Anastasia’s POV:
The service stairs smelled like cleaning products and old carpet and the particular staleness of a space that existed only to be functional and had never been asked to be anything else. Elena went first with the fireproof box under one arm and her laptop bag over the other shoulder and I followed and Lucas came last and none of us spoke until we pushed through the door at the bottom and came out onto the side street.
The cold hit immediately.
Harlow City at two thirty in the morning was not empty but it was reduced to its essential self, the people who worked through the night and the people who had nowhere else to be and the occasional car moving through streets that belonged to everyone during the day and to no one in particular now. I stood on the pavement and looked
