Marked By the Merciless Mercenary

Ivy Calloway had shot six hundred corporate galas by now. Enough to know the real photo was never on the dance floor. It was in the service corridors, where nobody remembered to perform for a camera.

The hallway behind the Kessler Atrium ran narrow, lit by emergency strips instead of chandeliers. She'd already ducked through it twice chasing candid shots of the catering staff for the planner's portfolio. Third time, she wasn't chasing anything. She was lost, hunting a bathroom that wasn't backed up twelve deep with women in heels they clearly regretted.

That's when she heard the voices.

Not the loose party murmur bleeding out of the ballroom. Something quieter. Clipped. She should have turned around right there — she knew that even at the time, she would tell herself that later, lying awake — but her feet kept going toward the cracked door at the end of the hall instead. Old habit. A camera around her neck made her brave in exactly the situations where bravery got people hurt.

Through the gap: two men. One in the same black suit; half the security staff wore it tonight. The other in a coat too heavy for a Chicago summer, standing over an open steel case lined with foam, and nested in the foam, shapes she recognised from news photos and had never once expected to see in person.

She caught fragments. A shipment. A name she didn't know. A date two days out.

Her camera did what it always did before her brain caught up — the shutter clicked, loud as a slammed door in that hallway.

Both men's heads turned at once.

She ran. Didn't decide to exactly; her legs just went, camera bag slamming her hip, corridor smearing red at the edges of her vision. Behind her, footsteps. Not panicked like hers. Even. Almost bored.

She hit a service door, shoved through into a stairwell, took the steps two at a time until her chest burnt, and came out on a landing that dead-ended at a fire exit she hadn't planned for. She spun, back against cold metal, camera hugged to her chest like it could stop something.

A man stood at the top of the stairs. Not the coat, not the suit — someone else, dressed for the gala but standing like he'd never once been a guest anywhere in his life. He looked at her the way you'd look at a math problem you already knew the answer to and resented having to write out.

"Camera," he said. "Now."

"I don't know what I saw."

"Doesn't matter what you know. Matters what's on the card." He didn't move yet. "Give it to me before somebody who isn't me finds you on this landing."

Her thumb found the delete button, pure reflex, no plan behind it. He watched her do it without so much as blinking.

"Won't help. Deleting a file doesn't delete it." A beat. "It just tells me you understand how bad tonight is."

"Who are you?"

He crossed the landing instead of answering, unhurried, and she noticed — stupidly, uselessly, the way your brain notices dumb things when it's terrified — a thin scar along his jaw, pale against a five o'clock shadow. He reached for the strap around her neck.

"Please." Her voice came out smaller than she wanted. "I was photographing the catering staff."

He stopped. Hand still in the air between them.

"What's your name?"

"Why does that matter?"

"Because if it's the wrong one," he said, "I'm about to have a considerably worse night than you are."

Below them, the stairwell door banged open. Footsteps. Two sets, at least, climbing fast.