Page 29

The street had the hollow emptiness of a weeknight past midnight — a few lit windows, a delivery bike chained to a post, the city’s ambient hum lowered to a mutter. Her boots hit the sidewalk in the same rhythm they always did, keys already threaded between her fingers out of a habit and never needed until tonight, when it might finally earn its keep.

The alley across the street had a figure standing in it, and Romily’s stomach dropped a full floor before she’d worked out why.

Not moving toward her. Not moving away. Standing at the mouth of the alley with the ease of someone who had somewhere better to be and had decided, for reasons of their own, not to go there. She kept walking at the same pace, eyes forward, and did the math anyway — six blocks from the bar, no reason to loiter here at this hour unless loitering was the actual job.

She’d watched enough true-crime television with Jessa to know the exact moment worth paying attention to: the one where you tell yourself it’s probably nothing. That was the moment. She noted the alley’s position, the man’s height, the fact he hadn’t shifted his weight once in the twenty seconds she’d had him in her peripheral vision, and picked up her pace without making it look like she’d picked up her pace, the way Jessa had drilled into her over six seasons of increasingly grim television.

Her car sat two blocks ahead under a streetlight that had been flickering for a month, which building management apparently considered a personality trait rather than a maintenance request worth actioning. She crossed the street early, cutting her distance to the alley in half instead of doubling it — a trick Jessa had drilled into her after one grim documentary about the math of being followed. Better to close the gap on your own terms than let someone else pick the moment.

Her pulse picked up. She noticed it the way she recognized most inconvenient things her body did lately — noted, set aside, not useful. Her hand found her phone in her jacket pocket anyway, thumb hovering over Jessa’s contact, not dialing, simply confirming it was there.

The figure didn’t move. She didn’t check twice — looking back turned a maybe into a yes, according to every self-defense class she’d half-listened to — and by the time she reached her car, hands steady enough to get the key in the lock on the first try, the street had gone quiet again, a city block with no opinion about her tonight.

She sat in the driver’s seat for one full breath before starting the engine, doors locked, watching the rearview mirror longer than the situation strictly required, longer than she’d ever admit to Jessa.

She drove home checking her mirrors more than the route required, and told herself, unconvincingly, that this was good practice and nothing more.

She didn’t mention it to Jessa in the text confirming she’d made it home. Some things you kept to yourself until you had a better reason not to, and one man standing in an alley, doing absolutely nothing wrong by any legal definition, didn’t yet meet the bar for group chat panic.

Mrs. Petrov, the elder knitting lady who’d been in the hotel every day with her husband, ambushed her in the lobby the next morning with two coffees.

“He watched you the entire time yesterday.” She pressed a cup into Romily’s hand like she was delivering evidence to an already-convinced jury, pleased with the delivery, chin lifted like a woman who’d rehearsed this exact moment on the elevator ride down. “From the rail.”

“Good morning to you too.”

“Good morning has nothing to do with it. Focus.” She set her own cup down on the marble side table, undeterred by Romily’s obvious desire not to be briefed, and pulled her phone from her cardigan pocket with the flourish of a woman producing a subpoena. “Yesterday, three o’clock. You were up on the scaffolding arguing with a piece of equipment — couldn’t hear the words, but I know an argument when I see one — and he was up on that rail the whole time. Forty minutes. I timed it. I have the screenshot.”

“You screenshotted your own stopwatch as documentary evidence.”

“Of course I did. What kind of detective doesn’t keep notes?” She turned the phone around to display a blurry timer app, thumb tapping the screen for emphasis, earnest about the evidentiary weight of thirty-nine minutes and change. “A man doesn’t stand at a rail forty minutes watching a woman fix a cable unless something’s gone seriously wrong with his priorities.”

“You’re looking at a man overseeing an installation, purely and simply.”

“I’m looking at a man who forgot he owns three other hotels.” She pocketed the phone, sipped her coffee, glanced toward the mezzanine on principle, the way other people checked the traffic. “Eleven years I’ve watched this building. Executives falling for assistants. Guests falling for bellhops. One incident with a florist I’m still not legally permitted to discuss in detail, though I will say it involved a fire alarm and considerable heroism on my part. I know what I’m looking at. My track record on this exact subject is spotless, ask anyone at the front desk.”

“That’s a lot of falling, historically and statistically speaking.”

“It’s a hotel, dear. Falling is the business model.” She patted Romily’s arm, thoroughly convinced her detective work had been vindicated yet again, and straightened the collar of her own cardigan like a woman preparing for her next case. “Drink that before it goes cold. Big day ahead, from the look of things upstairs.”

“What’s happening upstairs, exactly, in your professional opinion?”

“No idea. But a man who watches a woman for forty minutes tends to find a reason to talk to her again, sooner rather than later.” She turned toward the front desk, coffee in hand, cardigan swishing with the momentum of a woman with places to be and theories to confirm. “Call it experience. Ask me again next week — I’ll have updates. I always have updates.”

She left Romily standing in the lobby with a coffee she hadn’t asked for, a working theory she hadn’t confirmed, and a morning that had already gotten away from her before it had properly started.

NINE

NORDEN

Darius caught him at the elevator, tie already loosened, looking far too pleased with the timing.

“You’re leaving at six. You never leave at six. I had genuine doubts the concept was physically possible for you.”

“I have a dinner.”

“You have eight centuries of dinners you’ve never once left early for.” Darius fell into step beside him, matching his stride with the deliberate ease of someone thoroughly enjoying every second of this. “This is a special dinner, then. Candles. Possibly a jacket you actually chose yourself instead of letting Victor pick.”

“I picked the jacket.”