The shard of redemption, p.14
The Shard of Redemption, page 14
Then, from the next room, a soft click, and a faint whir, as if the air itself had sighed. Octavia stepped into view. Her loungewear, deep charcoal with brushed silk seams, moved like breath, cut by a Japanese designer who understood both beauty and force. It clung and drifted in all the right places, made to accommodate her strength, not disguise it.
She moved, and the robotic cane moved with her, like a dance they’d rehearsed in silence. A sensor beneath her grip, another likely strapped along her thigh, reading the rhythm of her body. It glided forward with her swing, then held firm at heel strike, fluid when she willed it, unyielding when she needed it.
Neil watched, struck not by the machine, but by the woman commanding it. She hadn’t just adapted. She’d evolved.
And for a moment … he forgot to breathe. Not from shock. From awe.
She was scarred, wired, brilliant.
She was thinner, yes. Paler. But the power was still there … and coiled. He didn’t know if he should move toward her or stay frozen in place.
A few feet away, Octavia paused. Tilted her head. She wore the slightest of smiles.
“You’re late,” she said.
Neil exhaled. A dry laugh escaped before he could stop it. “You’re stunning.”
It wasn’t a line. It was a fact.
Octavia arched a brow. “There’s a bottle of Meursault waiting.”
Neil smiled. “Lead the way,” he said as he let the diplomatic pouch slide off his shoulder. It hit the floor with a dull, final thud. Then he slipped out of his coat and shoes and turned toward the suite’s inner hallway. He paused. One bedroom. Two king-size beds, a skyline that could hypnotize, but … one bedroom. Last time, it hadn’t mattered. He’d crashed on the couch after working the Sterling case past midnight, chasing leads through doctored timelines and conflicting reports. But this time, he’d be here for at least a week. Working with Kozo. Living in proximity with a woman he hadn’t really spoken to in months.
“Put your things in the closet,” Octavia called from the living room, her voice smooth but low. “Then come sit with me.”
Neil hung up his coat and stashed his backpack beneath it before entering the living room, where the suite unfolded in crisp white and warm earthen tones. Japanese prints lined the walls, inviting inward contemplation. Beyond the floor-to-ceiling glass, the storm-lit view of the Imperial Palace Plaza stretched out, serene as a scroll painting … and just as deceptive.
Octavia had settled onto the couch as if the room had been designed around her. Shadows curled under her cheekbones. The exo-cane leaned against the coffee table. She watched as Neil unfastened his cuffs and rolled them back, his sleeves settling at the crook of his elbows.
Without a word, he stepped to the bar and reached for the chilled Meursault. The bottle breathed luxury as he opened it.
She watched his hands, his artist’s touch, fluid and sure. The lean muscles of his forearms caught the light, revealing the steady strength beneath, the kind of strength that captures a woman’s imagination and lingers in her memory. An amused smile curved her lips. He doesn’t realize he has that kind of effect on women.
He poured the wine into a glass and was about to pour a second glass when Octavia interrupted him.
“Water for me,” she said softly.
He glanced over his shoulder.
“Meds,” she added. “No alcohol for a while. It’s the most painful part of rehab.”
A brief grimace flickered across Neil's face and vanished.
“The most painful thing,” he echoed, barely audible.
He poured a tall glass of mineral water and handed it to her.
“Sit with me,” she said again.
“I’ve been sitting for hours,” he replied, then wandered instead to the glass balcony doors.
The lights of the Imperial Palace burned like scattered jewels across the plaza below. The reflection of his own silhouette stared back at him. The man sipping his wine looked composed. Maybe even calm. But inside, he wasn’t sure who that man was.
Emily’s name still lived in the questions he couldn’t stop asking. Questions etched deep, like acid on glass. And Octavia … She filled the silence between those questions. Not with answers. With something else. Something he wasn’t ready to name.
Neil looked away from his reflection. No point thinking in circles, he told himself. She’s healing. I’m here to work. Whatever’s left between us … It can wait.
