Chapter 4

Ezra’s POV

“Sixty million,” said Elliot Sterling. “Not a dollar less.”

“Forty,” I said.

“That’s an insult.”

“It’s arithmetic.”

We sat across from each other at a long glass table on the twentieth floor of the Sterling Fragrance House, in an office with a view of Lake Union and a portrait of Elliot’s father over the fireplace. It was nine in the morning, the day after the party. Elliot hadn’t slept. His shirt collar was open. His hands, on the tabletop, were not quite steady.

I’d seen that kind of tremor before. In men who were drowning quietly.

“Your debt to the Cascade Bank is forty-four million,” I said. “Due in ninety days. Your two largest clients left in the spring. Your sales are down thirty percent. And your best perfumer, the only one who can build anything the market wants, was fired yesterday morning.” I let it sit. “I’m not insulting you, Mr. Sterling. I’m offering to save your name.”

“Aya Rivers was not my best perfumer.”

“She built nine of your twelve top sellers.”

“She was an employee.”

“She was a twelve-year employee you called your ward.”

His eyes flickered. “That’s a private matter.”

“Where is she?”

“I don’t know. I don’t care.” He said it too fast. “That girl was a serpent. I took her in when her mother died, and she repaid me by, by...”

“By what?”

He shut his mouth.

Behind him, the door opened a crack. A slim woman in a gray suit stood in the gap, pale blue eyes, pale gold hair, a small pearl at each ear. Diane Sterling. She didn’t come in. She just watched. Her gaze slid to me, then to her husband, and a look passed between them, small and cold and practiced.

I have sat across from a lot of liars. I know the shape of a room that’s hiding a body.

“Forty-two,” I said, standing. “You have until Friday.”

I walked out.

In the elevator, Idan said, “Sir, was that wise? You’re going to buy them anyway.”

“I’m going to buy them cheap,” I said. “And I’m going to find out what’s under the floor.”

~

It took Idan four hours to find the flat.

Capitol Hill. A brick building above a laundromat on Pine. It smelled of detergent and fried onions, and the stairwell was lit by one bulb. I stood at the top of the third flight with a small black flash drive in my pocket and my heart hammering, and I realized I had not been this nervous since I was nineteen.

I knocked.

The door opened on a short, furious woman in a chef’s jacket, holding a wooden spoon like a dagger.

“Yes?”

“I’m looking for Aya Rivers.”

“She’s not here.”

“I think she is.”

“Who are you?”

“My name is Ezra Blackwell.”

“Never heard of you.”

“I met her five weeks ago at the Copper Door.”

The spoon drooped. Her mouth fell open. “You,” she said. “You’re him.”

“Liron?” a voice called from inside. “Who is it?”

I heard her before I saw her. Footsteps on old boards. Then she stood at the end of the narrow hall in socks and a gray sweatshirt too big for her, her hair tied back, no makeup, her face pale and swollen from crying. She looked younger than she had in the hotel. She looked just as she had in my arms.

She saw me. Her breath stopped.

“Aya,” I said.

“What are you doing here?”

“Can I come in?”

“No.”

“Aya...”

“How did you find me?”

“My chief of staff has a talent for finding people.” I kept my hands where she could see them. “I’m not here to hurt you. I’m here because I saw what happened at the Ashwood. And I have what you need.”

Liron looked at her. Aya looked at me. For a long time, nobody spoke.

“Let him in,” Aya said, very quietly. “Ten minutes.”

~

The flat was tiny and warm and smelled of garlic and lemon. She stood by the window with her arms wrapped around herself. Liron stood in the kitchen doorway, spoon raised, like a bodyguard with a weak grasp of weapons.

I took the flash drive from my pocket and set it on the arm of the sofa.

“The hotel’s security footage,” I said. “From ten thirty on. Ilana Sterling at the bar. A vial in your glass. Two paid men carrying you to the suite. A phone call to her mother.” I met her eyes. “It’s all there. Every minute.”

Nobody breathed.

Aya crossed the room in three steps. She snatched up the drive, held it in both hands, and looked at me with an expression I have never forgotten. Not gratitude. Not relief. A kind of stunned, terrified, exquisite hope, like a woman who’d been told the door was locked for so long that she’d forgotten it could open.

“You have proof.”

“Yes.”

“You can prove I didn’t...”

“I can prove you were drugged, and set up, and photographed.”

“Why?” Her voice broke. “Why would you help me? You don’t even know me.”

“I know you,” I said. “You told me your whole life in one night.”

She flinched.

“You never asked my name,” said Aya. “Not my last name.”

“No.”

“And you left before I woke. No note. No number.” She swallowed. “Why?”

I could have lied. I could have said a smooth line, about work, about timing. I’ve told a thousand men and women a thousand well-built lies across a thousand boardroom tables.

“I saw your badge,” I said. “At five in the morning. I saw the name. And I panicked.”

“Because I worked for Sterling.”

“Because I’m buying Sterling.”

The room went silent.

“You’re,” she said. “You’re Ezra Blackwell. The Blackwell. The one who’s been circling my company for six months.” Her voice rose. “You were in that bar on purpose.”

“No.”

“You were there to look at Sterling.”

“I was there for a whiskey. I’d been reading numbers for nineteen hours. You sat down two stools away and I smelled orange blossom, and I forgot why I’d come to Seattle.” I took a breath. “I didn’t know your name until I read it on your lanyard. I swear that on my life.”

“That’s the worst reason I’ve ever heard.”

“I know.”

“You ran.”

“I did.”

“That’s cowardly.”

“It’s the most cowardly thing I’ve ever done,” I said. “And I have done a few.”

She stared at me. Her eyes were very bright. I saw her jaw tremble, and I saw her get it under control, the way a person clamps down on a wound.

“I don’t want your money,” she said.

“I’m not offering any.”

“I don’t want a job.”

“I haven’t mentioned one.”

“I don’t want you to save me.”

“Then don’t be saved.” I stepped back, hands open. “Take the drive. Use it however you like. But Aya, I’ll say one thing, and I’ll say it once. Someone spent a great deal of money, and a great deal of effort, to make sure you left that house. That isn’t jealousy. That’s fear. You were close to the truth.”

“My mother,” she whispered.

“Yes.”

“You know about that?”

“I know she died in that house. And I know the file’s been sealed for fourteen years.” I met her eyes. “I have my own reasons for wanting it opened.”

She went still.

“What reasons?”

“Not today.”

“Then we both have secrets,” said Aya softly.

“Yes.”

She looked at the drive in her hand. Then, very slowly, she slid it into the pocket of her sweatshirt.

“I’m going to a bank tomorrow,” she said. “I can’t tell you why.”

“Would you like company?”

“No.”

“Would you like me to wait outside?”

Her mouth twitched. It was almost a smile. “Goodbye, Ezra.”

“Call me. Any hour.” I put a card on the counter, and beneath it, a second, smaller one, with my private number in ink. “I mean it.”

I went to the door. Liron stepped aside, glaring, with the wooden spoon at high alert.

At the threshold, a feeling made me turn.

She stood by the window, with a hand resting flat against her stomach. Just resting. The way you hold your ribs when you’ve been running. She didn’t seem to know she was doing it.

I filed it away. Then I went out.

~

Idan was waiting at the bottom of the stairs, with his back to the wall and his eyes on the street.

“Sir,” he said, very low. “Don’t turn around.”

“What?”

“Black sedan. Across the road. Tinted windows. It’s been there since eight o’clock this morning.” He didn’t blink. “And it just started its engine.”