Chapter 5
Sergei is my masterpiece.
His real name is not Sergei.
I didn’t ask what it was.
He is a retired stage actor with a weakness for Scotch and an alarming willingness to accept cash for bizarre assignments.
The gold teeth are caps.
His suit is his own.
He was offended when I suggested renting one.
I gave him the credential, the phrase, and exactly three instructions.
Walk in.
Say his name is Sergei.
Smile.
Then answer almost nothing.
He loved the role.
Perhaps too much.
I time his arrival for the precise window when staffing movement is highest.
Security shifts toward the gate.
Voices change.
A ripple begins traveling through the property.
I slip away from the catering staging area and move deeper inside.
This is the part I wanted.
Not Ghost knowing I'm here.
Me knowing who Ghost is.
I have been trying to solve him since France.
The invitation gives me names.
So I researched.
Kane Haverhill is easy.
NBA.
Stanford.
Royal Oaks.
Handsome enough that cameras follow him for sport.
Not Ghost.
His public life is too documented, and Ghost has been online during games.
Drew Travers is also impossible.
Too loud.
Too reckless.
Married.
Ghost's humor has teeth. Drew's humor appears to use blunt-force trauma.
Jalen is interesting for perhaps five minutes.
Single.
Smart enough.
Connected.
But I find too many public schedules that conflict with Ghost.
And somehow I cannot imagine Ghost spending forty minutes kissing models in the Mediterranean.
Tristan Vale?
Possible intelligence.
European familiarity.
Money.
Languages.
But married to Stella and apparently obsessed with her.
Not Ghost.
Leo Holt?
Another candidate.
Polished.
Old Newport ties.
But married too.
Besides, Ghost doesn't speak about domestic life like a married man.
Leo's father becomes my favorite possibility for nearly an hour.
Divorced.
Wealthy.
Connected.
Old enough to possess the cultural knowledge Ghost has accumulated.
Young enough to still have the physical confidence suggested by the photographs if genetics have been kind.
That possibility nearly makes me cancel the entire operation.
Falling for someone's divorced father through an encrypted network would be difficult to explain at dinner parties.
Then there is Xavier Blackwell.
I dismiss him almost immediately.
Everyone knows the rumors.
Cold.
Secretive.
Possibly gay.
Rarely photographed with women except at formal events.
He looks at cameras as though they personally disappoint him.
And Xavier Blackwell is not some self-made European hacker who spent childhood rebuilding computers at a kitchen table while his mother made pasta.
Xavier Blackwell was born inside a surveillance empire.
Blackwell is the kind of company Ghost mocks.
Inherited wealth.
Private jets.
Boardrooms.
Power passed from father to son.
No.
Ghost cannot be Xavier.
The idea is laughable.
Which is why I don't laugh when I finally see him.
He comes down the main staircase fast.
Not walking.
Not quite running.
Controlled men don't run unless something matters.
Xavier Blackwell slides past Kane Haverhill and the other men gathered below.
They turn.
Drew says something.
Xavier doesn't stop.
My pulse changes.
I am carrying champagne toward a service station twenty feet away.
Brown wig.
Brown eyes.
Tan skin.
White catering jacket.
Forgettable.
I lower my gaze and keep moving.
Then Drew follows.
So do the others.
Interesting.
I change direction.
Not toward them.
Parallel.
Enough to watch reflections in the glass doors without staring directly.
Sergei has arrived.
Even from here, I know exactly when Drew sees the gold teeth.
His entire body folds with laughter.
A smile pulls at my mouth.
Worth every euro.
Xavier does not laugh.
He closes the distance and grabs Sergei by the lapels.
My smile disappears.
That is not Ghost.
Ghost is controlled.
Ghost is funny.
Ghost would—
No.
Ghost would absolutely lose his temper if someone breached his security.
Wouldn't he?
Drew catches Xavier's arm.
Vale moves closer.
Kane watches.
The whole group is exactly where I wanted them.
I slip farther along the terrace and switch trays with another worker.
My heartbeat is beginning to bother me.
Xavier?
No.
Absolutely not.
I tell myself that until Drew says something I can't hear.
Then Xavier's head snaps toward him.
Drew puts his hand over his heart.
A familiar gesture.
I saw it through the distant lens from France when Ghost's friends were joking in NULL.
No.
That proves nothing.
Then a waiter brings Scotch.
Drew pours it himself and pushes the glass into Xavier's hand.
Xavier drinks.
My stomach begins to drop.
Ghost drinks Scotch.
Half the men here drink Scotch.
Stop.
I send the photograph.
The effect is immediate.
Drew looks at a device.
Then his entire face changes.
He turns it toward—Xavier.
Not Kane.
Not Vale.
Not one of the security men.
Xavier.
The world narrows.
He takes the device like it belongs to him.
Because it does.
No.
My breath catches.
Drew is talking fast now.
Xavier says something sharp.
Vale laughs.
Sergei raises his glass.
I stop walking.
Only for half a second.
Too long.
Move.
I force my feet forward.
Then Drew's voice carries across the terrace.
“Miss London Bridge.”
Everything inside me stops.
No one at this wedding should know that name.
No one except Ghost.
