Confidence

The holding cell is as bare as any Myka's seen. From a steel bench secured to the floor, she inventories the contents: takes in the open seatless toilet; the peeling, institutional paintwork; the old-fashioned, half-rusted bars that separate inside from out. There's room enough for the four of them, and more, though there've been no other occupants since they arrived. Cattleforge PD, she suspects, doesn't see a lot of action - much less the kind of action that might necessitate consigning its visitors to a night in the drunk tank.

"What time is it?" says Artie, back against the wall, hands dangling between his knees.

"A little after 1," says Pete, cradling his swollen wrist.

"And we've been here how long?" says Artie.

"Three hours," says Myka. "Still three hours."

"I'd have said longer," says Helena, her forehead pressed against the bars.

"I can see how hard you might find it," says Myka. "Being trapped in here with us."

"I'm claustrophobic," says Helena. "Feeling trapped anywhere, with anyone, is far from ideal."

"What, with nowhere to run?" says Myka.

"Can you two quit it?" says Pete. "Things are tough enough without you bitching at each other."

"Sorry," says Myka.

Helena says nothing.

"What even happened with you, anyway?" he says, gesturing at Myka, then Helena. "I thought you were all, you know... friendly."

"Evidently you were wrong," says Helena.

"Evidently," says Myka.

----

She'd been asleep for less than an hour when the alarm had kicked in. She'd reached over for Helena; had been disappointed but not surprised to find the other side of the bed empty.

She'd showered and dressed; made her way downstairs to the kitchen.

Helena had been sitting at the table, similarly dressed, palms wrapped around a cup of herbal tea. She'd walked up behind her, touched her lightly on the shoulder; had felt her tense under her fingers at the contact.

"Good morning," Helena had said - formally, stiffly, not turning around.

"Morning," Myka had said, sounding equally stilted even to herself.

"Did you sleep?"

"Some. You?"

"A little."

She'd poured coffee, buttered toast; eaten it standing up, away from the table, her elbows resting on the countertop. She'd washed her dishes in the sink; dried her hands, thoroughly, twice; rearranged the knives and spoons in the cutlery drawer. Watched, from the corner of her eye, as Helena sipped her tea and flicked - thunderously loudly, it had seemed to Myka - through the pages of a newspaper.

Eventually the silence had become too thick and stifling to ignore, and she'd spoken.

"Is everything okay?" she'd asked.

"Why would it not be?" Helena had said.

"I wondered if maybe you felt awkward. After yesterday."

"Awkward? Don't be absurd."

She'd been surprised by how much the casual dismissal had hurt.

"I'm allowed to ask the question," she'd said, bristling. "I don't do this a lot, okay? I don't know how it's supposed to go."

"Whereas I do, of course."

"I didn't say that."

"You didn't need to."

"It's true, though, isn't it? This is kind of your territory."

Helena had looked up at her; smiled, humorlessly.

"Not quite, darling," she'd said. "I'm usually gone before breakfast."

"I guess I shouldn't keep you, then," Myka had said. She'd slammed the drawer into the cabinet; heard the silverware rattle.

"You needn't worry. Claudia and I will be out of your hair by this evening. Just as soon as we've finalized payment."

"Payment. Sure."

"Were you expecting me to forgo our fee, after yesterday?"

"I don't know what I was expecting."

"Not all of us work pro bono."

"No, you're in it for the money, I get it. You've made it very, very clear."

"Must you sound quite so self-righteous when you say that?"

"I'm sorry. I should probably work on my moral ambivalence."

"It hardly seems worth it, on my account."

"Since you're leaving?"

The sharp, shrill chime of her phone had drowned out Helena's reply. She'd let it ring for a second longer than necessary; let the sound wash over her.

"Something's wrong," Pete had said, as she'd answered.

"What do you mean?" she'd said.

"I don't know. It's just... off. I can't explain it. But my gut's telling me there's something going on here that there shouldn't be."

