The Bridge is where Victoria goes to meet Eleanor again.
It is an old stone bridge that spans a river that runs through the city, a bridge that was built two hundred years ago and has been restored many times since then. It is the kind of bridge that lovers walk across and photographers visit and tourists ignore in favor of more famous landmarks. It is, in other words, the kind of place where no one would think to look for a secret meeting between two women who are trying to bring down an international conspiracy.
Victoria arrives first and waits by the railing, watching the water flow beneath her. The river is dark tonight, darker than it should be, and the lights that line the bridge create patterns on the surface that seem to shift and move in ways that are not entirely natural. She is not afraid, but she is alert, her senses sharpened by the events of the past week and the knowledge that her enemies are closer than they have ever been.
Eleanor arrives a few minutes later, walking quickly but not running, her face set in an expression that Victoria has come to recognize as determination. She hands Victoria a small device, something that looks like a USB drive but is clearly something more sophisticated.
“This is everything,” Eleanor says. “All the evidence we’ve gathered, all the names, all the connections. It’s all here, encrypted, but the key is in your mother’s papers. You have the key?”
Victoria nods. She has spent the last three days going through her mother’s belongings, the boxes that she had stored in her attic after the funeral and never really looked at since. She found the key in an old journal, a small brass key that fit a lock she had not known existed. And with the key came other things, other secrets, other pieces of a puzzle that had been waiting for her to complete it.
“Then you can finish this,” Eleanor says. “You can expose everything, bring down the network, make sure that what happened to your mother doesn’t happen to anyone else.”
“What about you?”
Eleanor’s expression flickers, becomes something that might be sadness or might be resignation. “I have to disappear again. They know I’m involved now, and if I stay, I’ll only put you in more danger. But I’ll be watching. When the story breaks, I’ll be there.”
The water beneath the bridge seems to darken even further, and Victoria looks down at it, trying to understand what she is seeing. There is something in the river, something that should not be there, something that moves with a purpose that she can sense but cannot name.
“We need to go,” Eleanor says suddenly. “Now. Something’s wrong.”
But it is too late. The figures emerge from the shadows at both ends of the bridge, moving toward them with the kind of purpose that suggests they are not interested in conversation. There are four of them, maybe five, and they are not carrying weapons that Victoria can see, but she knows they are dangerous.
“Victoria,” Eleanor says, and her voice is very calm. “When I tell you to run, you run. You get the evidence to the right people, you finish what we started, and you don’t look back.”
“Like hell.”
“Your mother made me promise,” Eleanor says. “She made me promise that if anything happened to her, I would protect you. And I have been protecting you for twenty years, Victoria, watching from the shadows, making sure you were safe, making sure you were never alone. Now let me finish what I started.”
The figures are closer now, close enough that Victoria can see their faces. They are not the faces of criminals or thugs; they are the faces of professionals, of people who have done this before, of people who know exactly what they are doing and why.
“Now,” Eleanor says, and shoves Victoria hard toward the far end of the bridge. “RUN.”
Victoria runs. She runs and does not look back, does not stop, does not slow down until she reaches the other side of the bridge and the safety of the crowded street beyond. And when she finally turns to look, the bridge is empty, and Eleanor Vance is gone.
The evidence is in her hand, heavy with the weight of everything her mother started and everything that remains to be finished. The Bridge has been crossed, and the war is not over.
But it will be. Soon.