Chapter Four
By the time pale October daylight reached the high windows, Stella was already in the kitchen.
She stood at the counter in a black T-shirt and charcoal pants, her white streak bright against her dark hair in the gray morning light. Bread waited in the toaster. She had one hand wrapped around a glass of water and the other resting against the counter.
She’d left my bed sometime before dawn.
I’d felt the mattress shift and opened my eyes long enough to see her gathering the pants and underwear she’d left beside her. She’d paused at the bedroom door and looked back at me, her bare legs disappearing beneath the hem of the black T-shirt.
Then she’d crossed the hall to the room that locked from her side.
I hadn’t followed.
Now she looked over as I entered the kitchen.
“Morning.”
“Morning.”
Neither of us mentioned that a few hours ago she’d been naked in my bed telling me not to stop.
I opened the refrigerator.
“Eggs?”
“Yes, please.”
That was apparently how two adults handled the morning after one of them had chased the other through a fortified building.
Stella took another drink of water while I set a pan on the stove, cracked four eggs into it, and stirred them.
“You slept?” I asked.
“Some.”
“Nightmares?”
Her gaze lifted to mine.
The question was out before I could reconsider it. It was reasonable, but it asked for more than she’d offered me.
“No,” she said. “I just woke up and wanted my own room.”
“You don’t need to explain.”
“I know.”
The toaster popped.
Stella turned to retrieve the bread, and the movement pulled the cotton of her shirt across her back. My attention stayed there a second too long before I turned back to the stove.
Last night hadn’t changed the assignment.
My phone vibrated against the table.
The screen showed Bancroft.
Work had arrived before breakfast.
I answered.
“DiNero.”
“Morning. I have Locke on with us.”
A second voice came through the speaker.
“Geo, it’s Locke.”
It was the first time Locke Stonebridge and I had spoken directly. Until now, he’d dealt with Bancroft while I dealt with Stella.
“I can hear you.”
Stella glanced over from the toaster. I pointed to the phone and mouthed Locke.
She carried the toast to the table.
Bancroft got to the point. “The equipment number you sent checks out. The communications unit is genuine Exchange security equipment.”
“Assigned to anyone?”
“No. It’s pool-issued.”
I turned off the burner and divided the eggs between two plates.
“So anybody with the right access could’ve taken it.”
“Correct.”
Locke spoke next. “Counsel also confirmed the camera problem is exactly what Stella was told. Missing and corrupted material across the relevant period. Nothing that identifies who caused it.”
Stella sat down.
I put a plate in front of her and took the chair across from her.
“Then we have access without identity,” I said.
“That’s where we are,” Bancroft said.
Stella leaned toward the phone.
“So the equipment and the camera problem point inside The Exchange, but not to a person.”
Locke answered. “That’s exactly where we are.”
“And Volkov is near the top.”
“He is,” I said.
“His authority and access matter. So does the timing of his call. None of it proves he sent those men.”
She picked up her fork.
“You really hate jumping to conclusions.”
“I hate being wrong more.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It occasionally is.”
A brief silence came over the phone.
Then Locke said, “I’m beginning to understand why Thomas picked you.”
Stella smiled at her eggs.
Bancroft ignored that. “I’m arranging the evidence transfer for the unit. Until then, keep it secured.”
“It is.”
“If anything changes, call.”
The line disconnected.
I set my phone beside my plate.
Stella ate two bites before facing me.
“How wide is the access pool?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Can you narrow it?”
“Security staff. Supervisors. Anyone authorized to use pool equipment. Potentially senior personnel who could get access through somebody else.”
I took a drink of water.
“Which puts Volkov high on the list.”
“Yes. High, not alone.”
“I’ll take it.”
“That isn’t an accusation.”
“I know.”
I continued. “His authority and access matter, and Bellacorte’s death may reshape the power structure at the casino. If Volkov benefits from that, it gives us another reason to look at him.”
Stella lowered her fork.
“You think Antonio’s murder was about the casino.”
“I think somebody killed a wealthy man inside his own penthouse and interfered with security around the same time. Money, access, and who benefits are worth looking at.”
“And whoever killed him could be the same person who wants me.”
“Could be.”
“But you won’t say it is.”
“No.”
She sat back.
“I’m starting to see why tarot makes you uncomfortable.”
“Tarot doesn’t make me uncomfortable.”
“You look at my cards the way other people look at unexploded ammunition.”
“I know what ammunition does.”
“That’s exactly my point.”
I finished the last of my eggs.
Stella smiled without answering right away.
“What would make you believe?”
“In what?”
“That I actually see things.”
“You told me not to take an elevator because you saw a needle. We took another route and found two men with a loaded syringe.”
“And you decided that could still be instinct.”
“It could.”
Her eyebrows rose.
