Chapter Sixteen – The Morning After

 Janet woke with her head pounding and her mouth dry as paper. The curtains in her Jasper Avenue hotel room leaked pale winter light, and every flicker stabbed her eyes. Her stomach twisted, her body screaming for water, but when she tried to roll off the bed, the room lurched sideways.

The night before came back in fragments. Whiskey. Too much of it. The green dot glowing on her laptop. Her own voice, sharp with anger. And then—her slip. The damned time-zone slip.

I just had supper.

Her pulse spiked with the memory. Had she blown it? Had Unknown figured out she wasn’t in Toronto anymore? She pressed her palms into her face. The hangover was punishment enough, but the thought that she’d jeopardized the investigation clawed at her worse.

Her phone buzzed. She grabbed it, fumbling to answer.

“Brown,” she croaked.

“Morning, sunshine,” Lorne Luft said. His voice was too bright, too solid, for the way she felt. “Hope you’re ready to work. I’ve lined something up. Ten o’clock sharp, bank headquarters downtown. HR. I’ve found someone willing to talk.”

Janet winced against the sound. “HR?”

“Yeah. Somebody who’ll bend the rules. We might get a lead on who walked out of there fifteen years ago. Don’t be late.”

She managed a raspy, “I’ll be there.”

After the call, she dialed her father. It rang twice before Edward’s voice came on, warm but cautious. “Janet?”

“Dad…” Her throat tightened. “I screwed up. I drank too much, and Unknown contacted me. I gave something away. Time zones. I think she knows I’m not in Toronto.”

There was silence, then the heavy sigh she’d dreaded.

“Janet, the bottle is not your friend. You’ve got to keep your head clear. But listen to me carefully—she won’t walk away. Not now. She’s an addict too. Addicted to herself, to her cleverness. She wants the story told. She needs to see her brilliance splashed on the front page of the Globe and Mail. That’s her drug. And you’re the only one who can give it to her.”

Janet pressed her forehead to the cold glass of the window. “So I keep going?”

“You keep going. But sober. You owe yourself that.”

When the line went dead, she stared at her reflection in the black TV screen. Pale, drawn, older than her years. But with a flicker of resolve.

Her stomach growled. She needed something more than whiskey sloshing inside her.

Downstairs in the hotel restaurant, she slid into a booth and ordered eggs, toast, and a mountain of bacon. The coffee came black and hot. She drank it greedily, cup after cup, until the fog in her skull thinned and the edges of the room sharpened. The food anchored her—heavy, solid. For the first time since waking, she felt human again.

By 9:30, she pushed through the revolving doors into the street.

The cold was instant, merciless. Minus thirty, with the windchill clawing down to minus forty. The air froze her nostrils shut, seared her lungs, and slapped her face raw. Her hangover evaporated in the shock of it, replaced by a sharp, jittery clarity.

She raised a hand and a cab pulled over, exhaust steaming like a dragon’s breath. The driver eyed her through a wool cap and scarf as she climbed in.

“Cold one,” he said.

Janet pulled the seatbelt across her lap, teeth still chattering. “That’s one way to put it.”

They rolled through downtown, the towers rising like ice-crusted cliffs. Sunlight bounced weakly off the glass façades, pale and tired. Pedestrians scurried across intersections, faces buried in scarves, steps quick and short, like animals darting between shelters. At bus stops, people stamped their feet, clouds of breath drifting up like smoke signals. Cars idled in slow lines, engines groaning, exhaust plumes hanging in the frozen air. Some vehicles sat abandoned at the curb, their windows iced over in thick white crusts.

Edmonton moved, but in survival mode. Life pared down to short bursts between warm havens. Janet pressed her temple against the cab’s window, watching it all blur by. The cold cut the hangover down to size. She was awake now.

At last, the cab pulled up before a high-rise, its mirrored glass etched with frost. She paid the fare, stepped out into the knife-wind, and felt her resolve solidify.

This was the city where Unknown had slipped up. And this morning, inside that building, she would start pulling at the first loose thread.