Serena's POV
Four rumours. Four hooks. One night.
I've been awake for thirty-one hours, and I've never felt so clear.
It's 1:56 a.m. and I'm pressed against a wet brick wall in Red Hook, listening to rain drum on a corrugated roof. The Hale Archive is a squat warehouse at the end of a dead-end street, windowless, with a rusted loading dock and a single security light that has been broken since June. I know because I broke it.
I check my phone. No bars. No messages from Odile.
Good. Nobody knows where I am.
That's how I want it.
It's a trap, you idiot, says a small voice in my head, the one that sounds like Tessa. If somebody comes, they'll see you.
No, I tell it. Somebody will come, and I'll see them first.
I take a breath.
I've done this before, in a way. Three years of pretending to be a woman who didn't flinch. Eighteen months of lying in a stranger's spare room, learning to eat again. I have been very patient. I have been careful about everything.
Except tonight.
Tonight I wanted to see his face.
I want to see the man who ordered it.
1:58.
A sound. The crunch of a tires on gravel.
I stop breathing.
A heavy shape moves along the far side of the building, flashlight down, the rain bouncing off his shoulders. Navy windbreaker. Thick neck. He walks like a retired cop.
The man from my bathroom.
My camera caught him bagging my toothbrush. I've watched that footage forty times. I know the set of his shoulders better than I know my own.
He stops at the north door.
He takes a crowbar from his coat.
Somewhere in my chest, something cold and sweet unlocks.
Got you.
The lock gives with a pop. He eases the door open and slides inside, and the flashlight beam skips across the dark glass and is gone.
I count to thirty.
Then I move.
It's twenty feet to the corner of the dock, and I cross it in a crouch with my hood up and my camera gripped against my ribs. The loading door is open an inch. I put my eye to the gap.
The archive is vast, a cathedral of metal shelving and cardboard boxes, stacked ten feet high in aisles like a labyrinth. The light bobs between them.
I slip in.
The air tastes of dust and cold paper. I move along the wall, step by step, and the rain on the roof covers every sound I make.
Aisle seven.
Aisle eight.
Bay nine.
There's a metal shelf there, six feet wide, with a faded stencil. IRONBRIDGE. 2013. LITIGATION. CLOSED.
I know what's on it. Nothing.
I stripped it myself three days ago, with a spare key I got by asking very nicely for a stack of old pension files. Every box on this shelf is empty. I labelled them ORIGINALS and tied them with a bow.
Drummond stands in front of it, flashlight clamped between his teeth, ripping open cartons with gloved fingers.
One. Two. Three.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
He swears. A flat, low, practised swear, like a man who has said it a lot.
He takes the flashlight out of his mouth and pulls a phone from his coat.
I lift my camera.
I'm twenty-two feet away, behind a rack of old ledgers. I hold my breath. My finger finds the shutter.
Click.
It's a very small sound.
He doesn't hear it.
He says into the phone: "Nothing. Yeah. Every box. Just empty cartons, a joke. Somebody's been in here."
Pause.
"No. No, I don't think so. I don't see signs of entry."
I shoot again.
"Yes, sir. I'll do the next one."
Click.
"Yes, Mr Vance."
I don't breathe.
I don't blink.
I hold the camera at the end of my arm like a rifle, and a sound comes out of the shelves around me, a high, thin singing in my ears, like the moment before a wave breaks.
Mr Vance.
I have it.
I have his voice, and his face, and his phone call, and the name.
It's not proof. It's not enough for a court. A good lawyer would eat it for breakfast.
But it's the first time in twelve years I've held a thread that leads to someone.
"I'll be in Queens by three," Drummond says. "Right. Okay. Night."
He ends the call.
The beam swings round.
I fold back behind the shelf, my back to the cold steel, my heart pounding so hard I think he'll hear it.
The light moves along the floor.
It stops.
It stops at my left boot, which has slid, an inch, into the aisle.
Move, I think. Move.
"Well," says Ellis Drummond, softly. "Look at that."
I run.
I hear the clang of the shelf behind me as he drops the crowbar. I hear boots, heavy, fast, ten feet away. I take the corner at full speed and hit the end of the aisle and there's a door, a side door, green, a fire exit. I throw my whole weight at the bar.
It opens.
Rain. Cold. A narrow alley between two buildings, black with water and trash. I sprint, and I'm halfway down it when I hear a gate slam, and the gravel behind me spits, and the heavy footsteps grow louder and louder.
I'm not fast enough.
I'm never fast enough.
Fire. A white wall, a sound like the world tearing. The deck lifting under my feet. Salt in my mouth, in my nose, in my eyes.
Stay, he'd said. I mean it.
I scream, and a hand closes round my arm.
It isn't Drummond.
I'm yanked sideways into the space between a dumpster and a wall, and a body slams me against brick, and a large warm palm covers my mouth.
"Don't," says a voice at my ear.
"Mmf..."
"Don't scream. It's me. It's me."
I know that voice.
I know it better than I know anything.
My husband's hand is on my face and his chest is against mine, and the rain pours over us both, and I can feel the tremor in every muscle of his body.
"Stay still," says Dominic, barely a breath. "He'll go past."
Boots.
Slowing.
A flashlight beam skims the mouth of the alley and swings away.
"Dammit," says Drummond, a long way off. "Bloody kid."
A gate clangs.
Silence.
Dominic lets his hand fall.
For three seconds neither of us moves.
He's soaked. His hair is plastered to his forehead. He's wearing a dark jacket and no tie, and he smells of rain and cedar and the faint, familiar smoke of a man who hasn't slept.
His eyes are inches from mine.
They're black in the dark.
"What," I say, "are you doing here?"
"It's my archive," he says. "My alarm. What's your excuse, Ms Lowell?"
My mouth opens.
My head is empty.
"I..."
"No," he says, very low. "Don't. Don't tell me yet."
"Dominic..."
"I'm going to take you home." He steps back, drags a hand across his face, and when he looks at me again his expression is unreadable. "And then you're going to explain to me why my chief of staff is running around a burglary scene in the middle of the night, with a camera, and a face like she's seen a ghost."
"I haven't..."
"I haven't asked yet."
He holds out his hand.
I don't take it.
A phone buzzes in my pocket.
I look down.
Posy: Sorry to text so late. Is it weird that someone from legal just asked me for your personal phone records? He said Mr Vance requested them.
I read it twice.
Then I look up, and my husband is watching me, very steadily, with the rain running down his face, and I understand that it's far too late to lie.