Lou stared at the floor. “Why are you doing this to me?” she asked before looking at him with hatred. “All I did was tell the truth about you.”
“This has nothing to do with the magazine,” he continued. “As the primary shareholder of Bedford Organics, you financed and conspired to distribute Schedule I narcotics, resulting in at least one fatality. Possibly two. We’ll be looking further into Callie Court’s death.”
Cat noticed a tiny ripple of terror passing through RAGE’s staff. In a fraction of a moment, Constance emitted a strangled noise, Rose stared hard at the ground, and Janet bit her lip with enough force to draw blood.
“Those bitches are not on me,” Lou snapped, referring to Callie and Hillary with unvarnished contempt. “They were adults. Americans. They had total control over their own lives.”
“You’re certainly welcome to argue that in a court of law,” he said. “Here’s what’s going to happen: I will escort you back to New York, right now. You will turn yourself in. That gives you roughly ten hours to figure out how to tell your children and arrange their child care after your arrest, not to mention contact your attorney. That’s much more than most people get.”
“If I don’t?”
“Your daughter will be taken to juvenile detention.”
“My husband will stop that,” she insisted.
“I’m afraid not,” he said, holding up his phone again and showing her Alexander Lucas’s Photogram account: #betterthandavos, it said beneath a picture of him toasting champagne with two former United States presidents on the deck of a sailboat. “He’s somewhere off the coast of Greece. We can be back in New York tonight.”
Lou opened her cellphone to dial her attorney, but Hutton used his huge hands to pry it easily from her bony fingers.
“You can have it back once we’re sitting on the plane,” he said.
“Fine,” Lou hissed, her eyes darting around the room as she obviously strategized ways to get away from him—but Hutton reached over and zipped a cable tie around her wrist, connecting it to one on his own, before she could stop him.
“You can pretend we’re holding hands,” he said, smiling.
Lou looked like she was about to cry. “No, that’s not okay,” she pleaded. “I…can’t.”
“You mean because of the story?” Hutton stepped back to let Paula, Cat, Bess, and Molly move into the foreground. The three young women looked at Paula expectantly. Constance Onderveet and the rest of the RAGE staff had gathered behind them and could hear every word.
Paula opened her mouth briefly, and then turned to Cat. “Go on then.”
“Lou, your November story is dead,” Cat said, “and you’re fired.”
“You ungrateful scabs!” Lou replied defiantly. “You’ve all used me. All you little strivers. I can’t believe I fell for it. Well, you can keep your tacky magazine! You’ll certainly be hearing from my attorney.”
Constance, Rose, and Janet’s faces turned bright red.
“Nobody used you,” Constance insisted, unconsciously scratching her arms, while Janet and Rose stood trembling behind her. “We have no idea what you’re talking about. You’re just some crazy woman we should never have let into our lives.”
“You killed Hillary Whitney,” Cat added firmly, rising to her full height. “I think you killed Callie, too. And I know you tried to poison us. I’ll be pressing charges.”
“Bloody little addicts,” Lou hissed. “Pills to stay thin, pills to be smart, pills to sleep, injections, bootcamps, surgeries. It’s a wonder there weren’t more corpses at the rate you lot were going. The office smelled like a bleeding perfume counter.”
At that moment, the twitchy concierge appeared, with a handful of pens and four printed copies of Cat’s and Bess’s contracts.
“Madame?” he offered. Grabbing the papers, Cat turned on her heel and walked to the craft services table, sweeping a basket of croissants out of the way as she signed her two copies and passed them back for countersignature. Paula signed them before turning to Bess, who didn’t move a muscle. Cat looked at her friend expectantly.
“I can’t,” Bess said. “I don’t want to work at Mania. Sorry. I couldn’t get a word in earlier. I hope that doesn’t mess things up.”
Unexpectedly, Paula smiled at her. “That’s okay,” she told Bess. “Do what’s right for you.”
Cat felt all the blood draining from her head—felt her fingers and toes go slightly numb. She stared at her friend. It had never occurred to her that Bess wouldn’t always want what Cat wanted.
“I’m not the same as you,” Bess said gently. “And you don’t need me.”
“It’s not because of our fight—”
“No,” Bess said sincerely. “I’m comfortable at Cooper. I know who I am there. I’m not like you, Cat. But please don’t let me stop you.”
“Okay.” Cat exhaled and squeezed her friend’s hand. Bess looked back toward the throng of RAGE employees hovering in the middle of the room. In an instant, Cat took in the opulent ballroom—the sunlight streaming in from the high windows, the cigarette smoke she could smell from the front door, the traffic honking on the street out front—and watched as her friend’s posture shifted ever so slightly, as if Bess finally stepped into a pair of shoes that fit. Was this where their paths divided?
“If you’ll excuse me,” Bess said confidently, “I want to finish this shoot. Even if RAGE folds after this issue, you and Hillary put a lot of work into this. I don’t want it to go to waste.”
“Thank you,” Cat said simply.
Bess smiled. “You’re welcome.”
“Don’t forget to quit,” Paula interrupted.
“Okay,” Cat said automatically. She’d spent half a dozen years obeying Paula Booth, assuming that she was really listening to Margot Villiers, but perhaps it had been Paula speaking the whole time. Cat turned, broke through the crowd of gossiping RAGE staffers, and went directly to Constance.
“I quit,” she said, holding out her hand and shaking the damp, skeletal palm of an astonished Constance. “And give Bess my job,” Cat ordered. “She earned it.” Even if RAGE disappeared in the next year, having “Senior Editor” on her résumé would help get Bess anywhere she needed to go.
Constance nodded limply.
Cat turned to Hutton and leaned in close, whispering in his ear as he held Lou at a distance. “See you in New York,” she said, trying to sound nonchalant. He wrapped his free arm around her and kissed her—a long, searching kiss, one that embarrassed everyone around them.
“Come home soon,” he said to her. “We’ll pick up where we left off?” Cat smiled in reply, let go of him, picked up her handbag, and dropped her contract in it as she headed for the door.
“What are you staring at?” Bess yelled at the stunned room. “We have twelve shots to pick up. Let’s go.” The group slowly broke apart, and everything returned to normal for everyone except Lou.
Hutton could feel her hands shaking through their plastic bracelet chain before she passed out, her head hitting the wall behind her with a very loud smack.
Dammit, he thought, checking her pulse and trying to find a way to discreetly loosen the thick plastic casing she’d squeezed into, don’t these women ever eat?