The woman in my car

Alexander's POV

She didn't stop talking for the first ten minutes of the drive.

She talked about the restaurant, the chocolate, the terrible traffic, a pigeon she had once seen steal a sandwich from a businessman's hand. She talked with her whole body, her hands moving, her shoulder turning toward me in the passenger seat as though I were an audience she was determined to win.

I kept my eyes on the road.

It was a rule I had never broken. When something disturbed my concentration, I gave it nothing. No reaction, no comment, no eye contact. Silence starved most things until they went away.

Arielle Sinclair did not go away.

"You're doing it again," she said.

"Doing what?"

"Pretending I'm not here."

"I'm driving."

"You're pretending."

"You're very persistent."

"So I've heard." I could hear the smile in her voice. "Is it working?"

"No."

She laughed softly and turned to look out the window. For a moment the car was quiet and I found, to my irritation, that I missed the noise.

Her phone lit up on her lap.

I didn't mean to look. The screen brightened the dark of the car and the name across the top was plain enough. Mum.

Her smile disappeared. It didn't fade. It vanished, like a light switched off. She glanced at the phone, then at me, then pressed the side button and turned it face down against her thigh. The movement was quick and practiced. She sat straighter.

"You can answer it," I said.

"It's nothing."

"It's your mother."

"She can wait." Her voice was lighter than it should have been. "She'll be asleep by the time I get home anyway."

"You live with her?"

"She's visiting." A pause. "She doesn't know I'm at dinner with a client."

"Is that a problem?"

"Not for me."

I let it drop. I noticed she hadn't asked me to.

I noticed a lot of things about Arielle Sinclair. The way she went still when a subject touched something she didn't want to explain. The way her smile always arrived a fraction too fast, as though it had been waiting behind a door. The way she talked so much and said so little that it was almost an art.

Most people lied because they were afraid. She lied like a professional.

I glanced at her. She was watching the city blur past, the streetlights sliding over her face. In that light, with the flirtation gone from her expression, she looked younger. Tired. Almost ordinary.

Almost.

"Take the next left," she said. "It's the third building."

I already knew the address. Daniel had sent it to me an hour ago, along with a message that said Report ready tomorrow. Some interesting gaps, sir.

I had stared at the last word for a long time.

The car stopped in front of a modest apartment building, cream stone and dark green shutters, a lamp glowing above the door. It wasn't the sort of place I expected a woman like her to live. Too quiet. Too ordinary.

Everything about her was designed to look extraordinary. Except this.

"Well." She unbuckled her seat belt. "Thank you for dinner, Alexander."

"Mr. Pierce."

"You're going to keep doing that, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"For how long?"

"Until you stop."

"Then we'll be here a while." She opened the door and paused with one heel on the pavement, looking back at me. The lamplight made a soft halo of her hair. "Goodnight."

"Goodnight, Ms. Sinclair."

She smiled, slowly, deliberately, as if she had won again, and climbed out. The door shut. I watched her walk to the entrance, her coat swinging, her shoulders straight, and she didn't look back once.

I waited.

Three minutes later, a light came on in a second-floor window. A silhouette crossed it. Another figure joined her, older, smaller. They embraced.

So the mother was real.

I looked at that light for longer than I should have.

Then I picked up my phone and called Daniel.

"Sir."

"It's eleven at night."

"I know. I was awake." He sounded awake. He always sounded awake. It was one of the more irritating things about him. "You received my message."

"What gaps?"

"I'd prefer to give you the full report in person."

"Tell me now."

A pause. I could hear him choosing his words, the way a man steps carefully across a frozen pond.

"Ms. Sinclair's records are excellent," he said. "Education, employment, references. Everything a person could ask for."

"But?"

"But the deeper I go, the thinner the earlier material becomes." A page turned. "I'll have it fully assembled by morning."

"How thin?"

"Sir, may I say something?"

"You never ask."

"I'm asking now." Daniel cleared his throat. "In eleven years working for your family, I have never seen you request a background check on an architect."

I didn't answer.

"I'm not criticizing," he added quickly. "I'm only noting."

"Note it quietly."

"Of course, sir."

"Eight o'clock. My office."

"Yes, sir."

I ended the call and sat in the dark car, my fingers tapping once against the wheel before going still.

The light in the window went out.

It was nothing. It was a woman going to bed.

But I found myself looking at that dark glass as though it might tell me something. Who are you, Arielle Sinclair? What are you looking for?

And why did I suddenly want, very badly, to know the answer?