Chapter Three: Whose Prey Is Whom
1699 Words
London · Isle of Dogs
December 11, 2024 — 21:30
Eva arrived at Warehouse No. 22 two hours early.
The address lay to the east, where the Thames curved toward the docks. For the last three hundred meters there were no streetlights. She walked over loose gravel, the sharp clicks of her heels swallowed by the wind off the river.
The warehouse was smaller than she had imagined. A new padlock hung from the iron door. She opened it with the universal key Cherry had given her. The hinges shrieked as the door swung inward.
There were no lights inside.
But she did not need them.
Because the opposite wall glimmered.
Not with electric light, but with reflection—the moonlight striking dozens of glass frames and scattering back toward her.
She stepped inside.
One step.
Two.
Three.
Then she saw what covered the wall.
Photographs.
All of them were of her.
One hundred and twenty-one photographs, arranged in an immaculate grid. Beneath each was a label written in careful handwriting.
2017.03.14 – Assignment 001
Target: Banker, City of London
Role: Journalist
Duration: 4 days
Result: Infidelity
Note: Target presented her with a brooch during their third meeting.
2018.09.02 – Assignment 038
Target: Lawyer, Chelsea
Role: Gallery assistant
Duration: 6 days
Result: Infidelity
Note: Target promised to divorce his wife and marry her. Wife was six months pregnant.
2019.11.11 – Assignment 076
Target: Doctor, Hampstead
Role: Patient’s relative
Duration: 3 days
Result: Infidelity
Note: Target said, “I’ve never met anyone like you.”
…One hundred and twenty-one entries.
Six years.
Every secret of her life laid bare upon that wall.
Eva stood perfectly still.
Not out of fear.
But because—
She saw the photograph at the very center.
She was fifteen in that picture.
Fifteen, in a school uniform, standing in front of a pale gray building. On the sign beside the door were the words:
St. Mary’s Adolescent Psychological Rehabilitation Center
There was no label beneath the photograph.
Only a single line.
That was the year you said you would never trust anyone again.
But you were wrong.
Eva’s hands began to tremble.
Fifteen.
The year her mother attempted suicide for the third time.
The year Eva had been sent to that rehabilitation center.
The year she learned to wear disguises as armor.
No one knew those things.
Not even Cherry.
Footsteps sounded behind her.
She did not turn around.
“Do you know why I do this job?” she asked quietly.
The footsteps stopped two meters behind her.
“Because you hate,” he said.
She turned.
Liam stood in the moonlight, wearing the same gray coat as the night before, the worn book resting in his hand.
“You hate the people who pretend to love you,” he said. “You hate the ones who promise they’ll never leave. So you expose them for others. Every success proves you were right.”
Eva met his gaze.
“And you?” she asked. “Why collect these photographs?”
He did not answer immediately.
Instead he walked to the wall, removed a photograph from the bottom row, and handed it to her.
It was from an assignment six months earlier. The target had been a forty-year-old photographer, married. She had pretended to be a student learning photography. Three days later he had confessed his feelings.
“I took that photograph,” Liam said. “I was in the café that afternoon, sitting three tables behind you. I watched you smile as you spoke to him, but his eyes kept drifting to your collarbone. That was when I knew—you did not belong to him.”
Eva stared at the image.
“You followed me?”
“I was looking for you.”
“Why?”
He was silent for a long time.
Long enough for the moonlight to shift an inch.
Long enough for her to think no answer would come.
Then he spoke.
“Three years ago,” he said, “someone tested me the same way you test others. It wasn’t you. It was another woman. My best friend hired her to test me. That same friend was in love with my fiancée.”
Eva’s breath caught.
“Did he succeed?” she asked.
“Yes,” Liam said. “That woman needed five days to convince my fiancée that I was with her out of habit, not love. Six days later—one week before the wedding—she disappeared.”
A blade of wind cut through the shattered window frames, bitter and cold.
Suddenly Eva understood.
“So you gathered these to find her?”
He shook his head.
“Not to find her,” he said. “To find you.”
He looked directly into her eyes.
The gray ice had shattered completely now, revealing what lay beneath.
