GLASS HOUSES

Chapter Three

Julian knocked twice, then a pause, then once more. A rhythm, like he'd thought about it on the drive over, needed something to hold onto that wasn't the fear sitting in his chest.

Elena opened the door and found him standing in the hallway light looking nothing like the man from the pool house that morning. His tie was gone. His jacket was rumpled like he'd been gripping the collar of it in his car. There was a scrape on his knuckles she hadn't noticed before.

"What happened to your hand?"

"I hit the wall in my office. It felt appropriate at the time." He tried for a smile and didn't quite manage it. "Can I come in, or are you going to interrogate me in the hallway?"

She stepped aside. He walked in slower than she expected, taking in the apartment the way people did when they were trying to ground themselves in something small and ordinary. The stack of unread mail on her counter. The single mug in the drying rack. The absence of anything on the walls that suggested a person who planned on staying anywhere long.

"Not exactly what I pictured," he said.

"What did you picture?"

"I don't know. Something with more books, maybe." He turned to face her, and for a moment the careful composure dropped entirely, and what was left underneath looked exhausted and scared and grateful all at once. "Thank you. For this. I didn't know who else to call."

"Sit down before you fall down." She nodded toward the couch. "You want water, or something stronger?"

"Stronger, if you have it."

She poured two glasses of whiskey she kept for exactly this kind of night, though she hadn't shared it with anyone in longer than she wanted to think about, and sat down across from him in the armchair, putting a careful distance between them that felt less like caution and more like a wall she wasn't ready to admit she needed.

"Tell me everything," she said. "From the beginning."

---

He told her about the settlement agreement first. Found six months ago in the archived files, sealed, unexplained, three families named as parties, the specifics redacted even in his own firm's copy. He told her he'd meant to ask his senior partner about it and never had, some instinct telling him not to draw attention to something he didn't understand yet.

Then he told her about tonight. Coming back to his office after leaving Elena at the Ashworth house, planning to pull the file properly, do this the right way, hand it over with everything in order. Finding his office door unlocked. Nothing obviously missing, no broken glass, nothing that would show up on an insurance report. Just the file gone. Vanished from a locked cabinet that only he had the key to.

"Only you," Elena repeated.

"Only me, and the managing partner, who's been in Aspen since Tuesday. I checked."

"So either someone got a key made, or someone who works there let them in."

"Or someone's been watching my office a lot longer than tonight." Julian rubbed his hand over his face, the scraped knuckles catching the lamp light. "I've spent six years protecting that family without ever asking hard questions about what I was protecting them from. I told myself that was the job. Ethical distance. Now a girl's dead and someone's willing to break into a locked office to keep me from finding out why, and I keep thinking, what did I miss? What did I let myself not see?"

"You didn't do this."

"I know that. Doesn't mean I didn't help build the room it happened in."

Elena watched him for a long moment, something in his voice landing harder than she expected, close enough to her own guilt about Marcus that it felt uncomfortably familiar. She recognized this particular flavor of self-blame. She wore a version of it every day.

"You can't carry every bad thing that happens near you," she said. "Believe me. I've tried the math on that one. It doesn't add up to anything except more nights like this."

He looked at her, and something in his expression shifted, the exhaustion giving way to something quieter, more focused, entirely on her.

"Is that what tonight is for you? A night like that?"

"Every night's a night like that. Tonight's just got extra company."

That earned a real smile from him, brief but genuine, and Elena felt something in her chest loosen that she hadn't realized was clenched tight until it wasn't. They sat in silence for a moment, the whiskey warm between them, the distance she'd put between their seats somehow feeling smaller than it had a few minutes ago.

"Can I ask you something?" he said.

"Depends on the question."

"That first morning, at the house. You looked at me like you already knew exactly what kind of man I was going to be, before I'd said more than three sentences." He turned the glass in his hand, not quite meeting her eyes. "Was I wrong to think you might have been wrong about that?"

Elena felt the question land somewhere low in her chest, somewhere she hadn't let anyone reach in longer than she wanted to admit. "I don't know yet. Ask me again once this is over."

"That's a very careful non-answer."

"I learned from the best."

His eyes came up to hers then, and whatever careful distance either of them had been maintaining collapsed a little further, the air in the room shifting into something heavier, something that had nothing to do with the case at all. Elena was aware of every inch of space between them, aware of the way his gaze had settled on her mouth for half a second before he caught himself and looked away.

"I should probably sleep on your couch," he said, voice rougher than it had been a minute ago. "If that's still the plan."

"It's still the plan." She stood up before she could talk herself into something else, grabbing a blanket from the closet and handing it to him, letting her fingers brush his for exactly one second longer than necessary. "Get some sleep, Julian. Tomorrow we figure out who broke into your office and why."

"Elena."

She stopped in the doorway to her bedroom, not turning around right away, feeling her name in his mouth land somewhere it had no business landing.

"Thank you," he said. "For not asking me to explain why I trust you already. I don't fully understand it myself."

"Don't overthink it," she said, finally looking back at him. "Neither of us has slept properly in months. We're both just looking for a reason to believe someone's still on our side."

She closed her door before he could answer, and she lay awake a long time after, listening to the quiet sounds of him settling on her couch, feeling the strange, unfamiliar comfort of not being alone in her apartment for the first time since Marcus died. She almost let herself relax into it.

Then her phone buzzed on the nightstand. A text from Priya, sent at just past midnight.

*Cole, you need to see this. Ran facial recognition on Ashworth's neighborhood cameras from three nights before Mia died. Got a hit on someone who shouldn't be anywhere near that house.*

Elena sat up fast, all the warmth from a moment ago gone cold in her chest.

*Who?*

The reply took a moment to come through, and when it did, Elena read it twice before she understood what she was looking at.

*Julian Reyes. Walking toward the Ashworth property at 11:47 PM. Three days before the murder. He never mentioned being there that night.*

Elena looked at her closed bedroom door, and beyond it, the quiet shape of the man sleeping on her couch, the man she'd just handed a blanket to with her fingers lingering a second too long.

She didn't move for a long time.