"Was it you?"
Alina stood in front of his desk with her phone in her hand and Penelope's whole story in her face. She'd told it to him in a rush: the lobby, the hood, the cash counted out on marble, the bare feet, the smell of the forest. The name spelled out letter by letter.
*A-R-G-S-T-O-N-E.*
"The barefoot man," she said. "At the night desk. Was it you?"
Avery didn't answer at first.
He wanted to say *no.* He wanted to say it the way he'd said it before, cleanly, with the conviction of a man who knew where he'd slept. But Penelope had described a tall man who smelled like a forest and didn't know how to count cash, and ever since the roof, Avery had been finding dirt under his nails and notes in his own handwriting and waking up in his grandmother's rose bed.
He didn't know.
That