“Because you and she used the same methods. Because you both vanished completely after each assignment. Because you both looked at men the same way—without ever truly seeing them.”
He stepped closer.
“But don’t you want to know why I spent three years searching for someone who technically didn’t exist?”
Eva did not retreat.
“Why?”
He lifted a hand and lightly touched the corner of her eye—where the small tear-shaped mole rested.
“Because I knew you were not the same as her.”
He opened the worn book.
Inside was a sheet of paper, folded and preserved. The handwriting dated from three years ago, but Eva recognized the words instantly.
Love survives a test only because the test was never thorough enough.
She had written that sentence herself.
six years ago, on a personal blog that had existed for barely three months and had never drawn more than a handful of readers.
“After my fiancée vanished, I spent six months searching for her,” Liam said. “Eventually I found her diary. In it she wrote that the woman testing me had told her something.”
He looked at Eva.
“If love requires proof, it is already unworthy of belief.”
“That,” he said quietly, “was your line.”
Eva could not deny it.
“So I began searching for you. Not for revenge. Not for answers.” His voice softened. “I wanted to know whether the woman who wrote those words believed them herself.”
Silence flooded the warehouse.
Eva could hear her own heartbeat—too loud, too insistent.
“Have you found your answer?” she asked.
He smiled.
It was the first time she had seen him smile. Brief and faint, like winter sunlight that appears for a second before slipping behind clouds.
“I’m waiting for you to tell me,” he said.
He turned and walked toward the door.
At the threshold he stopped, his back still to her.
“You can leave now,” he said. “Pretend tonight never happened. Continue with your next assignment, your next city, your next name.”
“Or—”
He turned his head slightly.
Moonlight split his silhouette in two: one half illuminated, the other lost in shadow.
“You can stay. And using your real name, tell me a single honest truth.”
Then he left.
The iron door closed behind him with a dull echo.
Eva remained where she stood, facing the wall of photographs.
One hundred and twenty-one faces.
sixyears.
She had never used the same name twice.
She had never spoken a single sentence that truly belonged to Eva.
And now someone had told her:
You can stay.
She glanced down at her phone.
Cherry had sent thirteen messages. The last had arrived three minutes ago.
Claire just contacted me. Liam messaged her last night saying he knows she hired someone.
He said: “You don’t need to test me. I already have someone I want to test.”
Eva, where are you? Abort!!!
Eva looked at the screen.
Then she pressed the power button.
She pushed the door open.
It was raining outside.
London winter rain—fine as mist, cold enough to seep into bone.
He stood ten meters away without an umbrella, the shoulders of his coat already dark with rain.
He was waiting.
She walked toward him.
The rain fell between them.
“Eva,” she said.
He looked at her.
“My name is Eva. Not Nora. Not any other name.” Her voice was steady, as though reciting testimony long prepared. “Thirty-two years old. Born in Birmingham. Sent to a rehabilitation center at fifteen. I started this work at twenty-two. One hundred and twenty-one assignments. I have never lost.”
She paused.
Rain slid from her lashes.
“I’ve never trusted anyone. Because before my mother died, she told me she loved me—and then swallowed an entire bottle of pills.”
He did not look away.
“But tonight I came,” she said softly. “I could have stayed away.”
“I know.”
“What do you know?”
He was silent for a long time.
Then he said, “I know you’ve spent your whole life waiting for someone to tell you that you don’t have to pretend anymore.”
He extended his hand.
Not the polite gesture of a gentleman offering assistance.
Not the silent invitation he had given her the night before.
This was simply a hand reaching for another human being.
“You don’t need to prove anything to me,” he said. “Just—before the day you decide to leave, tell me.”
The rain grew heavier.
Eva looked at his hand.
In six years she had held countless hands. Every one had revealed the same thing: what the man wanted.
This one asked for nothing.
It only waited.
She raised her hand.
Slowly.
Carefully.
Like a bird settling for the first time upon an unfamiliar branch.
Her fingertips touched his palm.
And in that moment she understood:
She was not the hunter.
Nor the prey.
She was simply a person—
For the first time allowing herself to be seen by another.
- Writer
