The honeymoon suite on the 43rd floor smelled like champagne and white roses and a little bit of the industrial chill of a city that always stays awake.Ethan stood against the floor to ceiling windows of the suite with his jacket off and his cufflinks lying on the glass ledge watching the lights of Evergreen spread out beneath him. There are three million people living in that area down there, and none of their names are Ethan. None of their names are even close to being his actual name. He has spent many years arranging to keep that part of his identity completely private, and today of all days, he was glad he had.Behind him, the suite was everything a typical wedding night suite should be. Candles lit the side board. An ice bucket sat quietly. A trail of rose petal's went across the marble floor that neither of them had laid there. They had walked into the suite earlier in the evening to find the flowers already in place. The hotel staff had placed them there as an act of professi

The encrypted audio link on Ethan's phone stayed connected.Lena had no idea about this. She thought she was having a private secure conversation. She was wrong. Ethan's mirroring software operated silently and stealthily in the background of her phone, turning her phone's microphone into a live transmitter.Ethan did not move for twenty minutes. He just stood in the suite and listened. He was not trying to gather information because he already had enough. He had seen Lena's face when she read Marcus's name on her screen. He knew how she felt. He had seen that look before. It was like her attention was divided; a part of her was already with Marcus in the hospital.Ethan stood there and listened because that is what he does. He finishes what he starts, even if he does not want to.The audio feed was crystal clear. He heard the ambient sounds from the hospital corridor and the ding of the elevator. He heard the sharp click of Lena's heels on the linoleum floor. He heard the nurse givin

Lena knew she had been gone for two hours and nineteen minutes. She knew this, since she had checked her cell phone in the lift and calculated it. Two hours and nineteen minutes is a very ridiculous long time to be away on your wedding night. Lena would have to apologize. It would have to be a very damn good apology.She had been preparing what she was going to say in the car. She would say that she should not have gone, that she should have let someone else deal with it. She would say that Marcus had people in his life even if she seemed like the only one in them.Lena was always one who made other people's problems her own. She had always been like that. It was one of her good qualities and one of her bad qualities at the same time. She had told Ethan about this a time ago and he had just listened, which is what she needed back then.The elevator opened on the forty-third floor. The hallway was empty and very quiet with carpet that made it hard to hear footsteps. Lena slid the card

Three years, he'd been dormant. The world hadn't returned the favor.Ethan walked through the city in the hour before sunrise. His collar was up, and his hands were in his pockets. He walked at a pace like someone who did not have a particular place to be and therefore no reason to hurry. This was how Ethan always walked. The people who trained him taught him this on: the key to blending in was not to hide; it was to belong. Ethan moved with a confidence that made people look right past him still searching for something that seemed out of place.Ethan was never out of place. He had spent a lot of time making sure of this.The city of Evergreen was a place that rewarded people who understood how it worked. At this time the city was slowly coming to life. The last of the nightclubs were letting people out onto the sidewalk the first bakeries were turning on their ovens, and the garbage trucks were making their way through the streets that would be crowded with people in four hours. Etha

She found the first one in August, three years ago.Except she didn't, not really. She found it now, at nine in the morning, sitting at the hotel desk with the divorce papers lying beside her and Priya cross-legged on the sofa and the egg tarts still in their bag going cold. Finding it now made the August version look like something she had never actually seen at all.At the time it had looked like good fortune. A vendor she had been fighting for four months dropped a lawsuit with no explanation, no warning, not even a courtesy call. She had rung her own lawyer, who told her it had been settled out of court. She had rung the vendor's lawyer, who told her his client had reconsidered. She thanked everyone, filed it away, moved on. That was the only rational thing to do. You learned quickly in business that disputes sometimes dissolved for reasons with nothing to do with right and wrong, that someone else's interests occasionally lined up with yours in ways you couldn't predict and proba