Behind him, Octavia’s voice floated across the room.
“Neil?”
“Hmm?”
“Why have you been ignoring me?”
He continued to gaze out over the Imperial Plaza.
“I haven’t been ignoring you,” he said. “I’ve been giving you space to heal.”
“That’s bullshit.” Her glass hit the table with a sharp clink, just enough to punctuate her point. “What’s going on?” she continued. “The only time I hear from you is when you need a favor.”
He turned toward her. The light hit half his face, the other remained in shadow.
“Who’s bullshitting who? "The most painful thing about rehab is not being able to drink wine?" Come on. I know better. You survived torture. You survived your sister, and she …”
“She would have killed me,” Octavia finished. “If you hadn’t arrived when you did.”
His eyes fixed on her.
“I came too late to stop … all of it.” His gaze dropped to her cane. “I wanted to crack Bastien’s code. I was so close. Just a few more minutes, I thought. And in those minutes, you were suffering.”
A significant silence fell between them.
“You’ve been avoiding me because you feel guilty?” she asked, her voice tight.
He didn’t answer.
“You want to know what really hurt?” she pressed on. “It wasn’t the rehab. Not the electricity in my legs, or the stim machines, or the hours learning to move again. It was that I didn’t hear from you. You’re my best friend, Neil. You left me.”
He moved to the bar where he turned his back to her and drained his wineglass .
“I’m sorry,” he said as he set the glass down. He turned to face her. “I … am … so sorry.”
Before she could stop it, a tear rolled down her cheek. She wiped it away.
“Damn it, Neil. Now you’ve made me cry.” She held out her hand, palm up. “Napkin.”
He grabbed two from the bar and handed them to her as he sat beside her.
“Octavia,” he began, “you’re the most important person in my life. I know I’m—”
“Self-centered. Tunnel-visioned. Emotionally tone-deaf,” she interrupted, wiping her eyes.
“I was going to say complicated,” he muttered.
She let out a shaky chuckle. Then another. Until laughter spilled out of her like air breaking from deep water.
He watched, stunned. “What’s funny?”
“You. You’re funny,” she said through a hiccup of laughter. “You chase professional killers and decode conspiracies like a bloodhound, but you still don’t understand the simplest thing.”
“What’s that?”
She looked at him then. Really looked. The kind of look that sees the bruise under the armor. The loneliness he won’t admit.
“I’ve already forgiven you,” she said. “You didn’t save me from the pain. Fine. But I get it. You ran toward the code. That’s who you are.”
“I wanted to prevent what happened to you.”
“You wanted to win. There’s a difference.”
The sensor on her cane lit up as she grasped the handle.
“I’m tired,” she said. “Rehab in the morning.”
He nodded.
“I’ll be out most of the day. The suite is yours.” She stepped toward the bathroom door, then turned back. "If the sleeping arrangements aren't to your liking, there's an office with a door and a very cozy couch in the alcove behind the bar and extra blankets in the closet." She paused.
“In a couple days, we’re going to Kyoto. Kozo and his girlfriend are joining us for Christmas Eve dinner. We're spending Christmas together. Maybe we’ll learn how to talk to each other again.”
Then she vanished behind the bathroom door, and Neil sat in the dim, silent suite with one word whispering in his mind … Forgiven.
He watched the light shift and sweep across the floor. Then he crossed the suite into the bedroom. He dropped the backpack onto a bench, tugged off his shirt and trousers, and pulled on a soft black tee and a pair of slate-gray sweatpants. As he made his way out, he slung the backpack and a blanket over his shoulder, grabbed the pouch he'd left by the door, and returned to the couch.
Behind him, the bathroom door opened. Octavia stepped out, her skin glowing from expensive lotion that smelled faintly of roses and sandalwood, one hand resting lightly on the cane. Her ravaged leg was visible where the robe parted, the exo-sensor glinting just above the knee. Red scars tracked up her thigh, delicate as a spiderweb, clinical. He’d imagined them, but imagining wasn’t the same as seeing.
