Unreadable
873 Words
CASSIAN
The lights were warm, the bar louder and livelier than usual. The air was thick with the strong smell of liquor.
Reid was still talking.
I heard him. The Mercer account, Wednesday deadline, projected returns, all of it landing in the correct part of my brain while the rest of my attention was somewhere else entirely.
She had walked in twenty minutes ago.
I noticed her the way I noticed everything, automatically, before I had decided to. She had on a short black dress and an expression that gave absolutely nothing away. Her friend was the opposite, already looking around like she'd found paradise, soaking in every corner of the room. It was her face that made me look twice. Unreadable. Not performing anything for anyone. In a room full of people trying very hard to be seen, she looked like someone who had forgotten the room existed. That alone piqued my interest.
I went back to Reid.
Then I looked again.
"Thursday," I said, cutting across whatever he was saying.
Reid paused. "Sorry?"
"Tell Mercer Thursday. Not Wednesday."
He made a note without questioning it. That was the thing about Reid. He had worked with me long enough to know the difference between a decision and a discussion.
I watched her from across the room for the next forty minutes. Her friend dissolved into the crowd eventually, disappearing toward the back with someone, laughing at something he said. She watched them go. Turned back to her drink. Didn't reach for her phone the way most people would. Just sat there, completely self contained, like being alone was a language she was fluent in.
I knew that feeling better than I wanted to.
Reid closed his folder. "I think that covers everything."
"Good." I stood, extended my hand. "Go home."
He shook it, glanced once in her direction, and said nothing. Smart man.
I stayed at the table for a moment after he left. Finishing my drink. Watching her stare quietly at the art on the wall completely elsewhere in her own head.
Then I picked up my glass and walked to the bar.
I told myself it was because I wanted another drink.
Up close it was worse.
She shook my hand like it was an inconvenience and went back to her phone.
She knew who I was and it made absolutely no difference to her.
That had never happened before.
We talked. Or rather she answered in the precise minimum required and made me feel like I was the one being assessed. She said my name like she was reading a file. And then she looked at me with those unreadable eyes and said something nobody had ever said to me in fifteen years.
A man who's very good at being in a room full of people and still somehow alone in it.
Then she picked up her bag and walked away.
I watched her go. Then I picked up my phone and called Reid.
"The woman who just left the bar," I said. "I need everything. Name is Elara Vance. Room number too."
"Give me ten minutes," Reid said.
It took him seven.
The file came through on my phone. I read it slowly. Elara Vance, twenty seven, forensic accountant, independent, no firm affiliation for the past eight months. Clean record. Meticulous reputation. The kind of professional paper trail that suggested someone who was very good at their job and very careful about everything else.
Then I got to the last part.
Current private investigation. Subject, Victor Ashford.
I read it again.
I set my phone down on the table and looked at nothing in particular for a moment. Of all the bars in this city, on this particular Saturday night, the woman currently in a room upstairs was quietly building a case against my cousin.
I thought about that.
Then my phone buzzed. Private number.
"Mr. Holt." The voice was careful, measured. "It's Victor Ashford, sir. He's dead. They're calling it a murder."
The bar kept going around me. Music, laughter, glasses clinking. Nobody knew anything had changed.
I sat very still and let my mind move the way it always did, fast, finding the shape of the problem before the problem found me.
Victor was dead. Murdered. And the list of people with both motive and means started and very nearly ended with my name.
The public feud was well documented. What wasn't documented was seven days ago.
His request. A private meeting. I had gone because I thought it was about the financial irregularities that had been quietly unraveling inside Ashford Holdings for months. We had argued. He had said things that confirmed what I had suspected for a long time. I had said things that made clear I wasn't going to let it go. We had parted with nothing resolved and everything understood.
A week later he was dead.
I thought about how that looked.
Then I thought about Elara Vance. Her secret investigation. Her dead leads. Her room number sitting in my phone.
She didn't know she was a suspect yet. When she found out she was going to need exactly what I needed.
I picked up my jacket and headed for the elevator.
- Writer
