AI Rory caught the bottle by its neck before it cracked a skull.
Glass sweated under her fingers. Somebody had already tipped three stools and a whole bowl of peanuts across the floor, and the noise in The Raven’s Nest had the ugly pitch of a crowd that wanted to watch something break. A man with a shaved head lunged again, teeth bared, and she shoved the bottle away from him, hard, into the bar top.
“Enough.”
He blinked at her like she had spoken in another language. His eyes slid to her wrist, to the small crescent scar she never managed to hide, then back to her face with a slow, stupid grin.
“Who the hell are you supposed to be?”
A laugh cut through the din. It didn’t belong to him. It came from the other side of the mess, sharp as snapped chalk, too familiar to ignore.
Rory turned.
The woman standing there held a broken coaster like a blade. Her hair used to fall in loose brown ropes down her back when they were nineteen, when they sat on Cardiff steps and pretended they didn’t care about the world noticing them. Now it sat cropped and deliberate against her jaw, a slick, expensive cut that framed a face Rory could have drawn from memory, except the memory didn’t include the hollows under the cheekbones or the fine line that ran from the corner of her mouth to her chin, as if she had learned to keep a smile on a short leash.
Eva Morgan looked at Rory as if she had walked into a mirror and found it spiteful.
“Oh,” Eva said. “Of course it’s you.”
The shaved-head man swung a fist, and Rory stepped inside it, caught his wrist, and twisted. He yelped. The bottle in Rory’s hand met his knuckles once, clean, and he swore as he staggered back, clutching his hand.
Silas Blackwood’s voice sliced through the room from behind the bar.
“Out. Now.”
Nobody argued with Silas when he spoke like that. Not regulars, not tourists, not men who fancied themselves dangerous. He didn’t raise his voice, he didn’t threaten. He just sounded like a decision had already happened and the rest of them were late to it.
The shaved-head man spat on the floor and backed away, eyes fixed on Eva as if she owed him money or blood. Two others followed him out under Silas’s stare. The green neon above the entrance washed their faces a sick colour when the door swung open, then slammed shut again, sealing the bar back into its dim hush.
For a moment, the only sound came from someone righting a stool and the slow tick of the old clock Silas kept behind the optics. Maps and black-and-white photographs watched from the walls like witnesses with nothing to lose.
Silas wiped his hands on a cloth that had seen better decades.
“You’ve got a talent for bringing trouble through my door,” he said to Rory .
Rory set the bottle down and flexed her fingers.
“I didn’t invite her.”
Eva’s eyes flicked to Silas. Then back to Rory. Up close, Rory noticed more changes. Eva wore a smart little black coat that looked Italian, soft wool, sharp lines. The collar hid her throat as if she didn’t trust anyone with it. A thin gold chain glinted at her neck, plain enough to pass for ordinary until the light hit it and showed a tiny pendant, a neat rectangle that reminded Rory of old ID tags.
Eva’s hand with the broken coaster didn’t shake, but it held tension , a tautness that sat in the tendons like wire.
“You live here,” Eva said. “Above a bar.”
Rory kept her face still.
“London’s full of surprises.”
Eva let out a breath that wanted to be a laugh and failed.
“You always did know how to go missing.”
Silas moved, the slight limp in his left leg more noticeable when he hurried. He reached beneath the bar and produced a dustpan and brush. Not flustered. Not curious. Just practical.
“Coaster,” he said to Eva .
Eva didn’t move.
Silas’s hazel eyes sharpened, and when he looked at someone like that, he didn’t need to raise his voice.
Eva placed the broken piece on the bar with care, as if it mattered.
Silas swept up the worst of the mess and nodded towards the back wall, where a tall bookshelf sat among framed photographs and an old map of Prague with faint pencil marks Rory had once traced with a fingertip.
“Private,” Silas said.
Rory didn’t ask. She followed. Eva followed too, close enough that Rory caught a scent off her, not perfume exactly, but something antiseptic underneath, like hospital soap and metal.
Silas ran his fingers along the spine of a book that nobody ever took down. The shelf shifted with a soft click, and the hidden doorway gave way.
Eva stared, the first real crack in her composure.
“You’re joking.”
Silas stepped through first. Rory went next. The back room swallowed the noise from the bar, and the air changed, cooler, drier, carrying the clean smell of paper and old smoke. A small table sat in the middle with three chairs around it. A lamp threw a focused pool of light that made the rest of the room retreat into shadow.
