The first thing I remember was throwing myself over a six-year-old boy as eight crystal wineglasses came crashing toward his head.

I didn't move for a long moment.

Leo's dinosaurs roared softly in the corner.

Somewhere in the house, a clock ticked.

Matteo waited with the patience of a man who had learned that silence was more useful than rushing the next sentence.

"Say that again," I said.

"David Carr has been working as an informant.

Passing information about people, movements, associations.

The man he reports to is named Carver.

Vincent Carver.

He runs money through three legitimate businesses and uses the information David collects to identify leverage points — people who can be pressured, people who can be used."

"And David told him about me."

"He told him you were seen entering my vehicle.

That you had been inside Lumina during a private dinner.

That you had physical contact with me." Matteo paused.

"To Carver, that combination is interesting."

I thought about two years.

Two years of David asking careful questions about where I worked, which shifts I took, which tables I served, which regulars came in.

I had thought he was attentive.

I had thought he was interested in my life.

I had told him things — small things, the kind of things you tell someone you trust — and I had never once thought about where those things went afterward.

"He was gathering information the whole time," I said.

"That is my belief, yes."

"About Lumina."

"About Lumina's clientele."

I looked at my hands.

"He targeted me specifically.

To get close to the restaurant."

"That is what the evidence suggests."

The word evidence landed strangely.

"You've been investigating him."

"I've been investigating Carver.

David became relevant three weeks ago when his name appeared in a communication we intercepted." Matteo's voice remained level.

"I did not know about your connection to him until this morning."

"When I told you."

"Yes."

I stood up.

Not from anger — or not only from anger.

I stood because sitting still had become physically impossible.

I walked to the window and looked out at the narrow garden behind the townhouse, where a stone path ran between two rows of something green and winter-bare.

"He told me he was watching me to protect me," I said.

"He was watching you to assess your value."

I turned around.

"And what did he decide?"

Matteo stood as well.

He moved to the desk and opened a folder — paper, not a screen, the kind of document that had been printed and handled and read more than once.

He held it out.

I crossed the room and took it.

It was a photograph.

Not of me.

Of a man I didn't recognize, middle-aged, unremarkable, standing outside a building I didn't recognize either.

Below the photograph, a name.

Vincent Carver.

Below that, a date from six weeks ago.

Below that, three lines of text that described, in the flat language of surveillance notes, a meeting between Carver and an associate identified only as D.C.

David Carr.

"He met with Carver six weeks ago," I said.

"Four days after you were assigned to the VIP section at Lumina for the first time."

My hands went very still on the paper.

"He knew I'd been moved to VIP."

"Someone told him.

We believe it was a staff member at Lumina who has been on Carver's payroll for approximately a year."

I set the folder back on the desk.

"Chloe," I said.

Matteo didn't answer immediately.

That was answer enough.

"Chloe," I said again.

"She caught her heel on that brass strip.

She's worked that floor for three years.

She knows every inch of it."

"We don't know yet whether the tray was deliberate."

"But you're considering it."

"Yes."

I thought about Chloe's face in the moment after the glasses fell.

The way she had looked at me — not with guilt, I had thought, but with something I had read as shock.

I had been so certain it was an accident.

I had been so focused on Leo that I hadn't looked at her carefully enough.

"If the tray was deliberate," I said slowly, "then the goal wasn't to hurt Leo."

"No."

"The goal was to create a moment.

To force a reaction." I looked at Matteo.

"To make you notice me."

"To create a connection between us that could be observed and used." He said it without softening.

"You were placed in proximity to my son during a private dinner.

An incident occurred.

I responded.

David reported the result to Carver."

"They used me as bait," I said.

"Without telling me.

Without asking.

They used me as a tool to get to you, and they didn't care what happened to Leo, and they didn't care what happened to me."

"No," Matteo said.

"They didn't."

The anger that came then was different from anything I had felt in the hospital or the elevator or my kitchen at 4:17 in the morning.

It was cold and it was very clear and it had a specific shape: David had spent two years building something he could use, and the thing he had built was me.

Leo appeared at my elbow.

He had been so quiet I had forgotten he was in the room.

"Hannah," he said.

"Are you okay?"

I looked down at him.

He was holding Rocco against his chest with both hands, watching me with his father's stillness and his own particular gravity.

"Not entirely," I said.

"But I'm going to be."

He considered this.

Then he held Rocco out toward me again.

"You can have him back for a little longer."

I took the dinosaur.

My throat did something I didn't let finish.

Matteo watched us both.

When he spoke, his voice was quieter than it had been.

"I want to put someone outside your building," he said.

"Not inside.

Not following you.

Outside, visible, so that David knows you are not alone."

"That's not — "

"It is not money.

It is not obligation.

It is a man standing on a public street." He held my gaze.

"Let me do this one thing."

I looked at Rocco in my hand.

I thought about the photograph face-down on my kitchen floor and the drawer full of takeout menus and the two hours of sleep I had gotten and the four words written in handwriting I had once found reassuring.

"One man," I said.

"Visible.

Not following me."

"Agreed."

"And I want to know everything you know about Carver."

Matteo nodded slowly.

"That," he said, "will take more than one lunch."