Claimed as the Wrong Bride

Chapter 10 Part 4: First Catch

Bastien was back at the Alderton by one in the morning.

Adler was already there, which meant Adler had not gone to sleep and had not intended to. He was at the table with the legal pad and a coffee that was on its second hour and a specific expression that Bastien had come to associate with situations that were developing in directions Adler found professionally uncomfortable.

"The bank account," Bastien said.

"Monitored as of this morning." Adler turned a page on the legal pad. "The direct deposit from The Meridian is the only regular income. Cash transactions only elsewhere, no ATM withdrawals in any traceable pattern. The first installment of the commission is sitting in the account untouched."

"She hasn't touched the commission."

"Not yet. The autopayments continue. Gym membership, a storage facility in the grey zone, a prepaid phone service that cycles every four to six weeks." A pause. "The phone cycles make her difficult to reach by conventional means. Every time a number goes inactive we're back to zero."

Bastien looked at the legal pad. "The gym."

"Three locations in her likely movement radius. We don't know which one she uses. She pays by direct debit under her legal name which gives us the membership company but not the specific branch."

Bastien looked at the city. "Vex."

Vex, from the far end of the room where she had been standing in the particular quality of stillness she maintained in spaces she was not required to be the center of, looked at him.

"The membership account," he said. "Freeze it. Quietly. I don't want a cancellation notice, I don't want a letter, I don't want anything that tells her what happened. I want the account to simply stop working the next time she tries to use it."

Vex nodded once. "Done by morning."

Adler looked at the legal pad. He made a note. "She'll know it was you."

"Eventually." Bastien looked at the window. "First she'll think it's an administrative error. She'll try to resolve it. When she can't resolve it she'll understand what it is." A pause. "By that point I'll know which branch she uses."

Adler was quiet for a moment. "That's—"

"Efficient," Bastien said.

Adler looked at his legal pad. He wrote something. He underlined it once. He sat down. Looked at the city through the window, the specific pattern of it at this hour, light and dark and the constant low hum of a place that never fully stopped. "The storage facility."

"Grey zone location. We have the general area from the autopayment but not the specific unit." Adler looked at Vex.

Vex looked at Bastien.

"The facility is old," Bastien said. "Old systems."

"Old systems are easier," Vex said. It was the most words she had contributed to the evening and she said them with the specific economy of someone who did not expand on things that did not require expansion.

"Security feeds too," Bastien said. "I want to know every time she goes in."

Vex nodded. "I'll have the unit number and feed access before you wake up."

Adler looked at his legal pad. He had stopped writing things down and was simply looking at it, which was a different kind of notation. "She pays for a unit she has no lease on," he said. "Through an autopayment under her legal name. At a facility in the grey zone." A pause. "What is she storing."

"Art supplies, most likely," Bastien said. "Overflow from the warehouse."

"You think she uses it as part of her infrastructure."

"I think everything she does is infrastructure." Bastien looked at the window. "She doesn't do anything without a reason. The storage unit, the gym, the routes she walks. All of it is load-bearing." He paused. "Which means every piece we identify is another point of contact."

Adler wrote something. He underlined it once.

"The warehouse."

"Not yet." Bastien said it without hesitation. "The warehouse is the fixed point. If we move on it too early she abandons it entirely and we lose the only location she reliably returns to. We leave it alone until we understand everything else."

Adler nodded. "There is one other matter."

Bastien looked at him.

"Where she lives." Adler set down his pen. "Vex has been running the search since the night of the gallery. Rental records, property searches, hotel registrations, short term let platforms, boarding house registries. We've run her legal name, Ash Vane, variations of both." He paused. "There is nothing."

Bastien was quiet.

"No current address on any system. No rental history. No property ownership. No hotel bookings under any name we can connect to her. She is not registered at any residential address in this city and never has been." Adler's voice was level. "People do not simply have no address. There is always something. We have found nothing."

Bastien looked at Vex.

Vex set down her coffee. She had been waiting for this.