Chapter 4: What Two Letters Cost
I didn't run.
Running would tell whoever was behind me that I knew they were there.
Instead I slowed slightly, stopped at the corner like I was checking my phone, and used the dark screen as a mirror.
A man in a gray coat.
Hands in his pockets.
He stopped when I stopped.
I turned left instead of right — away from the subway, toward the bodega on Amsterdam that stayed open all night.
Bright lights.
A cashier named Felix who knew my face.
Security camera above the door.
The man in the gray coat did not follow me inside.
I stood in the cereal aisle for four minutes.
When I looked through the window, the sidewalk was empty.
Felix raised an eyebrow from behind the counter.
"You okay?"
"Long shift," I said, and bought a bottle of water I didn't want.
I took three different trains to get home.
In my room in Queens, I sat on the edge of my bed with the vial on the nightstand and Owen's instructions running through my head.
Don't tell anyone in the building.
Don't tell anyone.
I almost listened.
Then I thought about the two letters scratched into the glass, and I opened my laptop instead.
R.H.
connected to Owen Hartley.
Connected to the Hartley family.
I started there.
The Hartley family had four members listed in any public record I could find.
Owen.
His father, Robert, who had died six years ago.
His younger brother, Marcus.
And his sister — Renata Hartley.
R.H.
Renata replaced Owen's flowers every Friday.
I had watched her do it for two years.
White lilies, always fresh, always arranged the same way.
She would stand at the foot of his bed for exactly five minutes, say nothing, and leave.
I had thought it was grief.
I pulled up every article I could find about the Hartley family from the past two years.
Owen's accident.
The organization's restructuring.
A series of real estate transfers that several financial reporters had noted as unusual — properties moving from the Hartley Group's main holdings into a subsidiary called RH Capital Partners.
RH Capital Partners.
Incorporated fourteen months ago.
Sole director: Renata Hartley.
I set my laptop on the bed and stared at the ceiling.
She hadn't been visiting her brother out of grief.
She had been visiting him to make sure he stayed exactly where he was — silent, still, and unable to ask where his properties were going.
My phone lit up on the nightstand.
Unknown number.
I let it ring.
It stopped.
Then a text appeared from the same number.
*You found the vial.
That means you found the initials.
That means you already know more than is safe for you.
Meet me tomorrow.
7 a.m.
The coffee shop on 181st, west side.
Come alone.
Tell no one.
— D*
D.
Decker.
I read the message three times.
The man who had watched me leave.
The man who had been on the phone saying *she's leaving.* The man Owen himself wasn't sure he could trust.
May you like
I put my phone face-down on the nightstand.
Outside, a car idled on the street below longer than it should have.