"With Leavenworth?"

"Yeah. He's here now, with Artie."

"Did he bring the money?"

"Yeah. I mean, I think so. But he's too calm, you know what I mean? Too cool. Nobody's that happy when they're handing over a million dollars' worth of bills."

"He's happy? Happy how?"

"What's going on?" Helena had said, standing up from the table, walking towards her.

"There might be a problem," she'd said, covering the mouthpiece. "With the handover."

"A problem?"

"He's smiling," Pete had said. "Like, Joker smiling. And he keeps blinking, and scratching his nose."

She'd panicked.

"You need to leave," she'd said. "Now."

"Leave?" he'd said. "I can't leave. Artie's in the middle of the exchange. He's... oh, shit. Shit."

She'd heard footsteps, a lot of them, then muffled shouting and a heavy thud, somewhere close by.

"He's called the cops," Pete had said quietly. "They're here. Wherever you are, Mykes, you gotta get out, quickly."

"Are they in the house?" she'd said. "Pete, do they have Artie?"

"I don't know," he'd said. "I don't know."

She'd moved quickly; had been pulling together her passport and a multi-currency collection of emergency funds even as the line went dead.

"I assume, given what I just heard," Helena had said, "that we might benefit from a swift exit?"

"Pack a bag," Myka had said. "And fast. Anything you don't need stays here."

Helena had nodded. And, seconds later, the police had arrived.

----

"What time is it now?" asks Artie.

"A quarter after 1," says Myka.

"You really gotta get a watch," says Pete.

She lies down on the bench; stretches out her legs until her calves and feet hang over the edge.

"You seem terribly relaxed," says Helena, "considering our current predicament."

"I'm tired," she says. "I barely slept. What do you want me to do, pace around like a caged animal?"

"It might be of some comfort to know that I'm not alone in feeling somewhat anxious."

"Obviously I'm anxious. But I'm also exhausted."

"You aren't the only one who didn't sleep last night."

"Then maybe you should take a nap yourself."

"And where do you suggest I do that, since you've so considerately monopolized the only flat surface available? On the floor, perhaps?"

"I thought you could get comfortable anywhere?"

"Cut it out!" says Pete. "I mean it."

"Sorry," says Myka again.

"Why are you both so tired, anyway?" he says. "We finished up early yesterday, and neither of you even answered the phone when I called last night, and... Oh. Oh."

Myka closes her eyes; prays for unconsciousness.

"Well," he says finally, "that explains the snippiness, anyway."

"Can we please change the subject?" she says.

"I'd like to second that request," says Artie.

Eyes still closed, she catches the sound of a metal door unlocking: hears keys turning in locks, bolts sliding back from unoiled catches.

She opens her eyes; sees a cop - red-faced and big-bellied, a uniformed Fatty Arbuckle - stride up to the bars, wet lips spread into a grin.

"Grifters!" he says, taking obviously delight in naming them, taxonomizing them. "On your feet. There's someone here to see you."

----

Helena has never been to prison. Never once has she considered it a possibility, much less an occupational hazard: she's too skilled, too meticulous, too careful. When she takes risks, those risks are calculated; when she gambles, she's secure in the knowledge that the deck is stacked, that the cards are marked, that there's a holdout strapped to her forearm. And more recently, there's been Claudia, supporting and guiding her and steering her away from recklessness.

Locked behind the bars of a jail cell, with Myka barely five feet away and the suddenly very real prospect of a longer-term confinement ahead of her, she wonders if she's also been lucky: if her skill and her care and her caution haven't been supplemented, at times, by injections of good fortune, of happy fortuity.

For three hours she stands by the door of the cell, waiting for the intervention that's come before, that has to - surely has to - come again. When eventually Myka speaks to her - still angry, still hurt from earlier that morning - she feigns claustrophobia; presses her face histrionically against the bars; musters an anxious irritation that she neither feels nor can convincingly affect.

