2. Chapter 2
Beckett
Iam standing in the elevator of Isla Wrenwood's building doing a threat assessment before the doors open, and the number of entry points I count before I reach her floor tells me whoever is watching her has been doing this for a long time.
Ground floor: lobby with a staffed desk, which should be a control point and isn't, because the doorman rotates between three buildings on this block and is away from his post for an average of eleven minutes per hour.
Service entrance in the basement, accessible via a code that — according to the building management report I pulled this morning — hasn't been changed in fourteen months.
Freight elevator with a manual override.
Parking structure connected to the building via an internal stairwell with a door that the security log shows has been propped open six times in the last thirty days.
Six times.
I make a note.
The elevator opens on the fourteenth floor and I step out into a hallway that smells like expensive candles and has exactly one camera, positioned to cover the elevator bank and nothing else.
I count three apartments on this floor. I stand at Isla Wrenwood's door and knock and run the numbers one more time while I wait.
The numbers are not good.
She opens the door in three-inch heeled boots at two in the afternoon, which tells me something. I'm not sure yet what.
"You're early," she says.
"I'm on time."
She steps back to let me in, which I count as progress, and I move past her into the apartment and start the walkthrough before she has finished closing the door.
It is a good apartment — high ceilings, corner unit, two exposures — and someone with a long lens and a building across the street has already identified both of those things as assets.
I check the locks on the primary windows first. One of them is a single-point latch that a moderately determined person could defeat in under forty seconds. I add it to the list.
She follows me. I expected that.
"The lock on that window is original to the building," she says, from behind me. "It's decorative at this point."
"I know." I move to the next one. "I'm replacing it."
"You're —" A pause. "You're replacing my window lock."
"And the one in the bedroom. And the service entrance code."
"My housekeeper uses that entrance."
"Your housekeeper can use the front door.
" I move through to the kitchen. The service entrance is off a narrow hallway behind it, and I try the handle and find it unlocked, which isn't a surprise but is still a problem.
I look at it. Then I look back at Isla, who is standing in the kitchen doorway with her arms crossed and the expression of a woman deciding whether to be outraged or amused.
She lands on: "She's sixty-two years old."
"I'm aware."
"Not a credible threat."
"No," I agree. "But the person who has been inside this building six times in the last thirty days might find an unlocked door useful.
" I change the code while she processes that.
She does not argue about the code, which means she understands the implication and is taking it seriously, which moves her up one notch in my assessment.
I file this away. She is more practical than she wants me to know.
She follows me through the rest of the apartment like a site supervisor who doesn't trust the contractor's measurements, which I've decided is preferable to a client who disappears and then complains about the results. She asks questions the whole time. Some of them are good questions.
"What's your clearance level?"
"High enough."
"For what, exactly?"
"For this." I check the sightline from her living room window to the building across the street and find what I expected to find. "You should keep the blinds down after six in the evening."
"That's when the light is best."
"I know." I step back from the window. "Blinds down."
She makes a sound that is not agreement but is not refusal either. I've learned, in approximately ninety minutes of knowing Isla Wrenwood, that this is her version of a concession and I shouldn't push my luck past it.
"Have you ever actually worked for someone who talks back?" she asks.
"Frequently."
"And?"
"And I prefer clients who don't require me to repeat myself." I move toward the hallway. "Second bedroom — is it in use?"
"It's my office."
"I'll need a key."
"You'll need a —" She stops. Follows me. "Why do you need a key to my office?"
"Because if someone accesses this apartment while you're in it, you need a room with a lock you can get to in under ten seconds.
The primary bedroom is at the end of the hall.
Your office is six feet from the living room.
" I try the office door, find it unlocked, and look back at her. "Six feet is better than thirty."
She stands in the hallway and looks at me with an expression I can't read, which is unusual. Most people are readable. "You've done this before," she says.
"Yes."
"Someone got inside?"
"Not on my watch." I hold her gaze. "That's the point."
She is quiet for a moment — not the performative quiet she uses when she is deciding how to push back, but something else, something that sits differently. Then she goes to her desk, pulls a key from the top drawer, and holds it out.
I take it. She lets go a half-second before I expected her to.
We stand in her kitchen, two feet apart, and I clock that this is not going to be a clean professional arrangement. I note it, and I set it aside, because noting it is as much time as I am willing to give it right now.