And Ghost's friends.
Drew turns back toward Xavier.
Toward him.
My fingers go numb around the tray.
No.
It can't be.
I stare at Xavier Blackwell.
Dark hair.
Six-three.
Custom tuxedo.
Jaw tight enough to crack stone.
Scotch in one hand.
A secure device in the other.
The same device receiving my photograph through NULL.
Ghost.
My Ghost.
Xavier Blackwell.
For a second, I hear nothing.
Not music.
Not staff.
Not ocean.
My own pulse seems to fill the entire terrace.
Every explanation I built collapses at once.
Italian.
His Italian.
The obscene knowledge of art, finance, wine, politics, architecture.
The old-world references.
The expensive cuff that appeared in one photograph.
The hand.
The stomach.
The contempt for inherited wealth that I mistook for the bitterness of someone excluded from it.
Maybe Xavier hated inherited privilege because he lived inside it.
Maybe he knew exactly what it cost.
I feel sick.
Ghost isn't some scholarship boy from northern Italy.
He isn't a self-made hacker with a mama making pasta in a stone kitchen.
He is Xavier Blackwell.
Heir to Blackwell Inc.
The man whose company I've been penetrating for years.
The man whose systems I have damaged.
The man whose secrets I have stolen.
The man assigned to find whoever keeps slipping through his network.
Me.
My enemy.
My hunter.
And the only man I have trusted since Papa died.
My breath shakes.
I lower the tray before anyone notices my hands.
No.
This cannot be happening.
I think about every conversation.
Every confession.
Every night I stayed inside NULL because Ghost was the only person who could make loneliness feel temporary.
Every flirtation.
Every photograph.
The piece of my mouth.
His abdomen.
The increasingly dangerous things we've said late at night when neither of us wanted to admit what we were becoming.
My chest hurts.
I'm falling in love with Ghost.
Maybe I already have.
And Ghost is Xavier Blackwell.
The Blackwell heir I've spent years trying to destroy.
Across the terrace, Drew is still talking him down.
Xavier rolls his shoulders.
Adjusts one cuff.
The anger disappears behind that cold, beautiful face.
Control returning.
I know that move.
I've read it in punctuation for years.
Ghost does the same thing in NULL.
When he is furious, his messages get cleaner.
Shorter.
More precise.
How did I miss it?
Because I didn't want Ghost to be someone like Xavier.
I wanted him safe.
Separate.
Mine.
The realization hurts enough that I almost laugh.
Mine.
He isn't mine.
He has no idea I'm standing twenty yards away wearing someone else's eyes.
And now I have a problem bigger than Blackwell security.
Xavier doesn't know I've identified him.
That is the only advantage left to me.
I need to keep it.
I carry the tray inside.
No rush.
No panic.
Jenny Hernández does not know Xavier Blackwell.
The woman in brown contacts does not know Ghost.
Sabine Beaumont is nowhere near this property.
Vesper?
Vesper is everywhere.
I move into the service corridor and brace one hand briefly against the wall.
Breathe.
Think.
Papa.
Blackwell.
ARGUS.
The files I've stolen.
The blackmail I've used.
The men I've squeezed using information pulled from Blackwell's supposedly untouchable systems.
Xavier has been hunting me.
Maybe not Vesper by name.
But the intrusion.
The ghost inside his machine.
All this time, Ghost has been searching for the same woman he goes online to find every night.
The irony is almost obscene.
I close my eyes.
Then another realization hits.
I have been searching for him too.
Not Ghost.
Blackwell.
The man behind the surveillance.
The hunter behind the screen.
The one guarding the empire that may have swallowed my father.
We haven't been moving toward each other.
We've been circling.
Years.
Both blind.
Both armed.
Both falling.
I open my eyes.
No tears.
Not here.
Never here.
From outside, the ceremony music begins.
Kane Haverhill is about to get married.
Xavier will be seated somewhere near the front, pretending he isn't scanning every reflection for me.
And I have a choice.
Run.
Take the cove.
Reach the dive gear.
Disappear into the Pacific before he ever knows how close he came.
That's the intelligent move.
It's also the move I've made my entire life.
Disappear first.
Feel later.
But I didn't cross an ocean to hide behind a catering door.
I came to see Ghost.
Now I have.
And I need to know what happens when I get closer.
I touch the brown wig.
Then the contacts.
There is still another dress hidden with the secondary disguise.
Another face waiting.
Another version of me.
I can become a guest.
Move closer.
Watch Xavier when he isn't looking for Vesper.
Find out who he is when Ghost isn't typing.
Dangerous.
Possibly catastrophic.
I smile despite the ache in my chest.
He thinks Vesper outplayed him once today.
Not yet.
I whisper softly in Italian.
“Vediamo quanto bene conosci davvero il tuo fantasma.”
Let's see how well you really know your ghost.
Then I turn toward the cliffs where I have my blonde wig and bombshell dress hidden.
A strapless push up bra with inserts will complete my next costume change.
I can’t break now. Not when I’m so close to finding out the truth about my father’s death even if I have to break a heart who was falling in love with a man who doesn’t really exist. At least not the one I had made him up in my mind to be.
The caterer has done her job.
Time to become someone else.