Run: 2026-10-20-01M5C6ENWC12ERNBA45QQWRP6K

The third deadbolt stuck halfway, the way it always did. Rory shouldered the door until metal gave a grudging click, and there he stood with the light from the stairwell behind him. Lucien Moreau, dressed as if the East End were an inconvenience he had chosen to forgive. Charcoal suit, no umbrella, platinum hair slicked back and shining with rain. The ivory cane hung from his grip like something he had meant to leave behind. Ptolemy beat her to a reaction. The tabby shot off the arm of the sofa, claws skidding over a stack of Eva's scrolls, and vanished under the bed. "Budge up." A hand on Lucien's chest. Push. He stepped back onto the landing without a word. She got the door shut behind them both. Rory folded her arms across the vest Eva had bought her for Christmas, the one printed with a cartoon banshee singing karaoke. "You've got four seconds." "You changed the locks." "You noticed." "Three of them now." The corner of his mouth moved. "That's a lot of faith in hardware." "Forty past eleven at night, Lucien. Eva's on a nightshift. There's nothing in here you can buy, sell, or blackmail out of anyone, so say what you came for or get off my stairs." He looked past her shoulder at the flat, at the sliding towers of books, the pinned maps, the cold cup of tea balanced on a dictionary. "You're staying here." "Cat-sitting." "You hate cats." "I like this one. He doesn't talk." Rainwater dripped from his hairline onto his collar. He didn't wipe it. "I need the Michaelmas ledger." "Gone." "Rory." "End of that sentence." She pulled the door open a hand's width and pointed with her chin. "Downstairs, three flights, out the back door into Hanbury Street. There's a skip. Check it." "Your name is on the last page." The door came to a stop. Somewhere below a curry house extractor fan thundered away, pushing the smell of onions and cardamom through the walls. "Written in your brother's hand. He signed for three consignments of salt-glass over the summer. Which puts you on a list of people attractive to men who want to know where the salt-glass went." Lucien tilted his head, the amber eye catching the hall light, the black one flat as a pebble. "Do you actually want to check the skip?" "I didn't sign anything. I moved boxes because Yu-Fei pays me forty quid a shift." "And one of those boxes sat in the boot of your employer's car for six hours while your brother rang every man he owed money." Her jaw worked. "He's not my brother. He's Eva's brother. And I've not seen him since August." "Shane hasn't seen a lot of people since August." He said it flatly. "Two of them won't be able to." The stairwell bulb buzzed and clicked off, and the landing went to the dim yellow of the light two floors down. She watched his shape in it, the broad line of his shoulders, the way he stood with the cane planted and the weight tipped onto his left leg. The leg she'd bandaged in a back room above the Golden Empress with the cloth off her own table. "Come in." She swallowed. "Before someone sees you and decides you're collectable." He stepped inside, and she shut the door. One bolt. Two. Three. "Boots off. Eva's got a thing about the carpet." He crouched with a small grunt he didn't bother to hide and set his boots by the door with the laces tucked inside, and the cane went into the umbrella stand as though its owner were going to be here in the morning. "You look thin," she said. "In my profession, that passes for a compliment." "Wasn't one." She pulled the lid off a biscuit tin, looked at the contents, and put the lid back. "Start with the night you left." He walked the length of the bookcase, fingertips skimming spines. "Which night." "Don't." "Eva's sofa, the twenty-third of June, you made a bargain of me and then didn't answer for eleven days." He turned his back to the shelves. "That's the night you mean." "I had a phone." "You had a phone." He nodded slowly. "And I had a client who put a hole in my rib and paid for the surgeon in cash, no name. It was a good week for silence." Her hand went to her wrist, to the small crescent scar. "You could have sent one word," she said. "I'd have come." "You'd have come to a room where they don't ask who you are, only what you're carrying." He gestured at the flat with his open palm. "This. All of this. Three locks and a cat and a beehive of paper. It's the most sensible thing you own, and you bought it because a man once put his hands on you and you couldn't open a door fast enough." She stood very still. "That's not what this is." "It's what all of it is." He walked the aisle between the books, and the floorboard complained under him, and he stopped at the low table and the cup of cold tea. "You put that city behind you and picked up a new one, and it was the right choice. Would you have made it if I'd been at the end of your phone?" The extractor fan outside stopped with a shudder. In the quiet a police siren turned the corner and went away down Brick Lane. "No," she said. He straightened. "So." His voice came down half a step. "Now you know why I let the silence grow." "That's not—" Rory pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes and dragged them down her face. "That is not a thing one gets to decide for someone else." She crossed the floor and got a fistful of his lapel. The wet wool was cold under her fingers. He didn't pull back. The black eye held her, and the amber one didn't. "You didn't want to be the reason," she said. "Now you're standing in Eva's flat asking me for murder evidence and there's a cheque's worth of salt-glass in your pocket somewhere. Choose, Lucien. Now or in the morning, and either way you move before I get my coat." "Sit down." His hand came up over hers. Not quite holding. "The ledger puts your name near the bottom of a page that three men I know are reading this week. I'll need a day. Two, if the first one discourages me." "Two days." She let go of the lapel, and smoothed it, and left her hand there. "You can sleep on Eva's sofa. Ptolemy will be furious. I'm going to make you talk before either of us sleeps." "I can't promise my answers are any good." "Then give me the bad ones." His hand settled warm over hers, and the flat creaked and settled around them. Under the bed, the tabby gave one low, aggrieved meow.