Chapter 292: Chapter 294: Aria And Victoria’s Reunion
They didn’t move for a second.
People moved around them....nurses finishing shifts, a porter with a trolley, two junior doctors who walked past without looking up from their phones. The ordinary end-of-day traffic of a hospital entrance, completely indifferent to the two women standing in it.
"Walk with me," Victoria said.
Not a question.
Aria looked at her.
She thought about calling Marcus. He was in the car at the end of the block, same as every day, waiting for her to appear. She thought about what he’d say if she texted him right now. She thought about what Damien would say.
She thought about what she wanted.
"Five minutes," she said.
They walked.
Not toward the coffee shop. Away from it, down the quieter side street that ran along the east side of the hospital building. Less traffic. Still public...people passed them, a woman walking a dog, two men in suits....but with enough space between them and the nearest person to talk without being heard.
Victoria walked with her hands in her coat pockets.
Aria walked beside her and said nothing and waited.
"You’ve been busy," Victoria said finally.
"So have you," Aria said.
Something moved at the corner of Victoria’s mouth. Not quite a smile. "Eleanor Park."
"Yes."
"Fast," Victoria said. "I expected another day before you responded."
"I’m not responding," Aria said. "I’m telling my own story. There’s a difference."
Victoria looked at her sideways. "Is there."
"My version doesn’t require yours to exist," Aria said. "That’s the difference."
They walked.
A cab went past. A woman with a pushchair came toward them and they separated briefly to let her through and then came back together and kept walking.
"How are your hands," Aria said.
Victoria’s jaw tightened. Just slightly. "Better."
"Good." She meant it. She’d meant it in the warehouse and she meant it now and Victoria could do whatever she wanted with that information.
"Don’t," Victoria said.
"Don’t what."
"Don’t be decent about it." She kept her eyes forward. "It’s more difficult to deal with than the alternative."
Aria looked at her.
There it was....underneath the composure, underneath the eight months of careful patience, something that was almost honest. The specific discomfort of a person who had built their plan around a target and then had to stand next to that target in a street and find them irritatingly human.
"I’m not being decent for your benefit," Aria said. "I’m being decent because that’s what I am."
"Yes," Victoria said quietly. "I know."
They stopped at the corner.
Victoria turned to face her properly for the first time. Up close she was...striking was the word. Not softened by distance, just different. The scars on her hands weren’t visible under her gloves but Aria knew they were there and she thought Victoria knew she knew.
"I’m not going to stop," Victoria said.
Directly. Plainly. No decoration.
"I know," Aria said.
"The article is the first piece. There are others." She held Aria’s gaze. "Things that are older and more specific and more difficult to contextualise with a sympathetic interview." She paused. "I’ve been thorough."
"I know you have," Aria said. "You’ve been thorough for eight months." She looked at Victoria steadily. "I’ve been thorough for four weeks. We’ll see which one of us is more thorough."
Something shifted in Victoria’s face.
"You’re not afraid," she said. Like it was a problem she was recalculating around.
"I didn’t say that."
"You’re not behaving like someone who’s afraid."
"I’m behaving like someone who knows what’s coming and has decided how to deal with it," Aria said. "Those aren’t the same thing."
Victoria looked at her for a moment.
"Why did you come back," Aria said. "Really. Not the plan, not the careful patient thing you’ve been building. Why did you actually get on a plane."
Victoria was quiet.
"You could have done all of this from Sydney," Aria said. "The article, the files, the journalist. You didn’t need to be in New York for any of it." She held her gaze. "So why are you here."
Something moved through Victoria’s face that she didn’t fully contain.
It was only there for a second. But Aria was looking directly at her and she caught it....something raw and complicated and very old underneath all the composure. The thing that lived under the plan.
"Because I needed to see it," Victoria said. Very quietly.
"See what."
Victoria looked at the hospital behind Aria. At the building. At the staff entrance they’d walked away from.
"What you have," she said. Simply. "What it looks like. Whether it was....." She stopped.
"Whether it was worth it," Aria said.
Victoria said nothing.
"And is it," Aria said. "Worth it."
A long pause.
"That’s not a question I’m going to answer," Victoria said. The composure back, sealed into place, the brief opening closed.
Aria looked at her.
She thought about the warehouse. The dark. Victoria’s hands. The specific moment she’d understood that doing the right thing and winning were sometimes completely separate.
She thought about the coffee shop window. Victoria sitting at that table every day watching the staff entrance, watching her come and go, watching her laugh with a colleague, watching her get into Marcus’s car.
She thought about a woman who had flown fourteen hours not because the plan required it but because she needed to see it with her own eyes.
"You’re going to keep going," Aria said. "You’re going to release the other files and you’re going to keep building the noise and you’re going to do it carefully and patiently because that’s who you’ve become." She held Victoria’s gaze. "And I’m going to keep going too. I’m going to tell my story in my own voice and I’m going to do my job and I’m going to walk out of that entrance every day and get into that car." She paused. "And one of us is going to run out of road first."
Victoria looked at her.
"Yes," she said. "One of us is."
She pulled her coat straight.
She turned and walked back toward the main street without looking back.
Aria stood at the corner and watched her go.
She watched until Victoria turned the corner and disappeared into the ordinary foot traffic of a Wednesday evening.
Then she took out her phone.
MARCUS’S POV
His phone buzzed at five fifty-eight.
He looked at the screen.
Aria: She was here. Outside the staff entrance. We talked.
He was out of the car before he finished reading it.
He got to the corner in forty seconds and found Aria standing there looking at the main street with her bag over her shoulder and the expression she wore when she was processing something and had decided to be very still about it.
"Are you alright," he said.
"Yes." She looked at him. "She’s been watching from the coffee shop across the street. Every day. The window table."
"I know about the coffee shop," he said. "I found it three days ago."
She looked at him.
"You didn’t tell me," she said.
"I was going to tell you and Damien tonight." He held her gaze. "Are you hurt."
"No. She wanted to talk." Aria looked at the corner where Victoria had disappeared. "She said there are more files. Older ones. More specific." She paused. "She’s going to release them."
"I know." He said it steadily. "Let her."
Aria looked at him.
"I’m forty eight hours from closing the chain," he said. "Whatever she releases between now and then....." He paused. "Let her release it. Every move she makes is another piece of evidence." He looked at Aria. "She doesn’t know I have the chain. She thinks she’s invisible."
Aria was quiet for a moment.
"She came here because she needed to see it," she said. "What I have. In person."
Marcus said nothing.
"She could have done all of this from Sydney," Aria said. "She didn’t need to be here." She looked at the corner again. "She’s not just running a plan. She’s...." She stopped. "She’s grieving something. And she’s turned the grief into this because it’s easier than sitting inside it."
Marcus looked at her.
He thought about what Aria had looked like eight months ago. The hospital, the maid’s uniform before that, the false name, the desperation of a woman running on fear and love and nothing else.
He thought about what she looked like now.
"Let’s go," he said. "Damien is going to want to hear this."
Aria nodded.
She picked up her bag.
She looked at the corner one more time.
Then she turned and walked to the car.
