Victor Kane's estate sat beyond the city limits behind steel gates, armed guards, and an alarming collection of marble lions.

The lions survived.

His men did not fare as well.

I entered through the greenhouse at two twelve. At two fourteen, the cameras looped. At two seventeen, the first guard discovered that decorative ponds become slippery in winter.

I left him breathing.

Retirement had made me gentle.

The next two woke with zip ties around their wrists and their own socks in their mouths. A fourth tried to use a radio. I introduced the radio to his teeth.

Twenty minutes after I entered, Kane crawled toward a pistol beneath his desk.

I put my shoe on his hand.

"Who gave you the Cross guest list?"

"Go to hell."

I pressed down.

Bones shifted.

"Specific directions would help."

Sweat ran along his temple. "Cross sent you?"

"He doesn't know I'm here."

That frightened him more.

I sat on the edge of the desk and opened the file beside his elbow. Freight manifests. Payments. Group-home donations.

St. Vincent's appeared on page nine.

My breath stopped.

The entries were recent.

"What is Acheron?" I asked.

Kane's pupils widened.

I put the file in my coat.

"The client in Prague moved money for you. He also moved children."

"Not my program."

"Program."

He bit his lip.

I picked up the pistol and removed the magazine.

"Who runs it?"

"No one you can reach."

"People say that when they want me interested."

He looked toward the bodies in the hall. His breath turned wet and quick.

"Nocturne," he whispered.

The name moved through me like a door closing.

I smiled.

"There he is," Kane said. "Cross bought himself a monster."

I placed the empty pistol beneath his chin.

"He rented."

Headlights swept across the windows.

Too many engines.

I checked my watch. Luca would never have sold the address. Only three people knew how to track me past a clean burner.

One was dead.

One was me.

The third walked through the front door in a black overcoat, flanked by six armed men.

Leander Cross looked at Kane.

Then he looked at me.

Blood marked my shirt, my hands, and the blade hanging loose at my side.

"Rowan," he said.

I lowered the knife.

"I can explain."

Leander's men cleared the house.

He stayed in the office doorway, wounded arm held close to his body, expression unreadable.

"Go ahead."

I glanced at my shirt. "Kidnapping?"

One eyebrow rose.

"I was brought here against my will. Then everyone began fighting. Very upsetting."

Behind Leander, one of his men coughed into his fist.

I pointed at the nearest body. "That one was especially rude."

Leander crossed the room and seized the front of my shirt with his left hand. He pulled me against him despite the blood.

His breath struck my neck.

"Are you hurt?"

Not Who are you?

Not How many men did you kill?

"No."

His grip tightened. "Check."

"I would know."

"Check."

I ran both hands over my ribs, shoulders, and waist. "Nothing."

The tension left him in one sharp exhale. Anger rushed in to occupy the space.

"You disappeared from my bed and walked into a fortified house alone."

"Technically, I drove."

"Rowan."

"You're reopening your wound."

He released me only to catch my wrist.

Kane laughed from the floor.

"Touching," he said. "Does your pet know what you did to find him?"

Leander turned.

Kane smiled through blood. "Prague was only the last breadcrumb."

I looked at Leander.

"What does he mean?"

"He means he wants us divided."

"Are we?"

Leander's gaze did not leave mine. "I hope not."

Kane lunged for the fallen knife.

One shot cracked through the office.

Celeste lowered her weapon.

"He was tedious," she said.

The drive back to Chicago passed in silence.

At the house, Leander handed me clean clothes and pointed toward the shower.

I remained in the bedroom.

He lifted an eyebrow. "Do you need help?"

"That depends. Are you planning to explain Acheron?"

The color left his face.

I took the file from my coat and threw it onto the bed.

"St. Vincent's. Freight routes. Children."

Leander opened it.

His fingers stopped on the ninth page.

"I didn't know."

"Your company moved them."

"Not with my authorization."

"Your name opens every gate."

He read the manifest again. His knuckles turned white against the paper.

"Adrian controls these routes."

"Convenient."

Leander lifted his head. "You think I would traffic children?"

I had killed men for money. I had watched Leander order Kane's death without turning around. Morality sat strangely between us.

Still, the question cut.

"I think you collect secrets," I said. "I think I'm one of them."

He closed the file.

"Take your shower. Then I'll show you the room no one enters."

The west-wing office opened beneath his hand.

Before we went inside, Leander made everyone leave the hall.

Celeste resisted.

"If Adrian is involved, you need a witness."

"Rowan decides who witnesses this."

They both looked at me.

No one had asked who I wanted in a room since I was twelve.

"Stay outside," I told Celeste.

She nodded once and closed the door behind us.

Leander crossed to the biometric panel. His wounded arm trembled when he lifted it.

"You can wait."

"I have waited eleven years."

The lock flashed green.

Inside, he stopped me before the lights came on.

"There are things you will hate."

"Your decorating?"

"The reports."

"About Nocturne."

"About you."

I studied his face in the thin hall light.

"Did you watch the kills?"

"Some."

"Why?"

His throat moved.

"To know whether you survived."

"People survived me."

"Not the same thing."

The answer struck too close.

I entered first.

Files filled three cabinets. Each bore a year instead of a name. I opened the newest.

Prague sat on top.

Under it lay an extraction plan Leander had prepared but never used: new identity, house in Vermont, accounts beyond Cross control.

"You built an escape."

"In case you asked."

"I didn't."

"No."

"Would you have forced it?"

He met my eyes.

"I considered it."

Honesty cut cleaner than a lie.

"And?"

"I remembered a boy at St. Vincent's telling me that a locked safe room is still a locked room."

I had forgotten saying it.

He had built a life around remembering.

"Turn on the lights," I said.

The wall of photographs appeared.

Inside, one wall held photographs of me.

Not Nocturne.

Rowan.

Twelve years old outside St. Vincent's. Seventeen at a bus station. Twenty-three crossing a street in Vienna.

At the center hung the photograph of the boy with the chipped tooth.

On the desk lay a bowl of peppermints.