no raised voices.
They moved through the room, and the room simply opened for them. The manager released Ingrid's arm and stepped away, pressing his palms against his trouser legs as though trying to rid himself of the contact. An officer filled the gap, immediately pulling her arm around behind her back. The cuffs engaged with three mechanical clicks that I registered somewhere behind my breast bone. Clean, sharp sounds that climbed into the high ceiling of that room.
The sound of an ending arriving exactly when it was supposed to. Ingrid's composure broke into a high, disbelieving sob. the sound of someone whose mind genuinely refuses what is happening to her. She looked at the officer. Then she found her husband.
Declan, do something. Tell them who we are. Declan had nothing left to give. He was curled over himself, face buried, utterly emptied. One of the federal agents stepped up and rested a hand on his shoulder.
Declan Dunore. The agent's voice carried no warmth, no menace, no inflection of any kind. Get on your feet. You're under arrest.
Declan raised his head. His eyes were swollen and raw. He made a slow pass around the room, searching for a way out, a friendly face. Some crack in the wall of consequence he'd been unknowingly constructing around himself for months. There was nothing.
The men he'd been cultivating all evening, the deals, the expensive wine, the polished self-assurance stood along the wall now with folded arms, their expressions offering him no quarter whatsoever. Declan stood. It cost him something. His legs were unsteady enough that I thought once or twice they might not hold. He extended his hands in front of him almost without thinking.
The agent turned him and secured him. The cuffs pressed down against the crisp fabric of that expensive tailored shirt. The Audemars Piguet watch bought with money lifted from me caught the chandelier light just above the steel bracelet. Quite an image. The trophy of everything he'd taken sitting flush against the instrument of everything he'd forfeited.