She's relieved, momentarily, to hear the guard announce their visitor - more than half-expecting to see Claudia just behind him, suited and booted and demanding their release into federal custody. Instead she sees Leavenworth, radiating smugness, and finds herself authentically irritated, legitimately angry.

"What do you want?" she says, looking him directly in the eye.

He backs away from the bars, shocked, self-assurance wilting under the heat of her stare.

"You're English," he says.

"And this startles you?" she says.

"He didn't tell me you were English," he says. "Wait, are you all English?"

"He?" says Artie, getting to his feet. "Who's 'he'?"

"The guy who tipped me off about you," says Leavenworth. "About the little scam you were running."

"Someone called you?" says Pete. "About us?"

Leavenworth shakes off his surprise; resets himself.

"Not the point," he says, more confidently. "That's not why I'm here. I'm here to tell you: you lost."

"Is that so?" says Helena.

"Yes, that's so," he says, mimicking her accent. "You lost. You tried to play me, and you failed. Because I'm better than you, and smarter than you. Which is why I'm out here, and you're in there. And you better believe me when I tell you that I'm gonna make sure you stay in there for a long time."

"In here?" says Helena. "In this temporary holding cell?"

"In some other sort of jail, then," he says. "Whatever. You'll still be locked up."

"And didn't you only find out about us because someone called you and told you?" says Pete. "Doesn't sound that smart to me."

"Doesn't matter what you think," says Leavenworth. "You're still gonna rot in a cage. You, and the girl. Soon as they find her."

"They won't find her," says Helena.

"They'll find her," he says. "And when they throw her in here with you, I'll come pay her a visit, too. But in the meantime..."

He pulls a folded Post-It from his pocket; opens it, reads it.

"What?" says Pete. "In the meantime, what? You can just leave us hanging like that."

"In the meantime," says Leavenworth slowly, looking directly at Artie, "James MacPherson says hello."

"What did you say?" says Artie, eyes widening.

"You heard me," says Leavenworth.

"He told you that?" says Artie. "MacPherson told you to say that, after he told you what we'd been doing?"

"That's right," says Leavenworth, smiling.

"Artie?" says Myka, now bolt upright on the bench. "What's going on?"

"Something bad," says Artie. "Something very, very bad. For all of us."

----

"Why does Artie do it?" Helena had asked the afternoon before, her body curled around Myka's.

"Do what?" Myka had said, twisting around onto her back, keeping Helena close. "The grift?"

"The Robin Hood business. Stealing from the rich, and so on."

"You want to know about Artie? Not about me?"

"I already understand you, I think. And Pete."

"What do you understand about me?"

"Why you do it. The appeal of altruism, if you like."

"I'm probably going to regret saying this, but okay: tell me why I do it."

"There's a degree of speculation involved here, of course, but I imagine you feel yourselves wronged by some larger institutional power. That some disaster or other has befallen you both in the past, and for your own reasons you've chosen to attribute that disaster to the corporate world and its machinations."

Myka had turned fully onto her side then, loosening the grip of Helena's arm around her shoulders. She'd stared at Helena for a full half-minute, wordlessly; Helena had been sure in that moment that she was preparing to pull away, or shout, or throw her out of bed altogether.

"I want to be mad at you," Myka had said instead. "For being so glib, so... matter of fact. But actually you're right, about me anyway. Though I'd rather you weren't such an asshole about it."

"Do you want to... talk about it?" she'd said uneasily, conscious of moving into uncharted, potentially turbulent waters.

Myka had laughed.

"You're safe," she'd said, pulling Helena back towards her. "It's not such a festering wound, not anymore."

"What happened?" Helena had asked.

"It was my dad, not me. A Ponzi scheme, if you can believe that, my last year of college."

"Selling what?"

"Real estate investment. Only there was no real estate, obviously. He'd sunk $100,000 into it before he realised. The guy who ran it was this third-tier Madoff type - he'd barely bothered to cover his tracks. They got him, but by then the money was gone."

