Chapter Twelve
Hailey
The text to Knox takes four drafts to get right. I stand outside the subway station at Carroll Street, thumb hovering over
send, watching my breath fog in the evening air while I debate the merits of honesty versus self-preservation.
Self-preservation wins. It always does with me.
Running a little late. Having a quick holiday cocktail with Chloe first. I’ll be there by 8. Save me some of whatever you’re
cooking.
His response comes in under thirty seconds. Take your time. I’m not going anywhere.
God. Of course he’s not going anywhere. Knox Bishop has been not going anywhere for months now, stationed outside my life
like a sentinel, and here I am lying to him before we’ve even had a chance to really begin. Guilt coils in my chest, hot and
sour, but I pocket my phone and start walking anyway.
Red Hook in December looks like a postcard that got left out in the rain.
The old brick warehouses hunker against the waterfront, strung with Christmas lights that somebody optimistic put up and nobody’s bothered to take down since probably 2019.
The wind off the harbor cuts right through my coat.
I pass a coffee roaster, a distillery, a furniture shop selling reclaimed wood tables for prices that could fund a small revolution.
The neighborhood can’t decide if it wants to be working-class Brooklyn or artisanal Brooklyn, so it’s settled for being both, uneasily.
Liam picked the bar. He always was better at tradecraft than me.
Rusted Anchor sits wedged between a marine supply shop and what might be an abandoned cannery. The kind of place tourists
never find and locals pretend doesn’t exist. No sign on the door, just a ship’s anchor bolted above the frame, orange with
decades of salt air corrosion. I push inside and the smell hits me first: old wood, older beer, and something fried that’s
probably been sitting under a heat lamp since the Obama administration.
Christmas lights here too, but these are ironic. A sad strand of multicolored bulbs droops across the back of the bar, and
someone’s stuck a Santa hat on the moose head mounted above the liquor shelf. The bartender looks up when I enter, takes one
look at my face, and goes back to polishing glasses.
Good. I’m not here to make friends.
I spot Liam in the back booth before he spots me.
Five years fall away in the space of a heartbeat.
He’s older. Harder around the edges, the softness of his late twenties burned off somewhere in the years between then and
now. His dark hair is shorter than he used to wear it, and there’s a scar on his jawline that wasn’t there before, a thin
white line that catches the light when he turns his head. But what really stops me is the ink. When I knew him, Liam had a
few tattoos scattered across his chest and shoulders, nothing you’d see unless he took off his shirt. Now the black lines
crawl up his neck, disappearing into his hairline on one side and curling along his jaw on the other. Intricate mandala patterns,
geometric and hypnotic. That much ink on the neck takes hours in a chair and a high pain tolerance. It’s striking. It’s incredibly
hot.
I shove that thought down hard. I’m here for information, not to catalog my ex-boyfriend’s body modifications.
Those eyes are the same, though. Brown so dark they’re almost black, quick and clever and seeing everything.
He’s always been handsome in that rakish, slightly dangerous way that makes mothers lock up their daughters and daughters climb out their windows.
I used to find it irresistible. I used to find a lot of things about Liam irresistible, which is how I ended up hiding stolen diamonds in the Canadian wilderness instead of finishing my art history degree.
He sees me. His mouth curves into that familiar half-smile, the one that used to make my stomach flip and my common sense
evaporate.
“Hails.”
“Don’t call me that.” I slide into the booth across from him, putting the table between us like it’ll help. “That person doesn’t
exist anymore.”
“Fair.” He doesn’t argue. Just accepts it the way Liam accepts everything, like water finding the path of least resistance.
“You look good. Really good.”
“I look exhausted because someone’s been leaving cryptic photographs on my doorstep.” I flag down the waitress, a woman in
her sixties with forearms like a dock worker, and order a whiskey. When she leaves, I turn back to him. “You could have just
knocked, you know. Instead of the whole mysterious stalker routine.”
“Would you have answered?”
Probably not. I don’t give him the satisfaction of admitting it.
He tilts his head, studying me. “You changed your hair.”
“You got a face tattoo.”
“Neck tattoo.”
“Is there really a difference?”
“About three inches and significantly more career limitations.” His grin is quick, disarming. The same grin that used to get
us into VIP rooms and out of tight spots. “But you’re deflecting. Your hair used to be longer.”
“People change their hair, Liam.”
