Chapter 21
BOGDAN
Klim puts a photograph of Ethan taking money on my desk.
I push back from the stone before I've finished looking at it. The chair strikes the cabinet behind me, and Kirill stops with a freight folder still open across his knees.
Ethan stands beside a parked car, his camera bag hanging from one shoulder. Folded bills show between his fingers and another man's hand. I enlarge the picture on Klim's phone until the faces begin to blur, then return it to its original size.
Peggy kissed this man in my corridor. Tessa watched them and smiled.
“Who paid him?” I ask.
“One of Luka's collectors. Devon identified him. I took that outside Afterglint an hour ago.” Klim lays a printed invoice beside the phone. “This is why I went there.”
The invoice bears Ethan's name and the date of Saturday's ball. Fifteen hundred dollars for private event photography at The Ninth Masque, billed to Devon's office.
I read the venue name twice. My club, my evening, and a charge I haven't seen before.
“Luka's man asked Devon to cover it,” Klim says. “Devon refused and sent me the request this morning. He wants credit for refusing. I checked Ethan's studio, saw the handover, then came here.”
The paper is warm from the printer. Beneath the ordinary lines of work and payment, someone has typed Guest coverage and event coordination. Nothing names Tessa. Nothing admits that a revised list of our movements reached Luka after I had him escorted out.
It would fit neatly in an accountant's folder.
I move the invoice beside my phone, where Tessa's last message waits. She'll come upstairs when she finishes the staff fittings. Tuesday afternoon, a few minutes stolen from work, and she wants to know whether I've eaten.
Until Klim walked in, that was all I wanted to think about.
Kirill closes his folder. “Bring Ethan here.”
I can picture him in the chair Luka occupied on Saturday. The camera bag on the floor, his hands empty, my door shut behind him. A man can keep smiling through a surprising amount of fear before his mouth stops cooperating.
I want to find out how long Ethan would manage.
Instead, I lean over the invoice again. “Did you hear what the money was for?”
“No. I saw cash change hands. I didn't hear the conversation, and I can't give you the amount from the picture. The invoice came in the request Devon forwarded. It may explain the payment.”
Klim leaves the distinction there. He's brought me what he has, including the part that makes it less satisfying.
Outside the office glass, black foliage winds through the chandelier's upper branches.
One lacquered raven still faces the chair where Luka sat.
Three days ago, I enjoyed making him leave while his former allies watched.
Now his money has reached a man who can walk through my service door carrying equipment.
My shirt pulls across my back as I straighten.
“Our bill?” I ask.
Klim opens the club's copy on his phone. Ethan's agreed fee for the ball is marked paid. The second invoice could cover portraits ordered separately by a guest, or work arranged without our office. Photographers sell pictures. That's how he earns his living, at least the part anybody can see.
But Luka wasn't a guest at the ball. His collector had no reason to pay for photographs of an evening Luka spent elsewhere.
There's a possible answer. I dislike how badly I want to hurt Ethan before I've heard it.
Kirill sets the folder on the sofa and stands. His coat falls open over the pistol at his belt. “He takes our money, then takes Luka's. We can ask him which employer he wants to disappoint.”
“And Luka hears we've found the route before we know what went through it.” I turn the invoice toward him. “Find out who ordered the work and what was delivered. I want the photographs this bill paid for.”
Kirill studies the page instead of repeating his demand to bring Ethan here. Getting the material before Ethan knows to remove it will take longer than making him afraid of us. The work has to survive whatever answer we force out of him.
“Devon will talk,” he says.
“Let him keep talking. He keeps his space at the depot while he cooperates. That space won't stay available if he starts paying Luka's people for access to my clubs.”
Kirill takes out his phone. He moves to the far end of the sofa to make the call, leaving Klim and me at the desk. The office suddenly feels too small for the women downstairs and the work we're doing above them.
I ask for the list of people who received the revised movement sheet.
Ethan's name is there, among the crew who needed the new portrait time.
Klim has checked the position beside the lighting table against the photograph sent to Tessa.
The angle is possible from that space, but the people working there weren't all kept in view.
He can't put a particular camera behind the anonymous picture.
Tessa showed me that message with a towel still around my waist. Later, sitting beside me on the bed, she'd tried to explain that she'd been happy in the picture. Whoever sent it wanted her to feel ashamed of believing in that moment.
Ethan had access to the sheet. His work took him behind the rope. Now there's money from Luka's side.
I can't tell whether I'm seeing one ugly arrangement or forcing separate acts into the same explanation because I finally have a face to strike.
“Keep someone on him,” I tell Klim. “Check his other work for Luka. No approach yet.”
He makes a note, then looks toward the office door. “I'll bring Tessa up. Peggy should hear it with her.”
“Wait.”
Klim's pen stops against the page.
For a few seconds, I have only the word I've said and the knowledge that I could take it back. He could open the door. Tessa would come in with a pin caught in her sleeve or a complaint about somebody's costume, and I'd put the photograph in front of her.
She'd call Peggy before I finished explaining.
I remember Peggy walking beside Ethan's equipment case, holding the folded backdrop out of the way so it wouldn't catch beneath a wheel.
She trusted him with ordinary, unguarded pleasure.
If she confronts him, he may deny the payment and tell Luka we're watching.
Any proof of the leak could disappear while they argue.
“Give me until Thursday afternoon,” I say. “Forty-eight hours to check it.”
Klim sets down his pen. “Peggy's dating him now.”
“Put another man with her existing jobs. Keep the escort when the work finishes. If Ethan tries to get her alone, stop it and call me.”
“She won't know why.”
