Chương 3
“My name is Lucien Vale,” he said. “Mr. Marchetti asked me to bring you somewhere secure.”
“Mr. Marchetti has had twenty years to introduce himself.”
Lucien did not seem offended. “He believed distance protected you.”
“Did he also believe five cars were subtle?”
“No.”
The answer was so plain that she looked at him.
He had a severe face, deep lines around his mouth, and the composed posture of a man who had spent a lifetime receiving anger on behalf of someone wealthier. He removed a clean folded handkerchief from his pocket and offered it to her.
She looked at the handkerchief, then at him.
“For your face,” he said.
“I know what handkerchiefs are for.”
A faint shift near his eyes suggested he might have smiled under different circumstances.
Odalys took it and dried the rain beneath her chin. She could smell cedar, wet wool, and the sharp chemical scent of a recently cleaned car. Her hand returned to her abdomen.
Lucien noticed.
His gaze remained there one second too long.
“Does Everett know?” she asked.
“Know what?”
“You’re good at standing still, Mr. Vale. You’re not good at pretending you haven’t understood a question.”
The vehicle turned downtown. Streetlights moved across Lucien’s face.
“Mr. Marchetti was informed that you might require medical care.”
“By whom?”
“I was not told.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It is the only one I have.”
She looked through the window. Manhattan slid past in wet fragments: restaurant awnings, brake lights, delivery riders hunched beneath plastic ponchos, a woman dragging a small dog away from a flooded gutter. The city had not altered because Weston Kade had thrown her out. People were still ordering dinner. A bus stopped at a red light. Someone under a scaffolding laughed so hard he had to brace himself against a pole.
Odalys pressed the handkerchief to her mouth.
She had taken the pregnancy test at five thirty that afternoon in the guest bathroom because Weston’s razor and aftershave in the main bathroom had made the possibility feel too intimate. She had sat on the closed toilet lid while the second line appeared. For several minutes she had listened to the exhaust fan click irregularly.
Then Weston had texted that he was bringing dinner home.
She had put the test in her pocket.
She had not told anyone.
“What medical care?” she asked.
Lucien’s expression changed by almost nothing.
That was enough.
“Who told him?”
“I cannot answer that.”
“You mean you won’t.”
“Yes.”
The honesty chilled her more effectively than the wet coat.
She leaned forward. “Did Everett send the dossier?”
Lucien looked at the rain on the window.
“Stop the car.”
“We are crossing an intersection.”
“Then stop after it.”
“Odalys—”
“Do not use my name as though you earned it.”
Lucien tapped the partition once. The driver pulled to the curb beneath a hotel canopy.
The vehicles behind them stopped in sequence.
A doorman glanced toward the convoy and decided not to approach.
Odalys reached for the door handle.
Lucien’s voice remained quiet. “Weston Kade’s people will already be looking for you.”
“He told me to leave.”
“You believe his anger makes you safe from his fear?”
She paused.
Lucien continued. “The dossier was delivered at seven twelve. Our vehicles took position near the building at seven twenty. Mr. Marchetti expected a confrontation. I was instructed to remove you if necessary.”
“If necessary.”
“Yes.”
“You mean after Weston saw exactly what Everett wanted him to see.”
Lucien lowered his eyes.
That was the first human gesture he had made.
Odalys released the door handle.
“Did you know what was in the dossier?”
“No.”
“Did you know it concerned my identity?”
“Yes.”
“And you came anyway.”
“I was ordered to.”
She gave a short laugh that held no humor. “Everyone is very obedient tonight.”
Lucien accepted that too.
The car moved again.
Everett’s residence occupied six upper floors of a converted bank building in Tribeca, though residence was not the word Odalys would have chosen. The lobby contained no family photographs, no mail, no umbrella stand, no sign that anyone had ever returned tired from a grocery store and forgotten to take off his shoes. Security staff in dark suits watched the convoy enter an underground garage. Lucien escorted her through a private lift that opened into a room paneled in pale oak.
A fire burned behind glass.
Everett Marchetti stood beside it.
He was seventy-three, lean, silver-haired, and straighter than Lucien. Age had narrowed his face without making it gentle. He wore a dark suit with no tie and held a porcelain espresso cup in one hand. On the table behind him lay a folded newspaper, a pair of reading glasses, and three sharpened pencils aligned with unnecessary precision.
His gaze moved over Odalys’s soaked coat, her bare feet, the travel bag in Lucien’s hand.
Then it settled on the necklace.
“Mara’s daughter,” he said.
Odalys did not move toward him.
Everett placed the cup down. “You have her eyes.”
“So I’ve been told by people who watched me from a distance.”
Lucien closed the elevator doors and remained beside them.
Everett’s expression held. “You should change before you become ill.”
“I’m not staying.”
“You have nowhere safer to go tonight.”
“I had a home an hour ago.”
“You had an address in a hostile man’s building.”
The sentence struck cleanly because a small part of her feared it was true.
Odalys removed her wet coat. A woman appeared silently from a side corridor and reached for it. Odalys kept hold of the sleeve.
“What is your name?”
The woman blinked. “Elena.”
“Thank you, Elena. I can carry it.”
Elena glanced at Everett before stepping back.
Odalys draped the coat over the back of a chair. Water began to pool beneath it.
“Did you send Weston the dossier?”
Everett looked at Lucien.
“You may go,” he said.
May you like
Lucien set down the travel bag and left.
Everett waited until the elevator doors closed. “I gave him the truth.”
