Part 2: “No.”

Part 2: “No.”

“Did you speak to him?”

“No.”

“Sloan, that is either stalking or the beginning of a romance novel, and I hate that I can’t tell which.”

“This is not a romance.”

“Not yet.”

I glared at her.

She smiled.

But when I turned back to the wall, I did not smile.

There were now two investigations in my apartment.

One was made of paper, contracts, and red ink.

The other had no files.

Only a man whose name I did not know, who kept appearing exactly where I was, and who had warned me before I even understood there was danger.

He appeared again the following week outside the archive.

I had arrived early. The doors were locked. I stood on the steps with my collar pulled up against the October wind when his voice came from beside me.

“The archive opens at nine fifteen on Tuesdays.”

I turned.

He stood two steps below me, hands in his coat pockets, looking absurdly calm.

“I know,” I lied.

“There is a diner around the corner with better coffee than this building deserves.”

“I already had coffee.”

“Then it

is an argument against standing in the cold.”

I should have walked away.

I didn’t.

For fifteen minutes, we stood in silence.

When the doors opened, I went inside without a word.

Behind me, his voice followed gently.

“Good morning, Sloan.”

I stopped.

I had never told him my name.

The Bait and the Problem

After that, running became harder.

Not because I trusted him.

Because he never chased.

He simply appeared with the patience of someone who knew eventually I would stop pretending I did not want answers.

The next time he found me, I was leaving campus through a side gate I had chosen specifically because it was inconvenient.

He fell into step beside me.

“You changed your route,” he said

“You memorized my route.”

“I notice patterns.”

“That’s not comforting.”

“It wasn’t meant to be.”

I looked at him then, really looked.

He had the face of

a man people either obeyed or feared disappointing. Dark hair, sharp jaw, eyes the color of winter pavement after rain. Everything about him was composed, but not empty. Contained.

That was the word.

He was a locked room.

We walked two blocks together while he spoke about the city, not about me. About an old bookstore in the West Village that had survived three rent hikes because the owner had once saved a judge’s nephew from a bad debt. About a church whose basement had hosted union meetings before anyone admitted it. About a brownstone that had changed hands seven times but never left the same family.

He knew New York the way people know old scars.

When he stopped at the corner, I realized I had gone three blocks in the wrong direction.

“Good afternoon, Sloan,” he said.

Then he walked away.

I stood there in the wind and

discovered I was smiling.

That was the problem.

The next week, Tatum got us invited to another cultural event, this one inside a converted warehouse in SoHo. I told myself I went because Meridian was listed among the sponsors.

That was true.

It was not the whole truth.

He was there.

Of course he was.

This time, I did not leave.

He came to stand beside me before a huge abstract painting in gray and gold.

“The artist calls it Inheritance of Silence,” he said.

“Cheerful.”

“He spent two years deciding on the title.”

“Two years for three words?”

“Sometimes the right words take time.”

I looked at him sideways.

“You know the artist?”