14. Lark
FOURTEEN
LARK
They finished dinner. He paid before she could argue, which she protested on principle and accepted with grace because the bill would have required her to pretend she hadn’t noticed the wine was two hundred dollars, and she was a poor liar about expensive Barolo.
Outside, Madison Avenue at night—the Upper East Side’s version of nightlife, which meant well-dressed couples and taxis idling at the curb. The June air hit after the restaurant’s conditioned cool, thick and alive against her bare arms.
“I’ll get a cab.” She turned to him on the sidewalk. The streetlight caught his profile—that jaw, that bone structure, the golden hair pushed back from a forehead he’d stopped guarding over the course of three hours and two glasses of Barolo.
“I’ll arrange a car.” He had his phone out. Of course, he was arranging a car. A cab was for mortals.
“A cab is fine.”
“A car is safer.”
“It’s the Upper East Side. The most dangerous thing on this block is a Pomeranian in a stroller.”
His mouth worked. The edge of it. Fighting. She could see the battle—the instinct to insist, to protect, to deploy resources, crashing against the awareness that she’d told him three days ago that she could handle her own logistics and had meant it.
“Fine.” He pocketed the phone. “A cab.”
A taxi materialized. She opened the door. Paused. Turned back.
“Rune.”
He straightened. His name in her mouth did a visible thing to his posture—a fractional lift, a tightening along the spine.
“The vault was—” She searched for a word that wouldn’t crack the evening open. Couldn’t find one that was safe. Settled for the truth. “It was the best first date I’ve been on in years.”
She got in the cab. Closed the door. The driver pulled away.
Through the back window, she watched Rune Sterling stand on the sidewalk on East 73rd Street with his hands at his sides and an expression on his face that she was too far away to read but could feel—the particular frequency of a man realizing, several hours after the fact, that he’d been on a date.
Her phone lit before the cab reached the park.
Breezy: You’ve been gone six hours. Dekel says you went to a vault. He also says Rune took a portable spectrographic unit and a bottle of wine to a subterranean lab. His exact words were ‘He packed the good equipment and the emergency Barolo.’
Lark: The Barolo was at the restaurant.
Sybil: THERE WAS A RESTAURANT???
Lark: Working dinner. Investigation related. Please don’t make it a thing.
Breezy: I have added ‘date debrief’ to tomorrow’s calendar. 6:45 AM. Before the 7 AM session. You’re welcome.
Lark: IT WAS NOT A DATE.
Sybil: A man took you to a private underground vault, showed you his most prized possessions, then fed you pasta and expensive wine by candlelight. That is the dictionary definition of a date. I will find the dictionary entry. Give me ten minutes.
Lark dropped her phone in her lap. Stared out the cab window. Central Park scrolled past in the dark, the trees black against the city’s ambient glow.
The boy in the vault. His hands in cotton gloves. His voice low and running, forgetting himself, forgetting the crown, talking about ink density and countdown clocks and preservation with the urgency of someone who’d spent his whole life protecting things that tried to disappear.
Including himself.
The next morning, she arrived at Villainette at six-thirty to prep for the post-dawn session.
On the counter of her back office—the counter only accessible through the service door that stayed unlocked between the two stores—sat an edition.
A 1939 Batman #1. Perfectly graded. Sleeved in archival mylar with a certification tag she recognized as Sterling & Mane’s premium tier. No note. No card. No business card with a logo and a phone number.
She picked it up. Turned it under the morning light coming through the back office window.
The edition was gorgeous—the cover colors vivid beneath the protective sleeve, the paper carrying the golden warmth of a book that had survived eight decades because someone had loved it enough to keep it safe.
She checked the certification. Graded 8.5. Near-mint. An edition at this grade and rarity was worth—
Six to seven figures, her brain supplied. Six to seven figures, sitting on your counter with no note, because the man next door doesn’t know how to say what this means, so he’s saying it in first editions.
Through the wall, she heard him. Moving through his store in the early quiet, the soft thud of cases being checked, the measured tread of someone who arrived before his staff and walked his territory alone every morning.
She’d learned this about him over a week of 7:00 AM sessions: he opened Sterling & Mane how she opened Villainette, with his hands and his attention, making sure every detail held.
She set the Catwoman on her desk. Pressed her fingertips to the mylar sleeve.
Her phone buzzed.
Breezy: It is 6:47 AM. You are staring at a comic book with an expression I have never seen on your face. Do I need to schedule an emergency session?
Lark looked up. Breezy stood in the Villainette doorway with two coffees and her tablet and a raised eyebrow—her surveillance capabilities rivaled a federal agency.
“He left me a Catwoman.”
Breezy’s eyebrow climbed higher. “Graded?”
“Eight-point-five.”
“No note?”
“No note.”
Breezy set down the coffee. Picked up the edition. Examined the certification with the dispassionate assessment of a woman who tracked every line item in Villainette’s inventory and could price an edition in her sleep. She set it back on the desk.
“That’s a seven-thousand-dollar comic.”
“I’m aware.”
“Left on your counter. With no note. Through an unlocked door. At some point between last night and this morning.” Breezy’s mouth did the thing—the twitch, the microexpression that constituted her entire emotional range in professional settings. “Lark.”
“Don’t.”
“He’s courting you in first editions.”
“It’s a professional gesture. A—a colleague gift. For the investigation collaboration.”
“A seven-thousand-dollar colleague gift. With no note. Left in the dark like a love letter.” Breezy picked up her coffee. “I’m adding this to the file.”
“What file?”
“The file I started the day you described his forearms to me for eleven minutes. It has tabs now.” She checked her watch. “6:52. Your session starts in eight minutes. Take the coffee. Leave the denial. You’re running out of room for both.”
Lark took the coffee. Looked at the Catwoman on her desk. Looked at the service door—closed, unlocked, the boundary that had become a bridge six days ago and hadn’t shifted back.
Through the wall, his footsteps stopped. A pause in his morning circuit. Standing on the other side of the plaster, three inches of wall between them, and she imagined him listening the way she was listening—for the sound of the gift landing, for the evidence that the offering had been received.
Lion courtship, and didn’t know where the phrase came from, only that it fit. A gift that said I paid attention, left in the dark, with no demand for acknowledgment.
She pressed her palm flat against the wall. Held it there for three heartbeats.
Then she picked up her notepad and walked through the service door for the session, and the Catwoman stayed on her desk, and she did not mention it, and neither did he, and the silence between them on the subject carried more weight than any conversation she’d had in years.