Or she told me a version of it. A controlled confession. Enough truth to explain her behavior if I caught her listening, but not enough to incriminate.
God dammit. I was thinking like Viktor now. Poisoned. Suspicious. Pulling apart the one good thing in my life with the same clinical detachment I used to pull apart crime scenes.
I hated it.
And I hated even more that I couldn't stop.
"Fuck," I whispered.
I left cash on the table and walked out the front entrance.
Then circled the block and waited for her in the alley.
She came out the back door at 10:47.
"Raven—"
"You were at table fourteen tonight." She stopped a foot away. Tilted her head. Not looking at me. Listening. Cataloging. "Vodka, neat. You didn't touch your dinner. And Viktor pulledyou away around nine-fifteen. You were gone for..." She paused. "Seven minutes. Give or take."
Seven minutes. The walk to the freezer, the conversation, the blood. She'd timed it from across the room while playing.
Three weeks ago, that would have made me want to pin her against the wall and kiss her until neither of us could breathe.
Tonight, it made my blood run cold.
"What else did you hear tonight?" The question came out harder than I'd meant it to.
Her head cocked. A micro-adjustment, like a bird sensing a predator's approach.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean what else. While you were sitting at that piano, cataloging how long Viktor and I were gone—what else were you listening to?"
The silence stretched. I could see her thinking, deciding how much to give me. The same careful calibration she'd shown before. The same measured honesty that I'd mistaken for total transparency.
"The usual," she said carefully. "Silverware. Conversation. Viktor arguing with someone in Russian near the kitchen. The same things I always hear."
"The same things you always catalog, you mean."
Her fingers tightened on her cane. "Why are you saying it like that?"
"Like what?"
"Like it's an accusation. I told you what I do. You didn't have a problem with it then."
No. I'd been too busy with my tongue in her mouth to have a problem with anything.
"Things have changed."
"What things?"
"Viktor's looking for a leak." The words fell between us like stones. "Someone feeding information to the Feds. Shipments have been intercepted. The DEA knows exactly which trucks to stop. And Viktor thinks—" I stopped. Breathed. "He thinks it might be you."
I expected panic. Maybe anger. Indignation.
What I got was stillness.
Complete, absolute stillness. The kind that meant her mind was moving faster than her body could keep up with.
