Run: 2026-09-23-01M36SPPEKJ9F3GGQ8H2CEP4M3

The lock gave before her knuckles touched the door a second time. The sound of a chain being drawn back arrived a heartbeat ahead of the light, and Lucien Moreau filled the frame of his own doorway the way he filled most rooms: like the space had been tailored around him. Charcoal suit, no tie, top button loose. His platinum hair was slicked back but less precise than usual, one side pushed off his forehead as though he'd run his hand through it once and stopped caring about the result. The ivory head of his cane rested against the jamb behind him. He looked at her. Not the quick, assessing glance he gave strangers — a full, slow inventory, starting at her eyes and working down to the courier bag still slung across her chest. "Carter." "Lucien." "You're standing in my hallway." He leaned against the frame and folded his arms. "Which, unless you've developed a talent for teleportation, means you came here." "Astute." Rory shifted her weight. The carpet beneath her boots was worn to the weave, and the light from his flat behind him caught the crescent scar on her wrist when she pulled the strap of her bag higher on her shoulder. "Are you going to invite me in, or do you want to keep the neighbors listening?" "There are no neighbors. I keep this floor." He stepped aside anyway, one hand on the door, the other gesturing into the room with a sweep that could have ushered in a jury. The flat was spare to the point of suspicion. A single armchair, a bookshelf that held more bottle than book, a window left open to the sounds of the street four stories below. Papers were stacked on the small table by the door — bills, by the look of them, and a newspaper with a section circled in red. Everything else was surface and shadow. Rory walked in. She didn't take off her coat. Lucien closed the door and the chain went home. Three turns of the lock. She counted them without meaning to. "You could have called," he said from behind her. "Your number changed." "Did it." Not a question. He moved past her toward the armchair, then stopped short of it and turned back. "I gave it to you twice." "You gave it to me once. The second time I deleted it on purpose." She met his amber eye, then his black one — the mismatch had always thrown her for a half-second before her brain caught up. "Sue me." "I could." He almost smiled. It didn't reach either eye. "I know a very good one." "So do I. She was my mum's colleague at the school." Rory unzipped the courier bag and pulled out a folder — Yu-Fei's takeout receipts, she'd grabbed them off the passenger seat without thinking — and set it on the table on top of his papers. Then she took the bag off entirely and draped it over the back of a chair she hadn't noticed was there. "I need information. That's why I'm here." "That's why you're here at eleven at night. On foot. Without calling ahead." He lowered himself into the armchair and crossed one leg over the other, ankle resting on knee. The blade concealed in his cane caught the lamplight where it leaned against the wall. "Tell me." She stayed standing. Standing kept her hands from doing something she'd regret. "Evan got out of Broadmoor last Thursday." The silence that followed had weight. Lucien uncrossed his legs, then crossed them the other way. "Thursday," he repeated. "Thursday." "You're certain." "His mother called my mother's house. Mum forwarded me the voicemail this afternoon." Rory pulled her phone from her coat pocket and held it out. The screen glowed with a waveform — a woman's voice, clipped and frightened, the kind of fear that had been rehearsed so many times it had gone smooth. "He's staying with a cousin in Ealing. Has been since Wednesday night." Lucien took the phone. He held it the way he held everything — like it was evidence and he was already building the case. He listened to the whole message, watched the waveform finish, then handed it back without a word. "Why me?" He said it flatly, without performance. "Because you have people who watch things. Because you owe me after Marseille." She'd meant to say it evenly. It came out sharper than that. "And because I can't go to the police with a voicemail and a feeling." "You could. They'd file it and you'd wait." He rose from the chair. He didn't cross to her — he moved to the window and looked down at the street, both hands in his pockets. "Ealing. That's not far from here. Not far from Brick Lane, either." "He won't come near me. He doesn't know where I live." The words were out before she decided to say them. Rory watched his shoulders — the line of them, the way the jacket sat — and understood he'd heard the crack in the sentence as clearly as she had. He turned his head. Not all the way. Enough for the amber eye to find her. "He knew where you lived before." "Before was different." "Was it." He faced her fully now. The lamplight picked out the sharp architecture of his cheekbones, the shadow under his jaw where he'd skipped a shave. "Before, you had me." The sentence landed in the middle of the room and neither of them moved to pick it up. Rory felt the heat climb the back of her neck. She set her jaw. "You had conditions." "I had expectations. There's a difference." He took a step toward her. "You ran because I wouldn't pretend the world you wanted was the world you were in." "I ran because the last person who told me what was real turned out to be wrong about everything." Her voice held. Barely. She flexed her left hand and the crescent scar pulled tight. "I'm not having that conversation again." "You're standing in my flat at eleven at night having every conversation we skipped." Another step. He stopped an arm's length away, close enough that she could smell the trace of cedar on his collar. "Sue me." A laugh escaped before she could catch it — short, involuntary, startled out of her. He heard it. Something in his face shifted, a muscle near the mouth releasing, and for a second he looked the way he'd looked the first time they'd spoken in Marseille, when she'd insulted his wine and he'd decided, visibly, to find her interesting. "Ealing," she said, pulling them back. "I need a name. The cousin's name, an address, anyone who moves in that circle." "You'll have it by tomorrow." He moved past her to the table and pulled a business card from the stack — blank except for a phone number. He wrote a name on the back, tore the corner off the newspaper, and handed both to her. "Rory." She took the card. Her fingers brushed his. The contact lasted the length of a held breath. "Don't come here again unannounced," he said. "Next time, call." "You'll answer?" "I'll consider it." The corner of his mouth turned. Not quite a smile. Close enough to make her chest tight. "Lock your door on the way out. Three deadbolts, all of them, even the one with the sticky bolt." "I know how doors work." "You know how one door works. You've been in one place too long." He picked up his cane and balanced it across his palm, a habit she remembered — a tell for when he was thinking. "I'll walk you to the car." "I walked." A beat. He looked at her — really looked, from her boots to her eyes, the whole of her, the way he had when the door opened and he'd decided to catalogue instead of ask. "At midnight, on foot, from here to Brick Lane," he said. "You'll take a cab, and I'll pay for it." "I don't need your money." "You need the cab." He was already reaching for his coat. "Take the argument with you — there won't be one at the door."