Chapter 4 #3
"You left your post tonight," he says.
"I had a conversation."
"You had a conversation." He leans back. "At the bar. With a woman."
"Your observational skills are staggering. No wonder you and big brother run one of the best intelligence and black ops agencies in the world."
"You've spent five years guarding my sister's club like it was your personal penance. Now you're having conversations with new members." He picks up the bourbon again. "At the bar. Where people can see you."
"People have always been able to see me."
"From a distance. While you sat in a corner radiating the emotional accessibility of a sniper's nest." He drinks. "This is different."
It is different. He knows that, but I'm not going to confirm it for him.
"She's interesting," I say. Because it's true and because anything more specific will give Luc material he'll use against me for months.
"Interesting." He rolls the word around. "You do realize that's the first time you've described any woman in this club with a word that wasn't a behavioral observation."
He's right about that too. I hate that.
"There's something off about her," I say.
Luc's expression shifts. The teasing drops like a coat he can shed in under a second. "Off how?"
"She doesn't add up. The knowledge is there.
The instinct is there. But she hasn't put the pieces together yet.
" I take a drink of water. "Her knowledge is theoretical.
Her questions aren't. She watches access, people, systems. She asks about failure points when she claims she's studying consent culture. "
"What do they track with?"
"When I figure it out, I'll let you know."
Luc studies me. He's the only person who reads me with any accuracy. I tolerate it because his reads are useful. And telling him to stop has never worked.
"You went through this once before," he says. "After Elysium closed. You talked to people. You asked questions. You came to me with a list of things that didn't add up, and we spent weeks pulling threads that went nowhere."
"I remember."
"The threads went nowhere because we couldn't find anything. A woman died. The coroner ruled it accidental. Nobody alleged otherwise. No evidence connected any of it."
"I remember that too."
"You know she wasn't yours to save. Her death falls on Elysium. They failed to keep their people safe."
The words land the way they always land. Like a door closing on a room I can't leave.
"I know what the official report said." I hold his gaze. "I also know what it didn't say. Absence of proof isn't the same as evidence of what really happened."
Luc doesn't argue. He's argued it before, years ago.
I think he stopped because he knows I won't be moved. I also think some part of him, the part that built Rapier with his brother, has never been entirely sure I'm wrong.
"And now there's a woman at the bar who asks the wrong questions and watches the wrong things," he says.
"Yes."
"And you want to put a collar on her."
"I didn't say that."
"You didn't have to. I've known you long enough, Sebastien. You left the booth." He finishes his bourbon. "That's louder than anything you're going to tell me tonight."
He stands. Adjusts his jacket. At the edge of the table, he pauses.
"Be careful," he says. "Not the kind of careful you do naturally. The other kind. The kind that accounts for the possibility that you might want something for reasons that have nothing to do with Elysium."
He leaves. The back bar goes quiet around me.
I take my corner back. Renata has already left a fresh glass. The scotch catches the amber light. Same as every night.
Natalie has left. I don't know when.
In my pocket, my phone is warm. I pull it out. The call is one I decided on before the conversation started. I couldn't justify it until now.
Not Rapier. Rapier means Remy, and Remy means Margot hears about it by morning. I'm not putting a member on their radar based on instinct and an untouched scotch. I have my own contacts from the months I spent pulling at Elysium's threads. People who owe me answers without asking why I want them.
"Natalie Chastain. She's a new member at Dominion, says she's a writer." I keep my voice even. "Confirm what she told the club is accurate. I want to know if anything doesn't match that Rapier Strategic might have missed."
I end the call. The amber hasn't moved in the glass.
The booth settles around me like something that used to fit and doesn't anymore.
Luc is wrong about one thing. I didn't leave the booth because Natalie reminds me of Elysium. I left because what she says she's doing and what she's actually doing don't match. Five years ago, I learned what it costs to dismiss the gap between those things. I won't do it again.
He's right about the other thing. I want to collar her, and the wanting has nothing to do with surveillance or suspicion or the fragments that still press at three in the morning.
The wanting is its own kind of problem, and I don't have a booth for that. But there's a collar in a drawer at the townhouse that's never been locked around anyone's throat.