CHAPTER 40
DAMIEN
The open glass doors breathe warm air into the cold, and she steps out like she owns the night.
Raquel Chesterfield, fur collar brushing her jaw, diamonds wrapped around her throat in a way meant to be seen. She looks expensive, but careless enough to be bait.
Alex leans on the hood of a parked sedan half shadowed beneath the street lamp. He doesn’t need to say it—we both clock the way her eyes dart too often, the way the clicking of her heels slows just before the corner. She knows someone is watching, she just doesn’t know who. That makes her dangerous in the most useful way.
The jewelry store behind her glitters, diamonds arranged like chess pieces, but Raquel didn’t go in for love or beauty. She went in to leave a signal. Ivan’s people buy information in jewels because jewels last when banks don’t. She stayed too long, smiled too wide, and left with a box small enough to be empty. I know a dead drop when I see one.
“She plays better than she thinks,” Alex murmurs, sliding behind the wheel. His voice is all cop. “But she’s in on it.”
“Of course she is.” My breath fogs against the window as I watch her cross the street. “She’s always been.”
The tires kiss the curb as we ease out, staying a car length back. Raquel turns her head once, hair catching light from a store sign. I wonder if she imagines herself invisible.
I know her kind. Ivan loves women like her: decorative, ruthless, convinced they’re irreplaceable. She thinks she’s moving her own piece across the board. She has no idea how deep the game actually goes.
She heads south, away from the boutiques, toward the darker blocks. Brighton bleeds into Gravesend, Gravesend into the silent industrial stretch by the water. She doesn’t look behind her. That tells me she trusts the trail, trusts Ivan. She’s taking us to him without realizing she’s the rope tied to his ankle.
Alex drives steadily, dash lights off. A bus lumbers between us, then clears. She’s still there, walking tall, spine straight, coat slit just enough to flash her calves with each step. Every gesture is a performance. Every performance is a mistake.
“She’s leading us right to him,” Alex says.
“Indeed she is.” I watch her silhouette shrink and grow under the streetlamps. “And she has no idea.”
The night opens ahead, wet pavement shining, the air heavy with exhaust and salt. Somewhere in that dark, Ivan waits—patient, coiled.
What he doesn’t know is that Raquel, with all her glitter and pride, has just become our homing beacon.
CHAPTER 41
CASSANDRA
Cold air on my face. The scent of metal. The dark hum of an old building.
I wake to the taste of tape, dust, and old oil, tongue dry, throat raw, wrists burning where the adhesive bites. One bulb swings above me on a long cord, like a small sun. It buzzes and flickers. Each time it dims, my world shrinks to a pin and then swells again.
I’m in a bent-steel chair with an uneven leg that stutters under me. My ankles are taped to the front ones. My hands are behind me, palms sweating, skin tender from fighting the binding.
There’s grit under my shoes and broken glass near the wall. Somewhere water drips in a slow, patient beat. Somewhere else a rat, I assume, scuttles and knocks a piece of scrap metal, causing it to ping against the floor.
The smell is rust, mold, food, cigarettes. It sits on my tongue, my hair. I breathe slowly through my nose. I count. I test each finger. Blood still flows. That’s something.
The ribbon is gone. I feel its absence. Silly as it sounds, it’s become a comfort for me, a safety net.
Footsteps. Far off at first, then closer. Sharp, clean, wrong for this place. Heels tapping on concrete, steady as a metronome. A woman’s perfume pushes through the smell before she enters the room. The bulb swings, throwing an oval across the floor, and Raquel Chesterfield walks into it like a queen.
Fur collar. Perfect hair. Glossed mouth. A small designer bag on her wrist. Another bag in her hand. Cheap plastic, the kind with a smiling shrimp printed on the side, heavy with takeout boxes that press against the thin film and show their white corners. The hem of her coat brushes the edge of a puddle. She pauses, looks down, and lifts the coat with two fingers, as if the puddle might leap up and ruin her. Her face folds in distaste.
“Pigsty,” she says to the air more than to me. Her heels click closer, like a clock speeding up. “Adequate enough for you, though.”
She drops the plastic bag on a warped metal table. She opens one box, sniffs, makes a face, then closes it with a slap of the lid. Another box, another sigh. Grease pools on the torn cardboard lid she uses as a plate.
I keep my eyes on her hands, not her mouth. People give more away with their hands.
“You don’t look good,” she says, her voice coated in venom. “You should eat. You’ll need your strength for what’s coming. Oh—” Her gaze settles on the tape at my wrists, then on my mouth. “Right. Well, I’m sure someone will be along to help with that.”
