CHAPTER ELEVEN — MARCUS WITHOUT A CAMERA

Marcus waited for Daniel at a coffee stand near the warehouse.
He had left his camera in the trunk of his rental car.
Daniel noticed the empty shoulder strap immediately.
“No photographs today?” he asked.
“Not of this.”
They sat at a narrow table beside a window looking onto the loading docks.
Marcus took out his notebook.
“I’m pulling my original travel article,” he said.
“My editor wants a piece about how the demonstration fell apart.”
“Are you going to write it?”
“Possibly, but I’m not going to turn Isabel’s injury into a clever opening paragraph.”
Daniel studied him.
“That’s a new standard for you?”
Marcus accepted the insult.
“I deserve that.”
“Why did you contact me instead of going straight to Priya?”
“Because the document had your name on it.

”
“And because of Vanessa?”
Marcus nodded.
“I found out what she’d told Adrian about you.”
Daniel waited.
“She said you were extraordinary under pressure,” Marcus continued.
“That you could enter a troubled operation and reorganize it before anyone else recognized there was a problem.”
“That’s flattering.”
“It was also useful to Adrian.”
“How?”
“He figured you’d save the demonstration if he put your reputation on the line.”
Daniel stared at the rain.
“Vanessa used to do that at home,” he said quietly.
“She would tell guests I was brilliant at cooking when she wanted me to prepare an elaborate dinner.”
Marcus almost smiled.
“You can cook?”
“Not nearly as well as she claimed.”
The smile vanished.
“I thought our relationship was something different,” Marcus admitted.
“She told me you had become comfortable with never going anywhere.

”
“I turned down Singapore because she didn’t want to move.”
Marcus looked startled.
“She told me you refused every opportunity to travel.”
“We did travel,” Daniel said.
“Just not in the way you write about.”
He told Marcus about the trips he and Vanessa had taken by train, the little roadside museums she loved, and the weekend they spent watching lightning storms from a cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
For a moment, he remembered Vanessa laughing with rain in her hair and felt the loss more sharply than he had during their final argument.
Marcus looked down at his notebook.
“She never mentioned those trips.”
“She didn’t mention them to herself either, after a while.”
“I thought I was giving her something she had been denied.”
Daniel turned toward him.
“She made choices for fourteen years, and so did I.”
“I know.”
“You were an adult in this too.”
“I know that now.”
“Stop saying you know things now as if that makes them easier to hear.”
Marcus set the notebook aside.
“You’re right.”
Daniel stood to leave.
Marcus spoke again.
“I haven’t told you everything.”
Daniel stopped.
“Then tell me.”
“Adrian asked me to publish a preview tonight.”
“About the summit?”
“About the demonstration you supposedly disrupted.”
“And?”
“He offered photographs and access if I described you as inexperienced and emotionally unstable.”
Daniel’s expression hardened.
“Do you have that request?”
“Yes.”
“Keep it.”
“I could show it to Elise.”
“That’s your decision.”
“What would you do?”
Daniel looked through the window at the people moving crates under the loading canopy.
“I would write about the people who kept the gate closed,” he said.
“They’ve earned more attention than my divorce.”
Marcus glanced toward the warehouse.
“I can do that.”
“Then do it without asking me to forgive you first.”
Daniel walked away before Marcus could reply.