CHAPTER THREE JAX #2
The response takes three minutes. Three minutes where I watch Elias and Lana have a conversation I can't hear, standing in front of a photograph of a terrace that looks uncomfortably similar to the one where her husband died.
Three minutes where my mentor—the man who trained me, sent me away, then connected me with Lucien—talks to the woman I've been watching obsessively for a week.
Lucien's text arrives: Last minute addition. Why?
Because Elias doesn't do last minute. Because everything he does is calculated three moves ahead. Because seeing him here, now, talking to her, feels like a test I didn't know I was taking.
I don't respond. Just watch.
They're still talking. Elias says very few words, gestures toward the photograph again.
Lana responds, her face more animated than I've seen it.
She's being honest with him in a way she wasn't with Lucien, wasn't with anyone else tonight.
The performance has dropped. She's saying very few words that I desperately want to hear.
Then Lucien appears in frame. Sees them together.
His expression does exactly what I expected—calculation wrapped in practiced warmth.
He says a few words. Elias responds with that edge I recognize, the one he uses when he's making a point without stating it explicitly.
Lana looks between them, sensing the tension, and excuses herself.
Smart. Get out before you become collateral in whatever power game they're playing.
She moves away from them, weaving through the gallery, but her body language has changed. More closed. Defensive. Whatever she was feeling in front of that photograph—whatever vulnerability she'd allowed herself—has been locked away again.
I track her across my screens. She finishes her champagne, sets the glass on a server's tray, walks toward the hallway that leads to the restrooms. Camera 7 catches her entering the corridor.
She doesn't look back. Just walks with purpose, like she needs escape more than she needs to maintain appearances.
The bathroom door closes behind her.
I switch to waiting. The hallway camera can't see inside the restroom—privacy laws, consent protocols, the boundaries Lucien insists on maintaining—so I'm left watching an empty corridor and wondering what she's doing in there. Composing herself? Breaking down? Both?
My phone rings. Lucien.
I answer. "Yes."
"Come to my office." His tone is clipped. "Now."
"I'm monitoring the exhibition."
"The exhibition can wait five minutes. My office. Now."
He hangs up before I can respond.
I save my current configurations, lock the control center behind me, take the private elevator to the third floor.
The ride is thirty-seven seconds that I spend trying to predict what Lucien wants.
Elias's presence has disrupted something.
Lucien's careful curation of tonight, his manipulation of Lana through Vera's art, his positioning of her as both patron and prey—Elias showing up unannounced has thrown variables into the equation.
The elevator doors open. Lucien's office door is already open, and he's standing at his window overlooking the main floor, hands in his pockets, posture rigid.
"Close the door," he says without turning around.
I close it.
"About Elias," Lucien says, still facing the window. "When did you last see him?"
"Three days ago. We had dinner."
He turns. "Did he mention anything about tonight?"
"No. Nothing."
"He contacted me this afternoon requesting entry.
Said he's interested in Vera Molina's work - apparently they know each other from years ago.
" Lucien crosses to his desk, pours scotch, but doesn't offer me any.
"Normally I wouldn't care. But he went directly to Lana Pope.
Engaged her in extended conversation. That concerns me. "
"Why?"
"Because I'm cultivating a potential patron and I don't need complications from your former employer." He studies me. "What did you observe?"
"She was more open with him than she's been with anyone else tonight. Her body language changed - less guarded, more engaged. They stood there for several minutes."
"Doing what?"
"I don't have audio authorization. I can only tell you they were looking at the photograph together. The Drop. And she was responding to whatever he said."
"That's what concerns me. She's been carefully controlled all evening.
Then Elias appears and suddenly her guard drops.
" Lucien sets down his glass. "I don't know what his interest is - whether it's the artist, the exhibition, or something else.
But I want you watching closely. If he approaches her again, I want to know immediately. "
"Understood."
"Go back to your station." He dismisses me with a gesture. "Keep monitoring."
I leave without responding. Take the elevator back down to the control center. Unlock the door, return to my chair, and pull up my monitors.
Camera 7 shows the hallway is still empty. She's been in the bathroom for six minutes, forty-three seconds. Longer than necessary for composure adjustments. Long enough that I'm starting to wonder if she found another exit, if she's gone, if I've lost—
The bathroom door opens. She emerges, and her face is different. Flushed. Eyes bright. Hands steadier. Whatever she did in there—crying, breathing exercises, internal recalibration—she's composed herself enough to return.
But she doesn't return to the gallery.
Instead, she walks past Camera 7's coverage zone, toward the emergency exit at the end of the hallway. She’s not fleeing, her pace is measured and controlled. But she is leaving. Choosing departure over enduring.
I pull up Camera 2, which covers the exterior emergency exit and watch her push through the door into the alley behind The Dominion. The night is cool, clear, and she stands there for a moment, breathing like she's just surfaced from underwater.
Then she starts walking. Not toward the front entrance where her car would be waiting. Away from The Dominion entirely, into the darker streets of The Margin.
My hands move before I can think through the implications. Pull out my phone. Text the driver Lucien arranged: Subject departing on foot. Track but don't approach.
Then I'm up, grabbing my jacket, locking the control center, taking the stairs instead of the elevator because stairs are faster when you're not thinking clearly.
I shouldn't follow her. This crosses every professional boundary I've maintained for two years. Surveillance from a distance is voyeurism. Surveillance on foot is stalking.
But I'm already moving.
I exit through the staff door, scan the street for her black dress. There—two blocks ahead, walking with purpose into neighborhoods that get progressively less safe the farther away you get from The Dominion's sphere of influence.
I follow, maintaining distance, using techniques Elias taught me years ago. Stay far enough back that I'm not obvious. Move when she's looking away. Blend with the environment. Become a ghost following another ghost.
She walks for twelve blocks. Doesn't look back once. Doesn't check her phone. Just walks like she's trying to outpace the thing that's following her from inside.
Finally, she stops in front of a building in The Margin's cheaper district. Older construction, six stories, the kind of place where nobody asks questions. She keys in an entry code, pulls the door open, disappears inside.
I wait across the street. Watch lights turn on—third floor, corner apartment. She appears at the window briefly, looking out at the city, then pulls curtains closed.
This is where she lives. Not Gabriel Pope's coastal estate. Not some expensive high-rise in The Crest. A modest apartment in The Margin where she can be anonymous.
My phone buzzes. Text from Lucien: Where are you?
I type: Following a lead. Will report.
His response: That's not an answer.
I don't reply. Just stand in the shadows across from Lana Pope's apartment, watching curtained windows, wondering what it means that I followed her home and why the hollow place in my chest feels less empty knowing where she sleeps.