Six months later, I found better work.

The office occupied the second floor of a brick building near the lake. The sign downstairs read HALE & WARD SECURITY CONSULTING.

Eli objected to the order of the names.

"I do the paperwork," he said.

"I have seniority."

"You nap on the sofa."

"Executive strategy."

He threw a folder at me.

Inside waited a protection request from a shelter in Milwaukee. Someone had been watching their rear entrance. The police saw no crime.

I saw three.

"We leave at four," I said.

Eli grinned.

He had gained weight. The bruise around his eye was gone. He still sat facing doors and hid food in desk drawers.

Some habits needed time.

Others needed permission to remain.

Luca funded the office through a maze of charities he claimed were legal. Celeste rebuilt Cross Holdings around the divisions that survived the investigation. Adrian accepted a federal deal and named every Acheron investor he could remember.

Mara remained missing.

I kept her photograph beside my gun safe.

Retirement, it turned out, had flexible definitions.

At seven, I returned to the house.

Leander had sold the mansion and bought a renovated townhouse with fewer cameras, warmer rooms, and a kitchen Mrs. Alvarez considered barely adequate.

The front door stood unlocked.

Light spilled across the steps.

I entered with snow on my coat.

Leander waited in the library with his glasses low on his nose and financial reports spread across his lap. He now advised companies on organized-crime exposure.

The work amused him.

"You're late," he said.

"You're unemployed."

"Consulting is employment."

"It's charging people to hear opinions you planned to give them anyway."

He set the papers aside.

"Come here."

"That tone suggests an execution."

"Inspection."

I stopped between his knees.

His hands moved over my ribs, shoulders, and waist.

"Not mine," I said.

He found the blood on my cuff.

"Check."

I lifted both arms and turned once.

No wounds.

He drew me close.

"You worry too much."

"You enjoy it."

"A little."

His mouth brushed mine. He tasted like coffee and peppermint.

After dinner, he led me upstairs.

The grand piano from the old house stood beneath the windows. One key still carried a pale scar from the sniper's bullet.

"No," I said.

Leander sat on the bench. "One song."

"You have neighbors. They could sue."

"I know a lawyer."

"You don't have a lawyer. You have an army with law degrees."

He played the first notes of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star."

Badly.

I stared.

"You practiced."

"Every day you were in Milwaukee."

"Why?"

He made it through six measures before losing the melody.

"I wanted to meet you somewhere you were willing to stand."

The joke left my mouth.

I sat beside him.

We started again.

His shoulder pressed against mine. Our hands collided over the same key.

Neither moved away.

Later, snow covered the terrace. Leander slept with one arm around my waist, his breathing slow against the back of my neck.

The knife beneath my pillow had moved to the bedside drawer months ago.

I woke when glass clicked downstairs.

My hand reached for the weapon.

Leander woke with me.

We moved through the dark without speaking.

In the kitchen, the window above the sink stood open.

A peppermint rested on the counter.

Beneath it lay a white card.

YOU WERE ALWAYS MY BEST WORK. — M

Leander read it.

His jaw hardened.

"She was inside."

"Yes."

"We move tonight."

I closed the window.

"No."

"Rowan—"

"This is our house."

I took the peppermint, checked the wrapper, and dropped it into an evidence bag.

"She wants me looking over my shoulder," I said. "She wants Nocturne awake."

"Is he?"

I looked at the dark glass.

Once, the answer would have frightened me.

"When needed."

Leander stood behind me. He did not touch until I leaned back.

Then his arm came around my chest, hand resting over my collarbone.

Not a restraint.

An anchor.

"She'll return," he said.

"Let her."

In the morning, we installed two new cameras and ate breakfast while Mrs. Alvarez complained about the window.

At noon, Eli called about Milwaukee.

The watcher had been arrested. The shelter was safe.

At four, Leander left for a client meeting. He paused at the front door.

"Dinner at eight."

"Is that an invitation or a command?"

"Mrs. Alvarez is making lamb."

"A threat, then."

He smiled and walked down the steps.

I watched until his car turned the corner.

My name is Rowan Hale.

I used to be the best killer in the country.

Now I protect shelters, impossible young men, and a former criminal king with terrible judgment, excellent suits, and a habit of holding me in his sleep.

The danger never vanished.

Neither did the old doors.

I simply learned which ones I could open, which ones I could break, and which one would always wait for me beneath a porch light.

The hours are better.

So is the pay.

And every night, I come home.

Leander tells people he found me by following the trail Nocturne left behind.

That is only partly true.

He recognized me long before he confirmed my name.

The first contract photograph showed a man leaving a hotel in Prague. Grainy image. Baseball cap. Half my face turned away.

My hand held the door for an elderly woman behind me.

I had always done that: kindness delivered with an irritated expression, as if decency were an inconvenience forced upon me by incompetent strangers.

He knew.

He still spent another year collecting proof. Hope had embarrassed him before.

Now he sleeps with one ankle hooked over mine and a hand at my collarbone. He claims the hold keeps me from stealing the blanket. I know he wakes whenever my breathing changes.

The city calls me his weakness.

They have misunderstood.

Weakness is a point an enemy can press until a man breaks.

Love is the person who gives him every reason to close his fist and trusts him to open it.

At midnight, I check the downstairs window.

Locked.

The cameras show empty snow.

Leander appears behind me in a robe.

"Mara?"

"Not tonight."

"Come back to bed."

I switch off the kitchen light.

At the stairs, I look toward the front door.

The porch lamp glows through the glass.

It is not meant to guide me home anymore.

It is a promise to anyone still outside.

There is a door.

There is a light.

There is another life after the locked room.

I take Leander's hand.

Together, we go upstairs.