SHATTERED GLASS

THE NOTE

Vivienne Marlowe POV

I did not sleep well.

This was not unusual for me in a new place — it took me weeks to adjust to unfamiliar sounds, unfamiliar dark, the specific quality of silence that was not actually silence but was just the noise of somewhere I hadn't memorized yet. Sol's apartment had the bar on the corner and a neighbor who kept what sounded like a very small, very determined dog, and the particular ambient hum of a city that never fully went to sleep.

But it wasn't the sounds keeping me up.

It was the email.

I had read it fourteen times by midnight. I'd run the sender address through everything I could think of — reverse lookup sites, LinkedIn, a basic search — and found nothing. The account had been created the same day the email was sent. Whoever had sent it had not wanted to be found.

You should have taken the job in London.

There had been a job in London. An editorial position at a mid-size literary press that I'd applied to on the same day I'd applied to Ashford & Cole, eight months ago, when I was still at the hospital and sending applications into the void every Friday night like letters I didn't actually believe would be answered. The London job had offered an interview first. I'd withdrawn my application when Ashford & Cole called.

Nobody outside my application history knew about that. It wasn't on my CV. I hadn't told anyone except Sol.

I lay on the couch in the dark and listened to the city and thought about that.

Then I got up, made tea I didn't drink, and went back to my notes on the Harmon manuscript. If I was going to be awake anyway, I might as well be useful.

* * *

Monday morning came by quickly, it was my second week. I had submitted my Harmon notes and Roz had sent back two words — good, print — and I was beginning to understand that this was, for Roz, effusive praise.

I was at my desk at 8:40. The floor was filling up around me, the particular Monday morning energy of people who had spent the weekend remembering they were people and were now being asked to forget it again.

I had not told anyone about the email.

I had thought about telling Roz. I had talked myself out of it three times. Roz had told me to watch everyone, and until I knew where the email came from, everyone included people I was inclined to trust.

What I had done instead was something I was not entirely proud of: I had come in forty minutes early and very carefully, very quietly, gone through the publicly accessible company directory looking for anyone who might have had access to my application file. Which was everyone in HR. And both CEOs.

I was staring at this list when a shadow fell across my desk.

"You're in early."

I looked up. And then up a little more, because he was tall in a way that required recalibration.

He was not Dominic. He had the same dark eyes but they were doing something entirely different with them — warm where Dominic's were contained, easy where Dominic's were deliberate. He was smiling like smiling was something he did constantly and with great personal enjoyment. He was also, objectively, extraordinarily handsome, in the kind of way that suggested he had known it for long enough that it had become simply a feature of his personality rather than a fact about his face.

"Nathaniel Cole," he said, extending a hand. "I run the acquisitions arm. You're Roz's new hire."

"Vivienne Marlowe." I shook his hand. "You're Dominic's brother."

Something flickered across his face — amusement, and beneath it, something that wasn't. "He mentioned me?"

"The company directory mentioned you. You share a last name."

"Right." He laughed. It was a good laugh. The kind that made you want to be the reason for it. "Of course. How are you finding it so far?"

"Steep. In a good way."

"Roz's floor always is. She doesn't believe in gradualism." He leaned against the partition beside my desk with the ease of someone who treated every surface as something that existed for his comfort. "How are you finding the city?"

"I'm still mapping it."

"The best way to learn it is to get lost in it. Do you like Japanese food?"

The conversational gear-change was so smooth I almost missed it. "That's — yes, generally."

"There's a place in the Cassidy district. Counter seating, no reservations, line out the door by seven. Best ramen in Meridian." He straightened. "You should go. It's worth the wait."

He said you. Not we. I clocked it.

"Thanks for the recommendation," I said.

He smiled like I'd said something funny. "I'll see you around, Vivienne Marlowe." He walked away. He did not look back.

I watched him go, and then looked back at my screen, and then looked up again — and found Roz watching me from across the floor. She held my gaze for one beat longer than was casual, then looked back at whatever she was reading.

Last week she had told me: you'll be tempted.

I had thought she was speaking generally.

* * *

The note appeared on my desk at 2:17 p.m. on Tuesday.

I know this precisely because I had stepped away from my desk for exactly nine minutes to get coffee and use the bathroom, and when I came back, there it was. A folded piece of cream paper, no envelope, my name written on the front in handwriting that was small and angular and very controlled.

I looked around the floor. The usual mid-afternoon arrangement — a few people at desks, one person on the phone near the window, the conference room on the left occupied and glass-walled. Nothing unusual.

I unfolded the note.

Don't let them see you're surprised by your own brilliance.

One sentence. No signature.

I read it twice. Set it down. I picked it up. Read it again.

It was the thing I had said in the conference room, the thing I'd said to Dominic Cole the week before — don't let them see you're surprised — except inverted. Reflected back. Like he had taken my words and aimed them at me and the angle was entirely different coming from that direction.

I folded the note. Put it in the front pocket of my notebook.

I did not look toward the executive floor. I thought about looking. I didn't.

Instead I opened the Harmon file and got back to work, and tried to ignore the fact that something in my chest had shifted three degrees in a direction I hadn't chosen.

* * *

I told Sol about the email that night.

We were sitting on the floor eating pad thai out of the containers because Sol believed strongly that takeout tasted better when you were closer to the ground, which was not logic I had ever interrogated because it turned out she was right.

She set down her fork. "Say that again."

"Someone sent me an anonymous email telling me to get out of Ashford and Cole."

"When?"

"Friday. The same day I submitted my first notes to Roz."

"Viv." Her voice had shifted into the register she used for serious things, which was lower and slower than her usual speed, like she was choosing each word with both hands. "That's not a coincidence. That's someone watching you."

"I know."

"Have you told anyone at work?"

"No."

"Are you going to?"

"I don't know who to tell. I don't know who sent it. Roz told me to watch everyone, so —"

"She told you to watch everyone?" Sol picked up her fork. Put it down again. "What kind of company did you take a job at?"

"A successful one."

"Vivienne."

"I know, Sol. I know." I pushed pad thai around my container. "But I worked for three years writing infection control newsletters for fourteen dollars an hour, and before that I worked two jobs through college while Marcus — while everyone around me — " I stopped. Started again. "This is the thing I worked for. This job. This city. I'm not leaving because of a creepy email from someone who might just be trying to spook me."

Sol was quiet for a moment. Then: "Okay. But you're going to be careful."

"I'm always careful."

"No," she said. "You're always accommodating. Those aren't the same thing. Careful means you make decisions based on what you need. Accommodating means you make decisions based on what everyone else needs first." She pointed her fork at me. "New city, new rules. Yourself first, Viv. Okay?"

I looked at her. Sol, who was the only person in my life who consistently said the true thing.

"Okay," I said.

My phone buzzed on the floor between us. I glanced at it.

A text from a number I didn't have saved. The same 503 area code as the missed call I'd noticed on the day I left.

It said: I see you got the email. Smart that you stayed. Smarter to know why I sent it.

Sol watched my face change. "What is it?"

I turned the phone so she could see.

We sat very still on the floor of her apartment and outside, Meridian City kept doing what it did, enormous and indifferent, and I thought: someone is watching me. Has been watching me. And they want me to know it.

That was worse than the warning.

That was so much worse.