Eleven

ARIANA 

The hallway was colder than the dining room.

I walked slowly, letting the click of my heels settle into a rhythm, letting my breath even out. The earpiece sat in my ear like a small warm stone. Nobody had spoken through it yet. I wasn't sure if that was good or bad.

The party had spilled out of the dining hall and into the main floor. Guests clustered near the bar, near the windows, near the fireplace that hadn't been lit. Staff moved between them with trays held high. Laughter rose and fell in waves. It sounded like money — that particular kind of laugh that only happens when everyone in the room already knows they've won something.

I stayed near the wall. That's what I do. Stand where the light doesn't reach, watch the room, count the exits, learn the faces.

That's when I saw him.

He was sitting alone at a small table near the terrace doors. Not standing. Not mingling. Not holding a drink or a plate or a phone.

He was reading a magazine.

At a party. In this house. In this room full of people who'd spent more on their shoes than I'd made in a year.

He was young — thirty, maybe. Dark hair, clean-cut. A plain suit, well-fitted but quiet. No rings. No watch worth noticing. Nothing about him announced itself.

That was the thing. Everything about him was designed to be forgotten.

He turned a page.

I watched him the way I watch everyone. Not because I was interested. Because it's what kept me alive. Hands, posture, where his eyes went when he wasn't reading. Small things. Small tells.

His eyes lifted off the page. They moved across the room — past the bar, past the guests, past the staff. Slow. Unhurried. They landed on Romano.

They stayed there.

Not the way a guest looks at a host. Not the way a business partner looks at a rival. Something flatter. Colder. Like a man reading a page he'd already memorized.

Then his eyes moved again — and landed on me.

I didn't look away. That would've been a tell.

He didn't either.

For three or four seconds we just held there, across the room, two people at a party who both knew they didn't belong. Then he smiled. Small. Polite. The kind of smile you give a stranger in an elevator.

He turned back to his magazine.

I felt the back of my neck go cold.

I didn't move. I kept my face still, kept my hands loose, kept my breathing even. But something in me had shifted — the way it shifts when you're picking a pocket and you realize the mark has already seen you.

I looked toward the terrace doors. Then at the bar. Then at the hall where Jack had disappeared with Skylark.

When I looked back at the small table near the doors, the man was gone. The magazine sat folded on the chair. Neat. Closed.

Like he'd never been there at all.

__

ARIANA 

I waited until the music swallowed the hallway, then slipped back toward the main floor.

He wasn't at the small table. I checked twice. The chair was still there, the magazine still folded on it, but the seat was empty and the space around it felt recently vacated — the way a room feels when someone has just stopped standing in it.

I moved through the crowd slowly. Not searching. Watching. That's different.

The bar was thick with guests. The windows held small clusters of men talking low. Near the terrace doors, a couple argued quietly in a language I didn't know. Nothing.

I'd almost given up when I saw him.

He was at the far end of the room, walking without hurry toward a side door — one of the staff doors, the kind that leads somewhere guests aren't supposed to go. He didn't look around. He didn't check if anyone was watching. He just reached for the handle and stepped through, and the door closed behind him like it had never opened.

My hand moved to my ear before I could stop it.

Nothing. No voice. Just the small warm hum of the earpiece sitting there, useless.

I followed anyway.

I was halfway across the room when a hand closed around my wrist.

"Where are you going?"

D.D.

He'd come out of nowhere, the way he always did — quiet, unhurried, standing close enough that I had to tilt my head to look at him. His grip wasn't hard. It was the kind of grip that didn't need to be.

"Air," I said.

"Air."

"Fresh air."

His eyes moved past me — toward the door at the end of the room. Then back to me.

"There's a terrace on the other side of the hall."

"I like this one better."

He didn't let go.

For a second neither of us said anything. I could feel his thumb against the inside of my wrist, resting there like it had a right to. The music was still playing behind us. People were still laughing. Nobody in the room was looking at us.

"Be careful," he said.

"I always am."

"No." His voice was quiet. "You're not."

He let go.

I walked past him without another word. I didn't turn around. I didn't need to. I could feel him watching me the whole way.

The side door opened easily.

The corridor on the other side was dark. Not pitch black — the emergency lights along the floor gave it a low red glow, enough to see shapes and nothing else. It smelled like old stone and cold air. No music here. No laughing. Just the hum of a building that had been standing a long time.

I moved down the corridor.

There was a room at the end. The door was cracked. Light bled through the gap in a thin yellow line. I heard nothing on the other side. No voices. No footsteps. Just that particular quiet that means someone is waiting.

I told myself to turn back.

I pushed the door open.

The room was empty.

Or it looked empty. A desk. Two chairs. A window with the curtain drawn. No lamps. No sign that anyone had ever been in here at all.

I stepped inside. I took two steps. Three.

Behind me, the door slammed shut.

I spun around. The room went black — the light in the crack had vanished, the hallway gone, everything gone. My hand found the wall. I moved toward where the door had been, and my fingers had just brushed the handle when something cracked through the air and the wood beside my hand exploded.

I jerked back.

Wood splintered. Dust hit my face. I couldn't breathe for a second. My ears rang. My hand was still raised, frozen, inches from a hole that hadn't been there a second earlier.

I didn't move.

A voice came out of the dark. Low. Calm. Almost pleasant.

"Tailing me."

Not a question.

I stayed pressed against the wall, hand still raised, heart slamming so hard I could feel it in my throat. I couldn't see him. I couldn't tell where in the room he was standing. The dark had no edges. Just that voice, coming from somewhere in front of me, sitting in the air like a fact.

"Those kinds of manners," he said, "will get you killed faster than the watch you stole."

My blood went cold.

The watch.

Nobody knew about the watch. Nobody except Jack, John, and Angela. Not even Skylark. Not even D.D.

"Who are you?" I said.

The voice didn't answer.

Then, from the dark — lighter now, almost amused:

"Wrong question.”