Chapter Two: The Perfect Prey
1578 Words
London · Clerkenwell
December 10, 2024 — 09:15
When Eva pushed open the glass door of Frost Architects, her palms were slick with sweat.
Not from nerves.
From exhilaration.
In the three days since that rain-soaked encounter, she had replayed the moment forty-seven times. The sentence he had spoken—“I’ve been waiting”—admitted at least six possible meanings.
He might have been waiting for the woman Chris was meant to meet that night.
He might have been waiting for the woman who had once shattered his friend three years ago.
He might simply have been waiting for coincidence—a casual approach, a misunderstanding, a moment that meant nothing at all.
Or—
He had been waiting for her.
Eva did not know which answer was true. But in sixyears, this was the first time she had walked into an assignment without already knowing the outcome.
The sensation made her scalp prickle.
The receptionist was a young woman with a high ponytail, studying Eva with open curiosity.
“Miss Eva Nolan? Liam is waiting for you upstairs. Second door on the left.”
Today, Eva was not Eva.
Today she was Nora Weiss, thirty-one, an independent curator recently relocated from Berlin to London, searching for architectural partners to renovate a derelict warehouse into an exhibition space.
A flawless résumé.
A flawless backstory.
A flawless persona.
She wore an oatmeal-colored cashmere coat. Her hair was loosely gathered, and the only jewelry she wore was a pair of tiny pearl studs. Her makeup was understated—Cherry had insisted that men like this did not respond to vulgar glamour. What they wanted was a woman who appeared entirely self-sufficient, yet carried the faint suggestion of a hidden depth behind her eyes.
Eva gave herself full marks.
She climbed the stairs.
The second door on the left stood open.
He had his back to it, standing before the floor-to-ceiling windows, watching the construction site outside. Sunlight outlined his figure in a muted aureole of dark gold.
She knocked.
“Come in.”
He turned.
The same gray eyes as three days ago. The same restrained, distant expression, untroubled by the slightest ripple.
And yet the way he looked at her now was entirely different.
Three days ago, he had been in shadow and she in the light. He had been waiting.
Today, she stood in the light—and he was still waiting.
He knows.
Eva’s instincts screamed inside her skull. He knows who you are. He knows why you’re here.
“Nora Weiss?” he said.
“Yes.”
He gestured toward the chair opposite his desk. “Please.”
Eva sat.
On his desk were two cups of coffee. One slid toward her. Her name was written on the cup.
Nora.
Not Eva. Nora.
The name he had “learned” only minutes before.
“Thank you,” she said.
“You’re welcome.” He returned to his seat and opened a folder. “I read your email. The warehouse redevelopment proposal. A curator from Berlin, previously working at…”
He recited every detail of her resume.
Perfect.
Precise.
Not a single error.
Eva listened—and observed.
His office was modest, sparsely furnished. The shelves held nothing but books on architecture. No photographs. No personal objects. On the corner of the desk lay a black leather notebook, the cover worn smooth with years of use.
She remembered what Cherry had said.
Three years ago, his fiancée had vanished. One week before their wedding.
If that were true, he ought to hate women.
Or fear them.
Yet when he looked at her, there was no discernible emotion at all.
That, she realized, was the most unsettling thing of all.
“So,” he said at last, closing the folder, “I’d like to hear your genuine thoughts about the project. Not the version written in your email.”
Eva lifted her gaze. “What qualifies as genuine?”
The corner of his mouth moved—not quite a smile, merely the faintest contraction of muscle.
“For instance,” he said quietly, “what you truly want.”
Silence fell.
In that single second, three thoughts crossed Eva’s mind.
First: he was testing her.
Second: he was waiting for her to betray herself.
Third—an unexpected, reckless idea surfaced.
What if she didn’t lie?
“I want…” she began, her voice slower than she expected, “a place where I can prove myself.”
It was the truth.
For sixyears she had deceived one hundred and twenty-onemen with carefully crafted lies. She had never needed to tell the truth.
Until now.
