Chapter 9: The Part Where Everything Gets Worse

From behind me, Lu's voice, tight with something he was working to keep professional: "Sir. That's the prototype. The couples' security band. The one that was reported stolen four months ago in—"

Julian raised one hand. Lu stopped mid-sentence. The hand returned to Julian's side with the same deliberate control as everything else he did, and his eyes moved to my face and stayed there. "So," he said, and his voice had dropped to a register I hadn't heard him use yet, something beneath the clipped precision, with an edge to it like the controlled edge of something very sharp. "You're the one who blew up my Ferrari."

I was already doing the math. Exits: the avenue behind me, the side street to my left, the general principle that crowds were useful and this particular crowd had thinned somewhat with the hour. Complications: Noah, still in my lap. Duchess, currently occupying the crook of my arm. Julian Sterling's assistant, positioned at a useful angle.

"Technically," I said, and my voice came out at the register I wanted—level, unhurried, the same tone I used for conversations I had chosen rather than ones I'd had thrust upon me—"the chandelier blew up your Ferrari. I just happened to be in the vicinity."

He stood. The movement was controlled and deliberate, and when he was standing he had several inches on me even accounting for the fact that I was seated, which he was clearly aware of. "And stole my prototype technology."

I transferred Noah gently to Lu, who received him with practiced efficiency and positioned himself several feet away with the child, and I stood as well, because this was one of those conversations that required being on your feet. "In my defense," I said, "I thought it was a fancy watch. Who makes a couple's bracelet that can't be taken off?"

"It's designed to prevent theft." He said it with the particular flatness of someone who recognizes the irony and has declined to engage with it. "Nano-lock technology. The only way to remove it is—"

"—simultaneous heart rate spike above 140 BPM for both wearers, followed by synchronized biometric confirmation." I finished it for him, because I had spent four months with this thing on my wrist and I had done the research. "Yeah, I figured that out. Around the same time I realized I was stuck wearing a tracking device."

His eyes narrowed, just slightly. "You disabled the GPS."

"I'm good with tech."

He took one step forward. We were close enough that I could see the individual cost of the watch he was wearing to replace the one I'd taken—understated, expensive, the kind of timepiece chosen by someone who had decided that obvious luxury was for people who needed to prove something. "Not good enough," he said. "The bracelet still logs heart rate data. And according to my records—" he drew his phone with the smooth efficiency of someone who had been waiting for this moment, called up an application that displayed biometric data in clean columns of time-stamped numbers— "your heart rate spiked to 142 four months ago. The exact moment my car exploded."

I looked at the data. I looked at him. "Wow," I said. "You keep tabs on random people's heart rates? That's not creepy at all."

"I keep tabs," he said, and the precision in his voice now had a quality to it that I recognized as genuine, the particular focus of someone who is not performing anger but experiencing the controlled version of it, "on people who cost me two million dollars and a priceless painting."

"The painting was a fake," I said. "And your car was insured."

Something shifted in his expression. It was small and fast and would have been imperceptible to someone who hadn't been watching his face the way I'd been watching it for the last twenty minutes. "The painting was not a fake. I had it authenticated by—"

"—three different experts who were all bribed by the seller." I watched that land. "Trust me. I've stolen enough art to know."

The silence that followed had a different texture from the previous ones. He looked at me across the roughly eighteen inches of October air between us, and behind his expression something was happening that I couldn't fully read, which was a problem I didn't encounter often enough to be comfortable with. "So," he said, and his voice had changed register again, moving from the controlled edge to something cooler and, if anything, more dangerous—the tone of someone who has just recalibrated their threat assessment and found the number larger than initially projected. "Cat burglar, art thief, tech expert, and apparently skilled enough at hand-to-hand combat to crack my brother's ribs." He took one step back, deliberate, reestablishing distance that was a choice rather than a retreat. "You're full of surprises, Miss Vance."

"And you're full of surveillance equipment and control issues, Mr. Sterling." I held his gaze. "We should start a support group."

The corner of his mouth moved. It was barely a movement at all—more an absence of the suppression that normally kept everything in place—but it was there. "I don't do support groups," he said. "Too inefficient."

I picked up my jacket, settled my bag over my shoulder, and Duchess flowed from the bench into the bag's opening with the fluid authority of a creature who had made her own evaluation of the situation and reached her conclusions. "Well," I said. "This has been educational. But I have places to be."

"Running away?" His voice carried easily across the distance I'd already started to create. "How disappointing."

"Not running." I kept walking. "Strategic retreat. There's a difference."

"The bracelet will keep syncing our locations." His voice followed me, measured, unhurried, with the quality of someone who has already finished the conversation and is simply letting the other person catch up. "Whenever both our heart rates spike. You can run to Texas. To Europe. To the moon." A pause, calibrated. "I'll always know where you are."

I stopped. Turned. He was standing exactly where I'd left him, hands in his jacket pockets, watching me with an expression that was the most open it had been all evening—which is to say, not open at all, but differently closed, the way a door is different from a wall.

"Then I guess," I said, "I'll just have to make sure my heart rate stays nice and calm around you."

His smile, this time, was not suppressed. It was small, controlled, and didn't reach his eyes in any way that should have been reassuring. "Good luck with that."

I turned back toward the avenue. Behind me I heard small, rapid footsteps, and then something was pressed into my hand—folded paper, warm from a jacket pocket, slightly crumpled at the edges. Noah looked up at me for exactly three seconds, then turned and ran back to Lu, who caught him with practiced efficiency.

I unfolded the paper while I walked.

The handwriting was the careful, uneven print of someone who had recently learned that letters had specific shapes and was taking the responsibility seriously.

Thank you for the hot dog. Uncle Jules is nice. Don't be scared. —Noah

I read it twice. I folded it carefully along its original creases and put it in my pocket, where it sat with a weight disproportionate to its size as I walked into the moving dark of Fifth Avenue and didn't look back.

Behind me, I heard Julian Sterling's voice, low and precise, directed at his assistant: "Run a full background check. I want to know every meal she's eaten, every bed she's slept in, and every movement from the last four months."

A pause. Then Lu's voice, carrying the careful neutrality of someone delivering bad news to someone who doesn't like surprises: "Sir, her digital footprint is extremely clean. Almost too clean."

"Then dig deeper." A beat. "Nobody steals from me and gets away with it."