"I'm sorry."

"Yeah, me too. A lot of people lost everything, my dad included. He had to sell the bookstore."

"He ran a bookshop?"

"He and my mom, for years. I grew up in that place. And then he had to let it go, and it... well, it broke him, for a little bit anyway."

"Which I assume is the point at which you met Artie and Pete."

"Pretty much - about a week after I graduated. I think Artie had been watching me for a while, since the trial."

"And he made you an offer you couldn't refuse?"

"An offer I didn't want to refuse. Everything he was saying... it made sense to me, at the time."

"And now?"

"I told you before: I like it. I like what we do. And it's good work, really good work. We've helped a lot of people. Stopped a lot of other people who needed stopping. So, you know... it's hard to feel much regret about that."

She's really means it, Helena had realised. She really is this person.

Then: I should never have let things go this far.

"But you have no sense of Artie's motivations?" she'd asked, closing down the line of thought before it could progress further.

"Nothing concrete," Myka had said. "Though if I had to guess? I'd say atonement."

"You think he's compensating for something?"

"Maybe. I can't be sure. He's never said anything to me, or to Pete as far as I know."

"You have a feeling, though?"

"I don't do intuition. That's Pete's thing."

"You ought to trust your own judgement."

"Judgement, maybe. Feelings, no."

Very sensible, Helena had thought. Perhaps we should both heed that advice.

----

"Who's James MacPherson?" Pete says, once Leavenworth has gone.

"Someone I used to know," says Artie.

"A friend?" says Myka.

Artie slides back down to the floor; draws his knees in to his chest.

"My old partner," he says. "From before. Before I met the two of you."

"So he's one of us?" says Pete.

"No," says Artie, shaking his head.

"But he's like me?" says Helena.

"No," says Artie again. "Not like you, either."

"So I guess he's the guy from Vegas," says Pete. "With the photo."

"It's very likely," says Artie.

"Why?" says Myka. "Why would he be out to get us?"

"That's a very long story," says Artie.

"I think it's fair to say," says Helena, "that we have time to hear it."

"You sure about that?" says Pete, looking behind her.

Another guard, older and thinner, steps through the doorway and towards the cell - what, to her horror, Helena has come to think of as their cell. He pulls a key from the bunch at his waist; thrusts it quickly into the locked door; turns it.

"You're free to go," he mumbles, staring down at his feet.

"What?" says Artie.

"On behalf of the Cattleforge Police Department," he says, more clearly, as if reading from an autocue, "I'd like to offer you all my sincerest apologies for this terrible misunderstanding."

"You would?" says Pete.

"If there's anything more we do for you during your stay in the great state of Montana," he continues, "please feel obliged to call on us at any time."

He swings the cell door open. Eventually, they walk through it.

----

Claudia is waiting for them outside the station, perched on the bonnet of the Maybach.

"I picked it up from the cabin," she says, gesturing to the car. "Seemed a shame to waste it, since we've got the lease."

"It was you?" says Myka. "You got us out of there?"

"Yeah," says Claudia. "Sorry it took so long. I had to wait for the cops to leave before I could go back to the house and pick up my stuff."

"How?" says Helena.

"I made a call," she says.

"To whom?" says Helena.

"Do you really want to ask me that?"

"Irene. You called Irene."

"What else was I supposed to do?"

"I have explicitly instructed you never to do that."

"These were... how would you put it? Exigent circumstances."

"Not to interrupt whatever cryptic thing you've got going on here," says Pete, "but shouldn't we maybe get away from the police station?"

"An excellent suggestion," says Helena.

"Where do you want to go?" says Myka to Artie.

"That depends," says Artie. "Claudia, did you bring passports?"

"In the back," says Claudia. "Along with a few other things. I wasn't sure what we'd need."

"Okay," says Artie, deep in thought. "Okay. In that case: I'd like us to go to the airport. We're going back to London."