Octavia paused, catching his gaze. She didn’t look away, just met his eyes.
“Good night,” she said, her voice already drifting toward sleep.
Neil nodded. “Sleep well.”
She smiled and disappeared into the bedroom. The door shut without a sound.
Neil opened the pouch and sifted through Katherine Sterling’s journals, each bound in worn leather, until he found the one marked 2004. The year everything went sideways. He pulled it out, ran his hand over the cover.
The truth’s in here somewhere. And once I open this, there’s no putting it back.
Chapter 23
The next morning, Neil, barefoot, wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt, sat cross-legged on the tatami mat near the suite’s sliding doors, a stack of worn leather journals beside him.
A dull ache throbbed behind his eyes. He rubbed the base of his neck. Jet lag. He ought to have done his yoga, but the idea of it felt like procrastination.
Neil drank the last of the matcha tea Octavia had ordered for him before she’d left for rehab and opened the journal labeled 2004.
The edge of the paper was water warped; faint rings of tea stained the corners. One entry bled through in places where the ink had pressed too hard, too long. Katherine’s handwriting: deliberate, straightforward, with the occasional journalist shorthand.
The first notation with Emily’s name was dated June 14, 2004: Emily reviewed my source notes for chapter 9. She’s sharper than I am at tracking the overlapping routes.
August 5, 2004: Award for Strident Misogyny announced. Emily upset she was listed in acknowledgments. She wants to remain anonymous.
He flipped through the pages of Katherine’s daily life: writing, research, interviews from news programs, political journals, and radio programming triggered by the awards announcement.
But the October 2, 2004, notation hit him like a chord struck too hard. The name Emily had been written but scratched out and replaced with the letter E.
E showed up trembling. Said Laura was dead. Said she was next. Frightened for B.
Multiple pages from October 3–10 were missing. One note remained:
E gone. Safe. Decoy. Why do I feel … The next word was scratched out. What remained looked like the word evil. Wallace knows.
October 11–13, 2004: Katherine walked Lepht Park, noting small things, squirrels, the wind, the rain, the cold, people walking their dogs. Someday, when I’m settled down and not traveling so much, I’d love to have a playful dog by my side. The name Laura was scratched out and replaced with L. L, I’m so sorry. Can I carry the secret?
Then, October 14, 2004: It’s done. Neil rescued in Afghanistan, told Emily is dead. The man is shattered. He doesn’t know about B. E insisted. Afraid he’ll come looking. I must hide the truth. God forgive me.
Neil shuddered. The memory rose unbidden: Athena, standing at the edge of the hospital bed, her voice calm.
“Marine,” she said, low and steady, “there’s something you need to hear.” She pulled up a chair beside him. “While you were missing, a notification came in.” She rested her hand over his. “Neil … your fiancée is dead. She was found murdered in her apartment.”
A different kind of war began that day. The kind that hollowed him from the inside. Neil couldn’t remember his reaction. It was a dead memory. He had no memory of the month after that, only the notes he had read in his medical history. Violent outbursts, hallucinatory nightmares, and the meds administered to calm him. A fracture of the heart. The kind that never quite healed.
He closed his eyes. When he opened them, he picked up the pencil and drew … not Katherine, not Emily. A shape. A spiral. Grief curling in on itself.
Neil made a note: Who or what is B? He continued flipping through the year 2004. In November, there was only one notation: Not my story to tell.
He stood up and stretched while looking over the gray sky of Tokyo. He made a fresh cup of coffee and pulled out the second journal, labeled 2005. Several pages in, a smear of something sticky had fused two pages together, March 31 and April 1. He put the coffee cup down and pried them apart gently, careful not to tear the pages. But what was to be revealed tore his heart.
April 1, 2005: Child born. Girl. Name P. No photo. E didn’t reveal where.
A brittle sound escaped his throat. He wasn’t sure if it was a laugh or something else. His heart began to pound. Neil felt like he had been sucker punched.
