"If you can dance better than me, I'll give you one million dollars."

Elena Vasquez was fifty-one years old, and she opened her apartment door before Marcus knocked a second time.

She was already dressed.

A small bag sat packed on the floor beside her feet.

"I've been waiting," she said.

"I wasn't sure if it would be his people or yours."

Marcus brought her to the estate in under twenty minutes.

Julian met her in the library — not the study, not the formal rooms.

The library, where the shelves ran floor to ceiling and the lamps were warm and the chairs were worn enough to sit in without performing.

Elena sat across from Julian.

She folded her hands in her lap.

She had the posture of a woman who had spent years making herself small in rooms where the wrong word could cost her everything, and had decided tonight that she was done with it.

"How long did you work for Victor DeLuca?" Julian asked.

"Six years.

I was his housekeeper." She paused.

"I heard things.

In that house, if you were quiet enough and invisible enough, people forgot you were present."

"Tell me about Claire Arden."

Elena's hands tightened briefly.

"Victor found out about her in the spring, four years ago.

He had someone watching you — watching who came and went from this house.

When he learned she was pregnant, he was very calm about it.

That frightened me more than if he had been angry."

"What did he do?"

"He made calls.

I don't know to whom.

But within two weeks, two men I had never seen before began coming to the house regularly.

They met with Victor in the back room.

I was never permitted near that room when they were there." She looked at Julian steadily.

"Claire Arden disappeared six weeks after those meetings began."

Julian's expression did not change.

"Did you know what he had done?"

"I suspected.

I had no proof.

I told myself I was not certain." She looked down at her hands.

"That was a cowardice I have lived with since."

"The letters," Julian said.

"Three letters that Claire sent to me.

They were intercepted.

Do you know how?"

"Victor had a contact inside your household.

Someone who had worked here for many years.

Someone you trusted completely." She looked up.

"I don't know how Victor recruited him.

I only know that the letters passed through this house and never reached you."

The room was very still.

Thomas Bell sat in the corner.

He had insisted on being present.

He had not spoken since Elena began.

Julian did not look at Thomas.

"Is the contact still active?"

"No.

Victor ended the arrangement approximately two years ago.

He said the asset had become — " Elena paused, choosing the word carefully — "unreliable.

He was afraid of exposure."

Thomas's voice came from the corner, very quiet.

"He tried to recruit me in the beginning.

Victor.

Before he found someone else.

I refused.

I want that on record."

Julian looked at him then.

"I know," Julian said.

"I know you refused."

Thomas nodded once.

His hands were clasped between his knees.

Julian turned back to Elena.

"The p*ison used tonight.

Do you know what it was?"

"Digoxin derivative.

Modified to absorb quickly.

Victor has used a chemist in Evanston for several years — a man named Reyes.

Reyes prepared it." She reached into the pocket of her jacket and placed a folded piece of paper on the table between them.

"That is Reyes's address, his phone number, and the name of the account Victor uses to pay him.

I copied it from Victor's desk eight months ago, the night I decided to leave."

Julian looked at the paper without touching it yet.

"Why tonight?" he asked.

"Why did Victor move tonight, after four years?"

Elena's expression shifted.

"Because of the trust.

Cassandra's announcement — the million-dollar trust for the child.

Victor has people at your parties.

He heard it.

He understood what it meant — that the child was becoming visible, becoming documented, becoming real in a legal sense." She paused.

"And because someone told him recently that you had begun asking questions again about Claire.

That you had reopened the search quietly."

Julian went very still.

"Who told him that?"

"Cassandra Vale," Elena said.

The name sat in the room like a stone dropped into still water.

"She didn't know what she was doing," Elena added quickly.

"I don't believe she knew what Victor was.

She knew him socially.

She mentioned it in conversation — that you had seemed distracted, that you had been making calls she didn't recognize, that you had asked her once whether she had ever met a woman named Claire Arden." Elena's voice was careful.

"Victor understood the significance of that question far better than Cassandra did."

Julian stood up.

He walked to the window.

Lake Michigan was beginning to show the first gray suggestion of dawn at its far edge.

"She checked herself out of the hospital," he said, not to anyone in particular.

"She went somewhere.

She knows something is wrong and she went somewhere." He turned.

"Where would she go if she was frightened?

Not her apartment.

Not her family.

Where would Cassandra go if she needed to think?"

Marcus appeared in the doorway.