CHAPTER THREE : Thirty Minutes Out

ALEXANDER

The file was thin.

That was the first thing that had bothered him when Julian placed it on his desk two days ago. 

Three years of looking and the sum total of Helen Sinclair — Helen Carter now, apparently — fit into a folder that was less than half an inch thick.

She had been careful.

He hadn't decided yet whether that made him angrier or something else he didn't have a clear word for.

The jet cut through cloud cover somewhere over Connecticut. Forty minutes out from Boston. Outside the window there was nothing but dark sky and the occasional scatter of lights from whatever town was passing below.

 He wasn't looking at it. He was looking at the photograph clipped to the inside of the folder.

It was a surveillance photo. Grainy, taken from a distance. 

Helen coming out of a café — Birchwood Café, the report said, Maple Street, Boston — with her coat pulled close and her hair down and her face turned slightly away from the camera like she already knew, on some instinct level, to always protect her angles.

She looked different.

Not worse. Not better. Just — different in a way he was still processing. Something about the way she carried herself. Lighter maybe. Or maybe that wasn't the right word either.

He closed the folder.

"ETA?" he said.

His pilot's voice came through immediately. "Forty-two minutes, Mr. Sinclair."

He nodded once even though nobody was watching.

Julian had asked him this morning, quietly, in that way Julian had of asking things that were actually objections dressed as questions — are you sure you want to handle this personally, Alexander — and he had not answered because the answer was complicated in a way he wasn't prepared to discuss at seven in the morning or possibly ever.

He was sure.

That was the only part he was certain of.

Three years ago he had let her go because he had told himself it was what she wanted. 

That the signed papers and the empty wardrobe and the single sentence she had left — not even a note, just a text, I can't do this anymore — were clear enough. 

That a man like him didn't chase.

He had been wrong about that last part.

He understood that now.

He didn't chase because he had never wanted anything badly enough to move for it. 

He had spent thirty-two years in a world where everything came to him — deals, loyalty, power, women who understood the arrangement before it was explained.

Helen had never understood the arrangement.

He had found that frustrating at first.

Later he had found it to be the most interesting thing about her.

Later still he had found the penthouse very quiet in a way that had nothing to do with soundproofing.

He picked up the folder again. Looked at the photograph.

Birchwood Café. Tuesday through Saturday. Opens at eight.

Today was Thursday.

HELEN

Her office was exactly the kind of place Helen had needed when she arrived in Boston eight months ago — mid-size, busy enough that nobody had time to ask too many questions, small enough that she wasn't invisible.

She had started as a coordinator. 

She was now a senior project analyst, which was a title that had surprised her more than anyone else when Marcus — her manager, perpetually caffeinated, genuinely decent — had slid the offer across his desk three months ago.

You're wasted at the front desk, he had said. We both know it.

She hadn't argued.

She liked the work. It was clean and logical and required enough concentration that she could go entire hours without thinking about New York. 

About a penthouse on the fifty-eighth floor. About a man who had looked at her across a room sometimes with an expression she had never quite been able to decode.

She was good at not thinking about it.

She was thinking about it right now.

Stop, she told herself.

She pulled up the quarterly report on her screen and focused.

It was Ethan who said it.

He had taken to stopping by her desk in the mornings — the man from the café, who had turned out to work three floors up and had a habit of appearing with two coffees and a completely non-threatening smile. She had not encouraged it exactly. 

She had also not discouraged it, which probably said something about how lonely the last three years had actually been.

"Have you seen this?" He set a coffee on her desk and turned his phone screen toward her.

It was a business headline. Sinclair Global announces northeast expansion. 

Three new acquisitions confirmed in Q1.

She kept her face completely still.

It was a skill she had developed in two years of Sinclair family dinners.

The ability to look neutral while something inside her was doing something else entirely.

"Interesting," she said.

"They're moving into Boston." Ethan leaned against the desk, reading from his screen. 

"Word is they're looking at three mid-size firms in the area. Consulting, logistics, one tech company." He looked up.

 "Marcus is losing his mind a little."

Helen looked at her screen.

Mid-size consulting firms.

The Group was a mid-size consulting firm.

"I'm sure it's fine," she said. Her voice came out steady. She was proud of that.

Ethan nodded, already moving on to something else, already talking about the Thursday morning meeting and did she want the conference room booked — and she answered him on autopilot because the part of her brain managing conversation had separated cleanly from the part that was now running very fast in a very small space.

Sinclair Global.

Boston.

Julian's voice on the phone last night. He's coming himself.

She had told herself she was ready.

She was realizing, sitting at her desk with a coffee going cold beside her and a quarterly report open on her screen, that ready was a thing you said before you understood what you were actually preparing for.

ALEXANDER

Boston appeared below the clouds like a city that didn't know it was about to be interrupted.

He straightened his jacket. Checked his watch — a habit, not a necessity. The car would be waiting. 

The hotel suite was booked under a name that wasn't his. He had exactly no plan beyond finding her, which was so unlike him that Julian had stared at him for a full three seconds when he said it.

And then what? Julian had asked.

I don't know yet, he had said.

Julian had looked at him like he didn't recognize him.

Alexander wasn't sure he recognized himself either. 

But he had spent three years being the version of himself that let her go and that version had not worked out particularly well for anyone, so.

The wheels touched down.

He picked up the folder. Looked at the photograph one last time.

Birchwood Café. Tuesday through Saturday.

He put it in his jacket pocket.

Today is Thursday, he thought. She'll be at work by now.

He didn't know where she worked yet.

He would find out.

He always did.