A girl. What does P stand for? She didn’t just vanish. She carried a child.
He reached for his sketchbook and opened to a blank page. The pencil moved before he was fully conscious of it. Emily, hair unpinned, the curve of her belly soft and rounded beneath a long sweater. Another page. A newborn cradled close to her chest. Her expression: part sorrow, part serenity. Neil shaded the outline of the infant, then stopped. His hand was shaking.
By the time Octavia returned, the room was dark, and the outside neon lights were muted by clouds. She came through the door with a purposeful energy, her cane humming and tapping rhythmically, her eyes tracking him.
“You haven’t eaten,” she said, “and that empty matcha cup is from this morning. I suppose you’ve had no water today.”
He looked up. She knew that look, the look he had before he had a PTSD episode: the sweat on his forehead and upper lip, the wild, feral eyes filled with rage and fear. She glanced down at his shaking hands as he pressed the pencil against the sketchbook.
“Neil, are you all right?”
He didn’t answer.
Octavia moved toward the bar and pulled out a bottle of Junmai Daiginjo sake. With a delicate clink, she poured the sake into a hand-blown Edo Kariko glass, its facets catching the light, and presented it to him alongside a bottle of ice-cold mineral water.
“Drink the water first,” she said, her voice soft yet firm, then sat on the plush couch across from him.
Neil gazed at the light fractures reflecting off the intricate, jewel-toned geometric patterns of the sake glass and took a swallow.
“She was pregnant.” His words were barely audible.
Octavia frowned. She didn’t speak at first. Then her eyes widened.
“Who was pregnant?”
Neil didn’t answer. He handed her the sketchbook.
Octavia’s fingers traced the edges of each page as she turned them, taking in the full impact of the images.
“Is the child …?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything.”
“Neil,” Octavia said softly, “you need to hydrate so that you can think clearly.”
He opened the bottle of water and took a few swallows, then dropped his gaze to the journal again.
They sat for a long while. Octavia’s eyes took in the drawing of Emily, pregnant. Then the second one, with the child. Then, she reached forward and returned the sketched pages to Neil.
“She never told you.”
He shook his head again. “I didn’t know,” Neil said. “Katherine did. She helped her run.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah.” His throat tightened. “And Wallace too. I think. He helped her disappear. I don’t know if he knew she was pregnant. I don’t know.” He rubbed his thumb across the paper, leaving a faint smudge. “She never told me. Katherine wrote that E told her I’d try to find her if I knew. And she was right.” He finished the sake.
They sat in silence as the sky darkened. Octavia didn’t press. She sat, aware something was cracking open.
Neil broke the silence. “I think I chased the wrong man for years. I mourned a lie. I didn’t see what was right before me, just as Sherlock Holmes overlooked the obvious. He didn’t see the woman standing before him, her presence obscured by his tunnel vision. Maybe I always knew. Maybe that’s why ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’ … Haunted isn’t the right word … Warned … Yes, that’s it. It was a warning.”
“Step away from the journals and drink your water,” said Octavia as she pulled her phone from her pants pocket. “I’m ordering room service, and we are going to eat a healthy, filling meal. I’m going to tell you about my day, and then you can tell me what happened to John Wallace and why you need Kozo.”
They ate on the covered balcony, wrapped in blankets. The mist covering the Imperial Palace grounds gave them the impression of floating above the earth. The moist air was cool, calming Neil, and Octavia proclaimed it was a beauty treatment for her skin … if it weren’t for the air pollution trapped by the water droplets.
“I got some encouraging news from my doctor today,” said Octavia after finishing her salad. “One more day of electrode therapy and then I have the Christmas holiday off, and when I return, I will have treatments two days a week instead of four. I’m on my way to freedom.” She grinned.
“That’s good news,” said Neil.
“Who knows, maybe I’ll be better than before … Montreal. They’re talking about an implant that will continue to stimulate and heal the nerves in my leg. I might run again … dance again. I’d much rather dance than run. Maybe get a black belt.”
