Chapter 34
NORA
The man who missed our blind date has set dinner for two beneath a dead carousel.
He waits across the little table for me to admire it.
The plates are white china, the kind restaurants buy by the hundred, though each one has been edged with a gold marker in a shaky imitation of luxury.
He has folded the paper napkins into stiff fans.
Two battery candles throw weak yellow light across a loaf of bread beside a roast chicken with steam no longer rising from its split skin.
Every detail reaches for romance and closes around my throat instead.
My stomach clenches at the smell. Hunger might be part of it. Smoke and pregnancy could claim the rest.
Beyond his shoulder, painted horses hang under the carousel canopy in leaping poses. Their gilded poles run upward into darkness. When the music stops, the whole attraction seems to hold its breath with me.
"You haven't touched your food," he says.
My fingers tighten beneath the gray blanket around my shoulders. The green sweater under it is damp from melted snow. Soot has dried along one cuff, where I keep rubbing the fabric without meaning to.
"I spent the afternoon breathing in a burning house." My smoke-roughened voice supports the claim. "Food isn't winning the competition for my attention."
He glances toward the improvised control station beside the carousel.
Six monitors have been bolted to a plywood desk, their feeds divided among doors, corridors, the loading court, and long stretches of road turning white under the snowfall.
Red dots sit over several interior passages.
Beside the screens rests a black switch box with the cover removed.
Wires spill from it toward the floor. "The house wasn't supposed to burn while you were there. I didn't do that."
"You used it the moment it helped you."
His fingers stop against the bread. "I used an opportunity. That's different."
The distinction appears to satisfy him. He tears bread from the loaf, eats it, then brushes crumbs from his fingers onto the rented tablecloth.
Weeks among people who consider fabric provenance casual conversation have taught me to recognize the fine wool of his suit.
He has buttoned the jacket too tightly. A wet line darkens the shoulders.
Nothing about him resembles the image on his dating profile except the shape of his eyes. Even those seem altered now that no screen contains what he wants from me.
I wonder how many photographs he rejected before choosing the one with the sun on his face.
I wonder whether he tried the modest little smile until it looked accidental.
Those questions used to belong to a disappointing stranger.
Now the man behind the false photographs controls a switch that may burn the building with me inside it.
My gaze passes over the plate again. The chicken could be drugged. The water certainly could. Without a way to test either, refusal becomes another problem I have to solve without making him feel refused.
"At least drink," he says. "You've been coughing."
"If you wanted me comfortable, you shouldn't have put a bag over my head."
"It was loose." He says it with such injured certainty that a laugh tries to rise in me. I press my tongue to the back of my teeth until the urge passes. He would hear ridicule where none was offered. I suspect he hears it everywhere.
"It was still a bag."
He tears another piece of bread. "You were frightened. My people had to move fast."
"Your driver was frightened too."
The bread pauses near his mouth. "He was told to keep going."
The memory returns in broken pieces. The false escort folding forward after the impact. The driver swearing as my hand found the door handle. Another vehicle blocking the narrow road. A man yanking me backward before my boots reached the snow.
I leave those pieces where they are. If I gather them now, they will become panic.
On the center monitor, snow sweeps across the main road. The picture shivers whenever wind strikes the exterior camera. No headlights appear. No shape moves across the loading court.
Konstantin may still believe I'm being taken toward a hospital. He may have found my warning. He may be searching thirty-eight miles away or three streets from Grandma's house. Not knowing whether he is searching in the right place frightens me more than either possibility alone.
I pull the blanket closer. "What did you think would happen after the video?"
He sits straighter before answering. "He comes."
"Then what happens?"
He glances toward the empty road feed. "He sees that force doesn't solve every problem."
"You built a building full of fire to teach him restraint."
"The fuel lines were already here. I improved the ignition."
His pride turns my skin cold.
I follow the nearest cable with my eyes. It disappears beneath a rubber mat beside the plywood desk. The attraction floor is bare, and the distance to the switch leaves me exposed to the pistol under his jacket.
