The town car took the last curve of the drive too fast, and Zale slid sideways across the leather with the brass watch pinned between his palm and his ribs. He had held it the whole way from the city. Marcus Vance had pressed it into his hand that afternoon on the museum steps, folded Zale's fingers closed over it, and said, "Keep it wound. A man who knows the time is never late for what matters." Zale hadn't understood that. He was twelve. What he understood was the weight of it, and the cold of the case warming slowly against his skin, and the tick going on and on in his fist like something small that had gotten trapped there. The driver hadn't spoken since the highway. Zale had counted the glances in the rearview mirror, eleven of them, and none had landed on him. They went past him to the road behind. The man's hands sat locked at ten and two. A vein jumped in his neck, steady as a pulse. "Your father usually has someone posted at the gatehouse," the driver said. His voice bro

The town car stopped at the foot of the steps, and Zale let his face go slack.It took work. Thirteen years had taught his mouth to hold still, and now he had to teach it to do the opposite. He loosened his jaw. He lifted his eyebrows a fraction, the way a man does when he's impressed by something he doesn't understand. In the dark glass of the window he caught the reflection he wanted: a pleasant, slightly vacant face over an expensive coat.The driver opened his door. Zale climbed out and tripped on the curb.Not badly. Just enough. He caught himself on the roof of the car, laughed at his own feet, and straightened with a sheepish grin. The driver looked at the pavement. Good. One more person who would tell the story the right way.The gates had been closed behind him. He'd noticed that coming up the drive, the way the iron swung shut with a clean electronic hum, and he'd noticed the floodlights too. They were blazing now. All eight of them, white and hard, painting the lawn the col

The elevator rose so smoothly that Zale only knew they were moving because his stomach said so.Forty-one floors. A hum under his shoes, a faint pressure in his ears, and his own reflection in the brushed-steel doors: a pale young man in a charcoal suit that had cost more than a car and fit like it had been cut for someone else. The shoulders hung half an inch too wide. The sleeves covered his knuckles, which suited him. He had asked the tailor for exactly that.He rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand until they went red, then let his mouth hang slightly open. Hungover. Late. Sorry about it.The doors parted on the top floor and the light hit him.The whole level was glass. Floor-to-ceiling panes ran the length of the building, and the late morning sun came through them like something thrown. It lit the white marble, the pale leather chairs, the long reception desk where a young woman in a gray dress sat very straight and did not smile. The air smelled of new leather and dry espr

The water was eleven degrees. Zale knew because the dive watch on his left wrist said so, in small green numerals, and because his body had stopped arguing with the number about forty minutes ago.He floated chest-deep in the shadow of the old ferry slip with his chin just above the surface. Black neoprene under black tactical shell, a mesh hood over his hair, grease paint on the skin around his eyes. The pilings around him were furred with weed and rotted to the color of old tea. Each time the swell lifted him, the timber groaned and a little shower of rust-brown flakes dropped into the bay. Salt had dried on his lips and cracked them. He tasted iron and brine and did not lick them.It was the following Tuesday, 3:34 a.m., and the harbor was awake.Fog lay low over the water, thin as breath on glass, and the floodlights turned it to a pale smoke that moved along the quay in slow sheets. Eleven poles. He had counted them again on arrival and found them where the satellite photo had pu

The sun in Tivat felt personal.It came off the water in sheets and off the hulls in blades, and Zale had to put his sunglasses on twice, because the first time his hand missed his face. Three nights ago he had been eleven degrees and shaking on a cold floor. Now he stood on a pontoon walkway at one o'clock on a Wednesday afternoon, warm to the marrow, with the smell of suncream and teak oil and somebody's gin riding the breeze, and the contrast was so complete it made his stomach turn.Brecken's boat was the third from the end. A hundred and sixty feet of white, with a name in brushed-gold script on the stern: *SEROTONIN.* Three decks of glass and pale wood stacked like a wedding cake, a crane on the foredeck holding a jet ski, a crew in white polos lined up at the gangway like they had been stamped out of the same sheet. Chrome rails threw the light back so hard he squinted.He adjusted his stride. Looser. A little drag in the left foot, a little too much swing in the arms. He had a