Ruthless Vow

Chapter Nine

The Houseguest

The photograph was still in my pocket when I came down for breakfast.

He knew it. He'd known since last night.

"You took it," he said.

"I told you I was keeping it."

"You told me on the street. That's different from taking it out of my car."

I sat down at the counter and didn't answer. Greta had left a plate out — eggs, toast, a small dish of berries. I picked up the fork and started eating, because eating was easier than talking.

"There was nothing else in the glove box," he said. "Which means you went through it."

"You left me in the car."

"For under a minute."

He set his coffee down and looked at me for a second. I watched him decide whether to push it.

He didn't.

That was new.

I worked the lunch shift.

The diner was busy for a Thursday, and I had tables on the whole left side, which meant I didn't stop moving for three hours. I was refilling the coffee at table four when the woman sat down at my station.

Late thirties. Long dark hair. Expensive coat. She didn't have a menu in her hand and she didn't reach for one.

"Coffee," she said. "Black."

I brought it.

She didn't touch it for a while. She just sat there with her phone face down on the table and watched the room the way you watch a room you've been in a hundred times before.

I kept working. On my third pass she spoke.

"You're Elena."

I stopped with the pot in my hand.

"Do I know you?"

"Not yet." She held out a hand. "Vivian. I'm a friend of Damian's."

I didn't shake it. "Then why are you in my diner?"

"Because I wanted to meet you before someone else did." She picked up her coffee and took a sip like she had all day. "Also because the food here is better than where I usually eat and nobody I know comes this far south."

"What do you want?"

"Just a conversation. You can keep working, I don't mind."

I set the pot down on the table and crossed my arms.

"Talk."

She smiled at that. She didn't seem bothered by it.

"He told you the rules, I'm guessing," she said. "Don't say your last name. Don't confirm anything. Don't deny anything. Am I close."

"You're warm."

"You don't have to do that with me. That's for the room, not for the sidewalk." She set her cup down. "I worked with him for three years. I know the drill."

" Worked with him how?."

"Same as you're working with him now. In his orbit. Under his roof." She looked up at me, and for the first time, her face changed — just slightly, like she'd decided to say something she hadn't planned to. "I lived in that apartment for six months. Before you."

The room kept moving around us. A man at table six waved for a refill and I didn't go.

"Then you know why I'm there."

"I know why he says you're there." She picked up her cup again. "Ask him what he told me, he needed from me. He'll give you a clean answer. He always has one."

"Are you here to warn me about him?"

"I'm not here to warn you about anybody." She turned her cup a quarter turn on the saucer. "I'm here to get a look at you. I don't do anything in this city without looking at the person first."

"Get a look at me for who."

"Someone asked me a question last week." She stood up and set money on the table — way more than the coffee cost. "I didn't have an answer, so I came to find one."

"Who asked you?"

She picked her coat up off the back of the chair and slid it on.

"Your mother's last name was Barlow," she said. "Before she married."

I didn't answer.

"Small details," she said. "Most people don't know it. Names change, paperwork gets moved, it's usually not worth a file. But somebody's been keeping a file on your family for a while, and your mother's name is in it, and I don't like reading about a woman in a file and not knowing which face goes with her."

I stood there with the coffee pot in my hand and didn't say a word.

"It was nice to meet you, Elena." She headed for the door. "I'll see you tonight."

"Tonight?"

She pushed the door open.

"Tell him I said hello."

I called him from the back alley. I told him everything.

He didn't say anything for about five seconds. Then: "I'll pick you up at six. Wear the black dress."

"I'm not wearing the black dress."

"Wear the black dress." A pause. "And Elena — don't tell anyone else about this. Not Sofia. Not Greta. Not your sister."

"Why."

"Because Vivian just came to your job in the middle of the day and I want to know why."

The event was in a museum.

Three floors of it, rented for the night, white wine and small plates and a jazz trio in the corner. Two hundred people. Damian introduced me to nine of them and didn't give my name once.

I found Vivian at the bar before he did.

She was in a green dress now and she was watching the room the way she had in the diner. She saw me and raised her glass. She didn't come over.

Damian noticed where I was looking.

"You know her," he said quietly.

"She came to the diner today."

He went still next to me.

"Say that again."

"She came in at lunch. Sat at my station. Asked me questions about you." I kept my voice level and my eyes on the room. "She knew my mother's maiden name, Damian."

He didn't answer. I turned to look at him, and for the first time all week, I watched something move through his face that I couldn't read.

"Stay here," he said.

"No."

"Elena—"

"Stay here."

He looked at me for one long second. Then he took me by the elbow — not hard, just guiding — and walked me across the floor to the bar, where Vivian was still standing with her glass.

She smiled when she saw us coming.

"Damian," she said. "You look well."

"What did you say to her today."

"Nothing she didn't already know." Vivian set her glass down and turned to me. "Come on. You've been with him a week. You know how this works."

"Answer him," I said.

Vivian looked between us for a moment, then her smile thinned by a degree.

"Someone paid me to ask about you," she said. "That's the truth, and it's all you're going to get standing in a room full of people."

"Who."

"Not here."

"Who."

Vivian looked past me, over my shoulder, toward the entrance of the room, and something changed in her face.

Then she looked back at me and said, in a voice much quieter than before:

"Maybe you sh

ould turn around."

I turned around.

A man had just walked into the room. Sixties. Silver hair. Glasses in his hand that he was lifting to wipe.

And he was looking directly at me.