Page 88 of Dominion’s Collar

"I'll be there."

"Natalie." A pause. Her breathing changes. "Come alone. And if I'm not there by quarter past, leave. Don't wait."

The line goes dead.

I stare at the phone in my hand. The instruction to leave if she's late isn't caution. It's a contingency plan. Someone who builds escape routes into every interaction because the last time she trusted a situation, she had to disappear.

I arrive at the coffee shop at ten to two. It's a small place with exposed brick and ceiling fans turning slowly against the afternoon heat. I take a table near the window where I can see the entrance and the street.

At 2:00, Cécile isn't there. At 2:05, the table I'm sitting at feels wrong.

The wrongness is specific. The coffee shop is the right place. The time is the right time. But the afternoon prickles along the back of my neck. I can't locate it in any single detail, only feel it in the aggregate.

The barista glanced at me when I sat down and then glanced again thirty seconds later, not at me but past me, toward the street. A man at the counter ordered a drip coffee five minutes ago and hasn't picked it up.

At 2:10, I text Cécile's number. No response. The message doesn't show as delivered.

At 2:12, I stop waiting. Cécile isn't coming. She could have panicked. She could have changed her mind. But the voice on the phone didn't sound like someone working up to a reversal. Cécile sounded like someone who'd finally decided to stop hiding.

Or someone made sure she couldn't.

I can't prove that. But I watched a source refuse overnight and records vanish from servers and misdirection arrive in my inbox. Someone with access and relationships has been trying to dismantle my case for weeks.

The idea that Cécile independently chose not to come, on the same day her phone went dead, after the same pattern that silenced Stephanie and warned Vivienne. I don't believe it.

I leave money on the table and walk to my car. The afternoon sun is brutal, and the sidewalk shimmers with heat.

I keep my pace even. Unhurried, controlled. A storefront window gives me the sidewalk behind me in reflection, and I let my gaze slide across it without turning my head. A couple with shopping bags. A man on his phone. Nothing that registers, but I don't know what would register, and the not-knowing makes everything sharper.

I fall in behind a group of women heading the same direction, match their speed for half a block, then split off toward my car. The pace of a woman completing an errand. The awareness of a woman who isn't sure she should be completing it alone.

I pull out of the parking space and turn onto Frenchmen Street. The route home is straightforward: Frenchmen to Esplanade, north into Tremé.

At the Esplanade turn, I check my mirrors. A dark sedan, three cars back. I noticed it when I pulled out. Noticing isn't remarkable. New Orleans traffic is dense, and dark sedans are common.

I take Esplanade toward Rampart. The sedan takes Esplanade toward Rampart.

My apartment is close. I don't take the turn.

I continue past Rampart onto Canal. The sedan follows onto Canal.

I make an unnecessary left onto Magazine. No reasoning behind it. I'm going to the grocery store, or to a friend's house, or nowhere in particular. A woman changing her mind about which way to go home. A woman who doesn't want the car behind her to learn where home is.

The sedan makes the same left.

My hands tighten on the steering wheel. That same car shouldn't still be behind me. I passed my own turn. I made a left that had no reason behind it. The dark sedan matched both.

I don't know what countersurveillance looks like. I don't know how to confirm a tail or lose one.

The car three lengths behind me has been there since I left the coffee shop. Two deliberate deviations from my route home is enough.

I pick up my phone. My thumb hovers over the contacts. Sebastien's name is at the top of the recent list. My body responds to his name on a screen with a low pull behind my navel. Nothing to do with fear. Everything to do with the fact that last night he was the only real thing in my world.

I scroll past it. My body can have opinions. It doesn't get a vote.

Renata.

I press call. She picks up on the second ring.