Eva halted at the threshold like she expected the dark to reach for her ankles.
Rory sat without being asked . She kept her hands flat on the table, open. Nothing to hide.
Silas closed the shelf behind them. The click sounded final.
“Name,” Silas said to Eva.
Eva’s gaze moved to his right hand, to the silver signet ring. It looked like the sort of thing you inherited or stole, the sort of thing that carried history whether you wanted it or not.
“Eva Morgan.”
Silas didn’t blink.
“And the men at my door.”
Eva’s mouth tightened.
“Not yours. Mine.”
Rory leaned back. The chair creaked.
“You brought them here.”
Eva met her eyes.
“I brought myself here.”
Silas remained standing. He didn’t sit when a room still had questions.
“What do you want?” he asked.
Eva’s hand went to her coat pocket, slow. Rory tensed despite herself, then hated herself for it. Eva used to be the girl who shared chips and lied to bouncers and held Rory’s hair when she was sick on cheap cider. Eva used to be safe.
Eva pulled out a slim envelope and laid it on the table.
Rory didn’t touch it.
Silas did. He opened it, slid out a photo, and placed it face up in the light.
Three girls on the steps outside Cardiff University, laughing at something just out of frame. Rory recognised her own younger face, softer, eyes too bright with certainty. Eva had her arm slung around Rory’s shoulders, her grin wide, a cigarette pinched between her fingers like she owned the night. The third girl, small and sharp-featured, stared at the camera with a look that said she knew the photographer and didn’t forgive him. Rory remembered her name as a blur, someone from a seminar, someone who vanished mid-term.
Silas studied the photo as if it carried a code.
Eva watched Rory, not the picture.
“You kept that?” Rory asked.
Eva’s voice came out flat.
“No. Someone else did.”
Silas slid the photo aside and pulled out the rest of the contents. A folded sheet of paper, a small key taped to it, and a plastic card with a magnetic strip. The card had no name, just a number printed in black.
Rory’s throat tightened anyway, a betrayal of body over mind.
“Tell me why you’re here,” Rory said.
Eva’s eyes held hers. The blue of Rory’s own eyes reflected in them, a cold mirror.
“I came to cash in a favour.”
Rory gave a short, humourless laugh.
“We had favours?”
Eva’s mouth twitched.
“You don’t remember the last time I saw you.”
Rory stared at the key. The tape looked fresh.
“I remember enough.”
“You remember the story you tell yourself,” Eva said. “The one where you ran. The one where London happened like a rescue.”
Rory kept her voice measured .
“Didn’t it?”
Eva looked away at last, to the wall, where a pinboard held scraps of paper and photographs Silas never explained. Her jaw worked once, as if she chewed on something bitter.
“I told you to come,” Eva said. “I told you to get out because he would have killed you.”
Rory’s hands curled, nails biting her palms.
“Don’t say his name.”
Eva’s gaze snapped back.
“You never said it either. Not to me. You just showed me the bruise and then you laughed at a joke and you pretended you didn’t feel it. You left Cardiff and you didn’t look back.”
“I looked back,” Rory said.
Eva’s expression hardened, a practiced thing.
“You sent one text. One. Then you vanished. I found your mum’s school number. She hung up on me.”
Silas’s eyes shifted between them like he listened to a wiretap and chose what mattered.
“This is personal,” Silas said.
“It’s always personal,” Eva replied, too quick. “That’s the problem.”
Rory forced her fingers open again. She looked at Eva’s hands. No rings. Short nails. A faint white line across one knuckle that looked like an old cut . Not the hands of someone who spent the last years behind a desk, no matter how smart the coat looked.
“What happened to you?” Rory asked.
Eva let out a slow breath.
“You mean why I look like I’ve seen things.”
Rory didn’t answer. The silence did it for her.
Eva’s gaze dropped to Rory’s wrist scar.
“You always had that,” Eva said. “You used to tell people it came from falling off your bike. You never told them it happened when you put your hand through glass because you were angry.”
Rory’s mouth went dry.
“That’s not what happened.”
Eva’s eyes softened for the first time, and that softness carried more violence than anger.
“It happened because you didn’t want to cry. I remember you bleeding into the sink, and you stared at it like it belonged to someone else. You’ve always been good at that.”
Rory’s voice sharpened.
“And you’ve always been good at making my pain into a story you can hold.”
Eva flinched, fast, then covered it with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
“There she is.”
Silas placed the card with the number on the table, tapping it once.
“What is this?”