“You’re stubborn.”
“I’ve been called worse.”
She pushed her empty plate away.
“What about tarot?”
“What about it?”
“You keep acting like the cards are supposed to give me a name, address, and signed confession or they aren’t useful.”
“If they could give you those things, I’d have fewer objections.”
“That isn’t how it works.”
“I know.”
“No, you know what I told you. You don’t know what it feels like from my side.”
The cloth-wrapped deck sat near the end of the counter. She’d brought it out sometime before I got up.
“Then show me.”
Stella turned toward the deck.
“Show you what?”
“What the cards can actually tell you.”
She stilled.
“About the murder?”
“No.”
I leaned back in the chair.
“About me.”
For several seconds she didn’t move.
Then she stood and retrieved the deck.
“Are you sure?”
“If I say yes, are you going to tell me my future?”
“I don’t do party tricks.”
“I’m devastated.”
“You’re hiding it beautifully.”
She sat across from me again and unwrapped the cards.
She touched the deck and went quiet.
“What do you want to know?”
“I thought I wasn’t supposed to influence the cards.”
“That was Antonio’s theory. I prefer a question.”
I considered it.
“What am I carrying that I should’ve put down?”
Stella’s eyebrows lifted.
“That’s almost poetic for you.”
“Don’t tell anyone.”
“I’ll protect your reputation.”
She shuffled.
Her hands moved through the deck in smooth, practiced passes.
After a few passes, she set the deck down.
“Cut it.”
I did.
She drew the first card and placed it between us.
A skeletal figure rode a pale horse.
I read the title.
“Death.”
“Reversed.”
“That improves it?”
“Not necessarily.”
“Good. I was worried this might become cheerful.”
Her mouth curved briefly.
She drew the second card: Five of Cups.
The third was Justice reversed.
Stella didn’t speak immediately.
Her fingers rested beside the cards without touching them.
“What?” I asked.
“Death usually isn’t literal death.”
“That’s reassuring.”
“Would you stop?”
“I’m listening.”
She tapped the edge of the reversed card.
“This can be surviving a destruction but getting stuck in what came after. A change that should’ve happened and didn’t. Or something ending without really letting you move on.”
My shoulders tightened before I could stop them.
Stella nodded toward the Five of Cups.
“This is loss. Grief. What’s gone taking up so much of the frame that it’s hard to see anything else.”
Then she moved on to Justice reversed.
She went quiet.
The safe house seemed smaller than it had five minutes earlier.
“What does that one mean?” I asked.
“An institution or system failing. Blame landing where it shouldn’t. Somebody who should’ve answered for what happened didn’t.”
I didn’t move.
Neither did she.
She hadn’t told me a country.
She hadn’t said military.
She hadn’t said mission, unit, command, or government.
She didn’t have to.
Stella’s hand went to her temple.
“You okay?”
“Yes.”
Her answer came too fast.
More color had drained from her face.
I stood and filled her glass.
“You look sick.”
“I pushed harder than I meant to.”
“Then stop.”
“I am stopping.”
She gathered the cards slowly, but her fingers fumbled once against the edge of the deck.
I put the glass beside her.
“Drink.”
“That one was definitely an order.”
“Yes.”
She took the glass anyway.
After several swallows, she leaned back and closed her eyes.
“Nauseous?”
“A little.”
“Dizzy?”
“Yes.”
“You knew this could happen.”
“I knew it might.”
“You did it anyway.”
Her eyes opened.
“You asked me to.”
I pulled my chair closer but didn’t touch her.
“How long?”
“The worst of it usually passes quickly if I stop.”
“And if you don’t?”
“It gets worse.”
“Then we’re done with cards for today.”
Stella’s mouth flattened.
“You do realize you can’t actually ban me from my own tarot deck.”
“I’m aware.”
“Good.”
“I can tell you when I think something is a terrible idea.”
“That does seem to be one of your hobbies.”
Her voice had weakened, but she hadn’t lost the dry edge.
I waited until she drank more water.
Then Stella glanced at the cards she hadn’t finished wrapping.
“You don’t have to tell me anything.”
Justice reversed sat between us.
“I was Italian Special Forces.”
She stayed still.
I hadn’t planned to say it.
That was probably why I kept going.
“My unit was sent into a covert operation that people above us already knew was compromised.”
Stella’s fingers tightened around her glass.
“They sent you anyway?”
“Yes.”
I could still remember the first burst of gunfire.
“Men from my unit died. I survived.”
She didn’t ask how many.
“Afterward, I found enough to know the failure hadn’t been accidental. Senior officials knew what they were sending us into.”
“And you tried to expose it.”
“I refused to accept the version they wanted me to accept.”
“What happened?”
“They made me the problem.”
She didn’t interrupt.
“The scapegoat.”
“Yes.”