Klim hasn't reached for his phone to give the order.
I bring the payment photograph back onto the screen and study the cash between Ethan's fingers, trying to decide how much more protection will make two days safe.
Another man at the workshop, another car for the journeys.
I can provide both before the women finish work.
“Tell the guards he's being checked for a leak,” I say. “They need his name. No private meeting, no trip to his studio. Use the cover we already have at the jobs and both homes.”
Klim keeps looking at me. “You can tell the women what you've told me. You don't have to call him guilty.”
I turn Klim's phone facedown.
He's right about how little the warning requires. I could tell them about the payment without pretending I've proved anything else. Instead I imagine Tessa listening, then looking toward the floor beneath us, where her friend is still fitting costumes.
I want to bring her a finished answer. I want the man removed, the threat ended, before she has to ask how close he got.
“Thursday,” I say. “Bring me anything you find before then.”
Klim picks up his phone. He doesn't put the pen back in his pocket until I've met his eyes. I wait for a nod that doesn't come.
Kirill finishes his call. Devon will keep the request and supply any further messages about the bill.
Klim sends me the photograph, then dates his notes and leaves the page beside the invoice.
I tell him to preserve everything. Alison already has the ball threats and the movement sheet, but I hold this new connection back with the rest of the inquiry.
I know whose decision it is.
Klim leaves to arrange the additional cover. Kirill collects his freight folder, stopping at the door with one hand on its edge.
“Don't turn two days into a week.”
“I said Thursday.”
He closes the door behind him. With both men gone, I can hear my breathing in the quiet office. My shoulders ache from holding myself ready for a fight nobody has given me.
I put the papers in the desk drawer.
Tessa knocks a few minutes later, carrying a covered plate and a folded waistcoat.
Her sleeves are pushed to her elbows. A length of copper-colored thread clings to the black knit over her hip, bright against a dress that follows her figure without getting in her way.
She's been working, and she comes toward me as though the place beside my chair belongs to her.
It does. I stand before she reaches it.
“The kitchen sent this up,” she says. “I was useful enough to carry it. Don't expect that twice.”
I take the plate and set it on the desk. “Stay and help me eat it.”
She lifts the lid. Warm pastry releases the smell of apples and butter into the room, and she breaks off a corner before I can find the fork. Sugar sticks to her thumb. The easy theft makes me want to pull her close until I stop thinking about the drawer.
Instead, I take the waistcoat from her arm. Black cloth opens between my hands, its buttonholes marked with pale basting thread.
“For the staff supper,” she says. “Try it before I finish the front. You've been difficult to pin down.”
I take off my jacket, laying it over the chair, and let her slip the waistcoat onto me. It's cut to fit under the long costume coat. She smooths the shoulders before reaching around my sides, her fingers pressing the cloth flat over my ribs.
She's close enough for me to kiss the top of her head. I do, and she looks up with the pins still tucked into the little cushion on her wrist.
“If you make me stab you, I charge extra.”
I keep my hands at my sides while she pinches a little spare cloth at my waist and pins the fold. The restraint feels ridiculous after everything I've done to keep her beside me. She has only to step back for me to miss her touch.
At the last button, she leans away to look. The necklace disappears beneath the neckline of her dress, leaving a short bright section visible when she bends. I like knowing she put it on for an afternoon of work. I like the casual way she leaves her plate on my desk and her thread on my clothes.
She brushes the copper strand off her hip, then reaches to remove a fleck from my shirt.
“You look tired,” she says.
“It's been a long afternoon.”
She accepts the answer, sliding the pins back into the cushion after she checks the waistcoat's sides. When she helps me out of it, I catch her hand and draw her between me and the desk.
The kiss begins softly. She brings her free hand to my cheek, thumb resting beside my mouth, and I have to resist the urge to hold her tighter than she expects. I want to stay here until the reason for the papers ceases to exist.
She pulls back far enough to see my face. “Come home with me when we're done.”
I rest my forehead against hers. Her request is simple, with a place for me already inside it. Earlier I'd been ready to rearrange the evening for that pleasure alone. Now I want to take her away from the club before Peggy comes upstairs to mention Ethan.
“I will.”
Tessa smiles and lets me go. She folds the waistcoat across the sofa while I taste the pastry. The apple is tart beneath the sugar, still hot in the middle. I swallow before she's finished folding, though I've barely chewed it.
“Have they found anything about the photograph?” she asks.
The fork catches against the plate.
“The position by the lighting table fits. Klim's checking the people who had access.”
She waits beside the sofa. I've answered the question about the picture. I can feel myself using its wording to avoid what she needs to hear.
“Nothing you can put a name to?” she asks.
Ethan's name is on the invoice inside my desk, separated from us by a slab of stone and a closed drawer.
“Nothing confirmed.”
Tessa nods. She winds the wrist cushion's strap around itself, then tucks it inside the folded waistcoat. “Peggy's seen the message. I showed her on Sunday after we got home. She says whoever sent it needs a hobby that doesn't involve my face.”
I almost smile. Then she picks up the waistcoat and comes back for another kiss, trusting me to keep looking while she goes downstairs to work.
At the door, she glances over her shoulder. “Half an hour. Eat the rest.”
I tell her I'll be ready.
When she leaves, I open the drawer. The invoice lies on top of Klim's report, Ethan's name uncovered now that there's nobody here to read it with me.
I take out my phone and open Tessa's messages.
Her question about lunch is still there. Beneath it, I type Ethan's name, then stop with my thumb above the next letter.
Through the office door comes the sound of her footsteps going downstairs to Peggy.
I erase the name before she reaches the bottom.