Something in his gaze changed.
Very slightly.
But Eva saw it—like a hairline fracture spreading across the surface of frozen gray water.
“So do I,” he said.
Then he rose, reached for his coat, and added, “I’ll show you the site.”
The construction site lay behind his office, a three-minute walk away.
An abandoned warehouse.
Brick walls from the 1920s. Rust-eaten iron window frames. Half the roof had collapsed. Yet sunlight filtered through the broken beams and fell upon puddles scattered across the floor, splintering into shards of liquid gold.
“It used to be a textile factory,” he said. “Closed fifteen years ago. I’m planning to convert it into artists’ studios.”
Eva stepped carefully over broken brick. Her heels sank slightly into the mud. She glanced down—
And he extended a hand.
Not in the gallant manner of allow me to help you. He simply held it out and waited for her to decide.
She took it.
His hand was warm. Dry. Solid with a quiet steadiness.
She thought of the countless hands she had held during one hundred and twenty-oneassignments—sweaty hands, trembling hands, hands gripping too tightly, hands pretending nonchalance. Every one of them had revealed the same thing: what the man wanted.
But his hand revealed nothing.
He was merely waiting for her to choose.
Three seconds later she released him and walked farther inside.
“What’s the hardest part of a renovation like this?” she asked.
“Ownership,” he replied. “This building has seven different owners. Half live abroad, two are dead, and one is in prison. It took me three years to get all of them to sign.”
Eva stopped walking.
Three years.
Three years ago, his fiancée vanished.
Three years ago, he began pursuing this building.
“Three years is a long time,” she said.
“I’m used to waiting,” he answered.
At that moment the sunlight shifted, falling directly across his face. For the first time Eva saw his eyes clearly—gray, but threaded with subtle variations in shade, like the layered strata of a glacier.
He knew.
She knew he knew.
And both of them knew the other was performing.
But the performance had to continue.
Because—
“Nora,” he said suddenly.
“Yes?”
“You mentioned you came from Berlin.”
“That’s right.”
“Which district did you live in?”
The lie was already prepared: Kreuzberg. Staying with a friend named Anna. A phone number she could recite flawlessly.
But when she opened her mouth, the words that emerged were:
“I don’t know. I’ve just arrived in London.”
The truth.
He did not press her.
He simply looked at her with that faintly fractured gaze and said, “Then you have time to find out.”
By the time they left the site, it was nearly six.
In London’s winter, evening descended like midnight.
Eva stood at the street corner waiting for a car when her phone vibrated.
A message from Cherry:
The client increased the offer. Claire says if you finish before she returns from the trip, she’ll double it again.
Also—I found something about Liam’s former fiancée. A week before she disappeared, someone saw her with another man. I’ll send the photo.
The image loaded.
Eva stared at the screen.
The air was bitterly cold.
Suddenly, her hands were not cold at all.
The man in the photograph looked about thirty, wearing a black jacket, standing beside a silver car. The angle was oblique, revealing only a partial profile—but it was enough.
Because she recognized that profile.
Three months earlier, during another assignment, she had met him.
The man’s name was Chris.
Married. His wife suspected him of infidelity.
Liam’s business partner.
The very man she had been meant to “test” tonight.
Her phone vibrated again.
Not Cherry.
A message from an unknown number:
Did you find the warehouse? I have another one. Would you like to see it?
—L
Eva stared at the letter L glowing on the screen.
Three seconds later, she smiled.
For the first time in sixyears, the prey had sent her a message.
Not begging.
Not accusing.
Not asking who she was.
Simply inviting her somewhere else.
She replied:
When?
Message sent.
She looked up.
Across four lanes of traffic, beneath a streetlamp, a man stood waiting.
Gray coat. Gray eyes.
He lifted his phone—the screen glowed. A second message appeared.
Tomorrow. Warehouse No. 22. Don’t tell anyone you came here.
—Including the person who sent you that photograph.
She raised her eyes again.
He had already turned and was walking away.
- Writer
