Chapter 2: Seven Words on a Slip of Paper
Mara didn't answer right away.
She set the four drinks on the bar tray and kept her hands busy because that was what you did when something large was standing very close to you and asking a question that felt like more than a question.
"I watched his hand," she said.
"He hadn't ordered.
He was angled wrong for someone waiting on a meal."
Julian Cross looked at her the way people look at something they weren't expecting to find.
"You've done this before."
"No," she said.
"I've survived before.
It's different."
Something shifted in his expression.
Not softness — recognition.
He said: "Do you know who I am?"
She said: "No."
He said: "Do you want to?"
She thought about her apartment.
The good deadbolt.
The deliberately unremarkable life.
"Not especially," she said.
He almost smiled.
Almost.
Then his phone buzzed on the bar between them.
He looked at the screen.
The almost-smile disappeared.
He turned it so she could see.
It was a photo.
Taken tonight.
Inside the restaurant.
It was a photo of her.
She felt the bar rail under her hand again.
Cold.
May you like
Solid.
He said, quietly: "They already know what you did."