The park has been chosen by someone who likes watching doors. My job is to make him watch me instead, turning his need to be admired into the minutes Konstantin may need.
"You went to a lot of trouble for a date you missed the first time."
He leans back until the chair creaks under him. "I didn't miss it."
"I was there for twenty-seven minutes."
"I arrived."
"After the shooting."
His hand closes around the stem of his water glass. A minute flaw in the bowl catches the candlelight every time his grip shifts.
"They gave me a simple assignment," he says. "I was supposed to watch the meeting from the next table. A man alone would have been memorable, so I arranged a date. Your profile was new. You had no connection to anyone in that room."
I keep my voice mild. "So I was furniture?"
"You gave the table a reason to exist."
"Much better," I tell him, settling back without offering another argument.
He ignores that. "The parking structure had two lower ramps. I followed the wrong car through the first gate, and the door locked behind me. My phone had no signal underground. By the time I found the freight exit, the shooting had started."
For one useless second, my mind returns to the restaurant before bullets broke the glass. I see the untouched chair, my phone beside the bread plate, and Konstantin watching me over the shoulder of a woman who did not want him.
The man across from me had chosen my table. His lateness put Konstantin in his path, though neither of them knows what to do with a life that refused the arrangement. "You got lost in a parking garage."
"The signs were wrong, which wasn't my fault."
I nod as if the distinction has helped. "Of course."
His face reddens. "They blamed me for the attack. They said I had one task. Men who have failed worse than I ever did laughed while my uncle stripped my access."
"Maybe they laughed at the signs."
The words escape before caution catches them.
His glass hits the table. Water leaps over the rim. One hand goes inside his jacket while the other reaches toward the switch box.
My heart slams once and hurts. I lift both palms without rising.
"If you're going to kill me for noticing the strange part of that story, this isn't much of a restoration."
His hand stops.
I can see him testing the word.
"Restoration," he repeats.
"That's why I'm here, isn't it?" Every breath scratches, though I force the sentence out at an even pace. "You take back the woman Konstantin claimed. Your family sees you beat him inside a building he couldn't control. They decide you matter again."
His fingers leave the switch first. The pistol remains hidden under his jacket.
"I already mattered."
"Then why do you need them to admit it?"
He stares at me across the crooked gold lines on the plates.
I know I've pushed too far just before his chair scrapes backward. He stands, sending the battery candle nearest him onto its side. His eyes move over me with a furious confusion that feels worse than a plan.
I lower my hands. Fear wants my gaze on the gun. I make myself look at his face instead.
"You said this was a date," I tell him.
"It is."
"Then show me what you planned."
He looks toward the carousel.
The change is slight, though I feel the space it gives me.
"You still haven't eaten any of it."
"My stomach is unsettled, so give it time." I nod toward the waiting horses. "You did all this work. Sitting here arguing wastes it."
His attention travels from me to the control station and then back again. The dinner has not gone according to the scene he wrote in his head. An attraction may still obey him.
"The carousel comes later," he says.
"What comes first?"
Suspicion narrows his eyes. I hold still while he searches for the joke.
What he finds must please him, since the tension in his shoulders eases. He takes a cloth from the empty chair beside him and wipes the spilled water with small, irritated swipes.
"You would have liked me if he'd stayed out of it."
"You don't know what I would have done." He begins listing the facts that please him. "You chose my profile. You came to my table at the time I selected."
"I agreed to one drink with a photograph, then a hostess walked me to a reserved chair."
He stacks each fact into a case for owning me. For weeks, I've watched another man use certainty to close his hand around every risk near me. Konstantin's claim frightened me most when it disguised decisions as protection. He has begun learning the difference.
The stalker recognizes no difference between loving me and owning me. His entire fantasy depends on my consent being unnecessary. "You unlocked the door," I say. "That didn't invite you into my life."
"You were waiting for me."
"I was waiting to meet someone. You never let me find out who he was."
His expression goes flat.
I've done it again.
My body understands danger before my thoughts finish naming it. Heat drains from my hands. The child is too small for me to feel, leaving the absence of pain as my only reassurance.