CHAPTER THREE
Nadia — The Man Who Introduces Himself
I did the thing you’re not supposed to do, which is nothing, and then the thing you’re really not supposed to do, which is decide that nothing had actually happened.
By Sunday I’d built a case against my own instincts and won it.
The footsteps were a jogger, or a man walking home in the same direction I was, which happens in a city of eight million people more often than fear wants to admit.
The stranger at the coffee shop was exactly that — a stranger, with a life of his own, who had never once looked at me and had simply left because he’d finished his coffee, which people do.
I almost believed it. I would have believed it, if not for Elias.
Elias Vane found me on a Tuesday, at the gallery, during the after-hours hour Marguerite let me have to touch up a corner of the pier painting that had picked up a fingerprint smudge no one else would ever notice.
The bell over the door chimed, and I turned expecting Marguerite with coffee, and instead there was a man in a gray suit that fit too well to be off the rack, holding a card between two fingers like he wasn’t sure yet whether I deserved it.
“Nadia Kessler.” Not a question. “I hope I’m not intruding.”
“We’re closed.”
“I know.” He smiled, easy, practiced, the kind of smile that had opened a thousand doors it had no real right to.
“I’m the one who’s been asking about the low-tide painting.
Elias Vane. I represent a private collection — I would have called ahead, but Marguerite’s line’s been busy all week, and I was in the neighborhood. ”
It should have felt normal. Collectors did this sometimes, showed up in person, wanted the story behind the piece before they wanted the piece itself.
But something about the stillness of him — the way he stood exactly the same distance from me the entire conversation, never closer, never farther, like he’d measured it — put the same cold drop in my stomach that the footsteps had.
“It’s not for sale,” I said, which wasn’t entirely true. It had a hold on it, not a lock.
“Everything’s for sale, Ms. Kessler. It’s only ever a question of what someone’s willing to trade.” He handed me the card anyway. Cream stock, embossed, no company name — just a name and a number. “Think about it. I have a feeling we’ll be in touch regardless of what you decide about the painting.”
He left before I could ask what that meant.
I stood there holding a card that felt heavier than cardstock had any right to, and it wasn’t until I was locking up twenty minutes later that I let myself admit the truth I’d been avoiding all week: I hadn’t imagined any of it.
Someone had been watching me long before Elias Vane ever walked through that door, and Elias Vane knew exactly who I was before I’d told him.
I never gave him my name. He’d already had it.
Kael — Vane
I know that name the way you know a scar — not because I look for it, but because it’s always there, under the skin, aching whenever the weather changes.
I wasn’t at the gallery when he went in.
That’s the failure I’ll be carrying for a while: four years of never letting more than an hour pass without eyes on her, and I chose that particular evening to drive across the city and confirm a lead that turned out to be nothing, and in the ninety minutes I was gone, Elias Vane walked through her door and said her name like he owned it.
I know he did because I have people. Not many, not anyone she’ll ever meet, but enough that within an hour of him leaving that gallery I had a grainy photo, a plate number that traced to a shell company I’ve spent three years pulling apart one thread at a time, and a headache that hasn’t gone away since.
Vane doesn’t do anything without a reason, and he never does anything small.
If he introduced himself to her — used his real name, showed his face, let her have something to remember him by — it means the waiting period is over.
It means whatever he’s been building toward for four years, he’s decided it’s time to start collecting.
I should tell her. I’ve told myself that every night for four years, and every night I’ve found a new reason it isn’t yet the night to do it.
Tonight the reason is simple and it disgusts me: if I tell her about Vane, I have to tell her about myself, and about the version of me that existed before I became the man in the car outside her building, and I am not ready — may never be ready — for her to know what I did to earn the right to protect her.
She kept the card. I know because I watched her fold it into her coat pocket instead of throwing it away, which tells me she’s smarter than I want her to be right now.
A card like that is a hook. She’s going to turn it over in her mind for days, wondering what he meant, wondering if she should call the number, and every day she carries it around unanswered is a day Vane gets to watch her decide.
I moved closer tonight. Not into the light — I’m not that reckless yet — but closer than I’ve let myself get in months, close enough that if she’d turned around at the right moment she would finally, actually, have seen my face.
She didn’t turn around. I don’t know if I’m relieved or if some ruined part of me is disappointed.