My phone goes off at four-fifteen. Celeste.
"There's a problem," she says, without preamble, which is one of the things I appreciate about Celeste Harper-Andrews. "The story leaked. Thirty minutes before the scheduled announcement, to Page Six. Engagement confirmed, Match Maven named, one detail included that was not in any public document."
I turn away from the window I am currently evaluating. "Which detail?"
"The arrangement structure," Celeste says. "Not explicitly, but close enough. Someone used the word managed."
I hang up and look at Isla, who has already found the article — she is reading it on her phone with the focused, controlled stillness of a woman who has had a great deal of practice receiving bad news in front of other people.
Her expression is flat. Her jaw is set. She is considerably angrier than she is showing, which means she is very angry indeed.
"Someone inside the agency," she says, without looking up. "Or the family office."
"Yes."
"My father's assistant has worked for him for nineteen years." She scrolls. "Celeste's staff?"
"Being looked at." I cross to where she is standing and she turns the phone so I can see the screen, which is a small, automatic gesture that I don't think she notices she's made.
I read the article. It's careful — whoever fed this knows exactly how close to the line they can get — and it ends with a quote from an anonymous source.
Isla reads it at the same time I do. I watch her face.
She reads it twice. Then she puts the phone face-down on the counter, picks up her coffee mug, and takes a long sip.
"Well," she says.
"Yes."
She sets the mug down. Her hand is steady. "Blinds," she says.
"Sorry?"
She nods toward the window. "At six. I'll keep them down."
I look at her for a moment. Then I turn and go back to the window evaluation, and behind me I hear Isla Wrenwood put her phone face-up again, and I know without looking that she is reading the quote one more time.
She will not be able to hide behind a ring.
I add it to the list. It goes at the top.
The quote sits in my head on the drive back to Brooklyn, which I don't normally allow.
I allow threat analysis. I allow logistics.
I allow the fourteen-month-old entry code and the single-point window latch and the eleven-minute gap in lobby coverage.
I do not allow quotes from anonymous sources to occupy mental real estate, because that's how emotion gets into the work, and emotion in the work gets people hurt.
I allow it anyway, for approximately four blocks, before I shut it down.
What I keep instead is the look on her face when she read it.
Not the flat expression she wore for the first pass, the one she has clearly worn in front of cameras and board tables and probably her father for most of her adult life.
The second pass. The one that lasted less than two seconds before she picked up her coffee mug and said well in a tone that meant something entirely different.
That look I keep because it is operationally relevant. It tells me the quote landed somewhere real — that whoever sent it knows something about her that a Google search wouldn't surface and a tabloid wouldn't print.
Which means we are not dealing with a stranger.
I park outside my building and sit for a moment in the car.
Upstairs, Mrs. Callahan will have Elias fed and bathed and working through his homework with the focused, slightly resentful energy of a seven-year-old who would rather be doing anything else.
In approximately forty-five minutes I will sit next to him at the kitchen table and check his math and listen to him explain, at length, why his iguana facts are more interesting than multiplication.
I will be present for that. I'm always present for that. Whatever this case is — and it's already more than a standard protective detail, I know that much — it does not come home.
I get out of the car. Check the street out of habit. Go upstairs.
Elias is at the table with his homework spread in a radius around him and a look of deep grievance on his face that clears the moment he sees me.
"Dad. Did you know iguanas can hold their breath for twenty-eight minutes?"
"I did not," I say.
"It's for camouflage," he says. "In the water."
I sit down next to him and look at his math worksheet. "Is it?"
"Marco told me. His iguana held its breath in the bathtub for eleven minutes but then it got out and knocked over the shampoo."
I look at the first problem on the worksheet. Then I look at my son, who is watching me with the patient, hopeful energy of a kid who has correctly calculated that the iguana facts are buying him time on the multiplication.
"Finish the worksheet," I say. "Then you can tell me about the shampoo."
He sighs, heavily, and picks up his pencil.
I watch him work and I let the apartment be quiet and I don't think about the fourteen-month-old entry code or the anonymous quote or the look on Isla Wrenwood's face for the rest of the evening.
I think about it again at eleven-fifteen, after Elias is asleep, when I am at my drafting table running the threat file one more time.
She will not be able to hide behind a ring.
I add a second note beneath it: This is personal. It's been personal for a long time.
I stare at that for a moment. Then I get back to work.