Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 106090 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 530(@200wpm)___ 424(@250wpm)___ 354(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106090 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 530(@200wpm)___ 424(@250wpm)___ 354(@300wpm)
“Why are you here?”
“Because someone’s hunting us.” No preamble. No charm. Just flat, serious Liam, which scares me more than any threat could. “Someone who knows about the diamond. They found me in Boston three weeks ago. Threats first, then surveillance. Then a break-in at my apartment while I was out.” He pauses. “They tossed the place, Hailey. Took it apart like they were looking for something specific. I barely got out before they came back.”
My fingers tighten on the phone. “How do you know it’s connected to the diamond?”
“Because they left a message. A photograph, just like the one I left you. Kedrov’s insurance documentation. They know what we took, and they want it back.” I hear him exhale, rough and tired. “I tracked the threat back here. To New York. To you. Whoever’s looking, they’re going to find you next. If they haven’t already.”
The hallway feels colder than it did a minute ago.
“So what’s your plan?” I keep it vague on purpose—I’m not saying a single word I wouldn’t want Sloane to overhear.
“I have one. But not over a phone, Hailey. I need to see you.”
I close my eyes and lean my head back against the wall. Somewhere down the hall, an elevator dings. Footsteps approach and then recede. Normal people, living normal lives, completely unaware that there’s a former jewel thief having a crisis ten feet away.
“Tonight,” I hear myself say. “We’ll meet. Where?”
“I’ll text you the address. Come alone.”
He hangs up before I can respond.
I stand there for a long moment, staring at the burner phone in my hand. The photograph is still in my coat pocket. Two pieces of my past, pressing against me like weights.
Knox wants to have dinner at seven. Liam wants to meet in secret. And somewhere out there, someone is hunting for a diamond I buried in frozen Canadian soil five years ago, back when I thought I could outrun my own choices.
My past hasn’t just caught up with me.
It’s about to swallow me whole.
Chapter Twelve
Hailey
The text to Knox takes four drafts to get right. I stand outside the subway station at Carroll Street, thumb hovering over send, watching my breath fog in the evening air while I debate the merits of honesty versus self-preservation.
Self-preservation wins. It always does with me.
Running a little late. Having a quick holiday cocktail with Chloe first. I’ll be there by 8. Save me some of whatever you’re cooking.
His response comes in under thirty seconds. Take your time. I’m not going anywhere.
God. Of course he’s not going anywhere. Knox Bishop has been not going anywhere for months now, stationed outside my life like a sentinel, and here I am lying to him before we’ve even had a chance to really begin. Guilt coils in my chest, hot and sour, but I pocket my phone and start walking anyway.
Red Hook in December looks like a postcard that got left out in the rain. The old brick warehouses hunker against the waterfront, strung with Christmas lights that somebody optimistic put up and nobody’s bothered to take down since probably 2019. The wind off the harbor cuts right through my coat. I pass a coffee roaster, a distillery, a furniture shop selling reclaimed wood tables for prices that could fund a small revolution. The neighborhood can’t decide if it wants to be working-class Brooklyn or artisanal Brooklyn, so it’s settled for being both, uneasily.
Liam picked the bar. He always was better at tradecraft than me.
Rusted Anchor sits wedged between a marine supply shop and what might be an abandoned cannery. The kind of place tourists never find and locals pretend doesn’t exist. No sign on the door, just a ship’s anchor bolted above the frame, orange with decades of salt air corrosion. I push inside and the smell hits me first: old wood, older beer, and something fried that’s probably been sitting under a heat lamp since the Obama administration.
Christmas lights here too, but these are ironic. A sad strand of multicolored bulbs droops across the back of the bar, and someone’s stuck a Santa hat on the moose head mounted above the liquor shelf. The bartender looks up when I enter, takes one look at my face, and goes back to polishing glasses.
Good. I’m not here to make friends.
I spot Liam in the back booth before he spots me.
Five years fall away in the space of a heartbeat.
He’s older. Harder around the edges, the softness of his late twenties burned off somewhere in the years between then and now. His dark hair is shorter than he used to wear it, and there’s a scar on his jawline that wasn’t there before, a thin white line that catches the light when he turns his head. But what really stops me is the ink. When I knew him, Liam had a few tattoos scattered across his chest and shoulders, nothing you’d see unless he took off his shirt. Now the black lines crawl up his neck, disappearing into his hairline on one side and curling along his jaw on the other. Intricate mandala patterns, geometric and hypnotic. That much ink on the neck takes hours in a chair and a high pain tolerance. It’s striking. It’s incredibly hot.