He leans back in the booth, infuriatingly relaxed. “You’re also wearing less black than you used to. More color. That green
is new.”
I hate that he notices. I hate more that some small, traitorous part of me is pleased.
“Did you drag me to a dive bar in Red Hook to critique my wardrobe, or is there an actual point to this reunion?”
“Can’t it be both?” But his smile fades, and something more serious settles in.
“So,” I say instead, keeping my voice low. “You really think returning the diamond is going to make this go away? That whoever’s
hunting you is just going to shrug and move on?”
“I think it’s better than the alternative.” He takes a drink from whatever’s in his rocks glass. “Running didn’t work. Hiding
didn’t work. The only leverage we have is the thing they want.”
“And if they decide we’re loose ends once they have it?”
“Then we make sure the handoff is clean. Anonymous, untraceable. They get what they want, we disappear, everybody walks away
happy.” He sets the glass down. “It’s not perfect. But it’s a plan.”
The whiskey arrives. I wrap my fingers around the glass and don’t drink yet, needing something to hold on to.
“Your plans used to involve more contingencies,” I say. “Remember the Beaumont job? You had backup plans for our backup plans.
Flow charts. Color coding.”
“I didn’t have flow charts.”
“You had a laminated card.”
“That was a quick reference guide.” But he’s fighting a smile now, and god help me, I almost smile back. “And the Beaumont
job went perfectly.”
“We had to leave through a window.”
“A planned window exit.”
“We were on the third floor.”
“And we stuck the landing.” He raises his glass to me. “Admit it. We were good together.”
Changing the subject and not wanting to admit just how “good” he was at everything, I say, “So you need me. You can’t find
it without me.”
“The agreement we made.” His eyes hold mine. “Only you would know the location. Even if you told me now, described every landmark, I’d never find it. Remote Canada, unmarked terrain, five years of weather changing everything. I need you to take me there.”
I think about that frozen ground. The weight of the waterproof case in my hands. The way my fingers went numb as I buried
twenty million dollars in a place no one would ever think to look.
“When?” I ask.
“Tomorrow. I’ve already arranged transport and gear. We fly into Yellowknife and drive from there.” He pulls out a phone—not
the burner—and glances at the screen. “How much time can you get away?”
“My boss is closing the studio for the holidays. Two weeks off starting the twentieth.”
“Perfect timing.”
I laugh, but there’s nothing funny about it. “Yeah. Perfect.”
He’s watching me again, cataloging every micro-expression the way he used to watch marks. Which is why he notices when I check
my phone for the third time in five minutes.
“You’re seeing someone.”
I don’t bother denying it.
“Knox.” The name feels strange on my tongue in this context, like I’m introducing two worlds that should never touch. “He’s . . .”
How do you explain Knox Bishop? Former Marine, head of security, a man who followed me through Christmas markets for months
because he couldn’t help himself? A man who looks at me like I’m something precious and breakable and doesn’t know that I’ve
been lying to him since the day we met?
Liam saves me from having to finish the sentence. “The security guy who’s been following you around?”
I blink. “You’ve been watching him too?”
“Hard to miss a six-foot-three stalker when you’re already doing surveillance on the same target.” His smile is wry, almost
amused. “You always did like the dangerous ones.”
“Says the professional thief.”
“Former professional thief.” He tilts his glass toward me in a mock toast. “I went straight too, believe it or not. Got a
legitimate job, paid my taxes, tried to pretend the last decade of my life didn’t happen. But someone’s dragging us back in
whether we want it or not.” He sets the glass down. “Come with me to Canada. Help me end this. Then we can both actually move
on.”
“And what’s your legitimate job?” I ask, because I can’t help myself. “Accountant? Insurance adjuster? Beekeeping?”
“Private security consulting.” He has the grace to look slightly sheepish. “Helping companies find vulnerabilities in their
systems.”
“So you get paid to case buildings now.”
“Legally. With a contract and everything. I even have business cards.”
Despite everything, I feel my mouth twitch. This is the problem with Liam. He’s too easy to talk to, too easy to fall back
into rhythm with. Five years of silence and within twenty minutes we’re bantering like nothing ever happened, like I didn’t
walk out on him in the middle of the night with nothing but a note on the pillow and twenty million dollars buried in frozen
ground.
I look at him across the table, this man I used to love, used to run with, used to trust with my life when we were doing things
that could have gotten us killed. We were good together once. A team. The kind of partners who could communicate in glances