Eva’s posture stiffened. Her shoulders rose a fraction, as if she braced for impact.
“A door,” she said. “A lock. A bank. Pick one.”
Silas didn’t smile.
“I don’t do riddles.”
Eva leaned forward, and the lamp caught the fine sheen of sweat along her hairline.
“Then do the simple version. I need somewhere to disappear for a while. You’re the man who makes people disappear.”
Silas’s eyes narrowed .
“That’s a rumour.”
Eva’s laugh came out raw.
“Silas Blackwood, retired, limping, respectable. Bar owner. Patron saint of lost causes.”
Rory watched Silas’s face. He didn’t react to flattery. He didn’t react to threats. Only to information.
Silas’s voice stayed even.
“You said you came for a favour. Who promised you one?”
Eva’s gaze slid to Rory, and it carried the old intimacy like a bruise.
“You did,” Eva said.
Rory’s chest tightened.
“I never promised you anything.”
Eva’s hand moved, and for a moment Rory thought she would reach across the table, grab her wrist, make it physical. Instead Eva tapped the photo, once, twice.
“You did when you asked me to keep your secret,” Eva said. “Back then. When you told me you weren’t scared of him, you were scared of yourself.”
Rory’s face stayed still, but her stomach turned.
Silas’s attention sharpened, a dog scenting blood.
“What secret?” Silas asked Rory.
Rory didn’t look at him.
Eva’s voice dropped.
“You want to know how she really left? She didn’t just run. She took something.”
Rory’s chair scraped back a fraction.
“Stop.”
Eva’s eyes glinted.
“She took his file,” Eva continued. “The one he kept in that locked drawer like it was scripture. Names. Accounts. Pictures. And she came to me with it because she trusted me.”
Rory’s fingers gripped the edge of the table.
“I didn’t trust you,” Rory said. “I had nowhere else.”
Eva’s mouth tightened, and the line down her chin deepened.
“And I told you I’d handle it. I told you I had a contact, someone who could burn it, wipe it, keep him off you. You remember that part?”
Rory’s silence answered.
Silas’s gaze flicked to Rory now, sharp with a question he didn’t speak.
Eva swallowed once. Her voice stayed steady, but the steadiness felt forced, a door held shut with a shoulder.
“I didn’t burn it,” Eva said. “I sold it.”
The words hit the room and didn’t echo . They didn’t need to.
Rory’s throat tightened until breath felt like an argument .
Eva kept going, not letting Rory speak, not letting mercy in.
“I told myself it didn’t matter. I told myself he deserved it. I told myself you were safe in London and you didn’t need me.”
Rory’s voice came out low.
“You sold it to who.”
Eva’s eyes didn’t drop.
“I don’t know his real name,” Eva said. “I know his face. I know the way he smiled like he had teeth to spare. I know he paid in cash and he said one thing that stuck.”
Silas leaned in a fraction.
“What did he say?”
Eva’s mouth twisted.
“He said, ‘Tell Rory she picked the wrong city.’”
Rory’s hands went numb.
“That’s not possible.”
Eva’s gaze held hers, and Rory saw it then, under the polish and the sharp coat. Fear. Not the theatrical kind. The kind that made a person precise.
“It’s possible,” Eva said. “Because he found me last week. He showed me the photo. He showed me your mother’s address, and then he asked where you were. I lied. He didn’t believe me.”
Silas’s voice turned colder.
“You led them to my bar.”
Eva shook her head once.
“No. I led them to Rory,” Eva said. “Because if he’s coming, he’s coming anyway. I came to warn her.”
Rory stared at the key on the paper. The tape caught the light like a thin bandage.
“What does that open?”
Eva’s mouth pressed into a line.
“A locker. King’s Cross. The rest of what I kept.”
Rory’s eyes lifted.
“You kept more.”
Eva’s voice cracked and recovered.
“I kept enough to ruin him. I kept enough to ruin you too. I didn’t know which I’d need.”
Silas’s chair scraped back. He reached into his jacket, and Rory saw the old reflex in him, the smooth economy of movement.
The bookshelf behind them thudded.
Once.
Then again, harder.
A male voice carried through the wood, controlled and loud enough to cut.
“Silas Blackwood. Open up.”
Silas didn’t look at Rory or Eva. He pulled a compact pistol from inside his jacket and checked it like it belonged in his hand.
The bookshelf shuddered as something heavy struck it, and dust fell from the top shelf in a thin stream.
The voice came again, closer now, edged with impatience.
“We’re coming in.”