“That explains stopping the collection. It does not explain using your own money.”
Silas held her gaze.
“No,” he said. “It does not.”
Mara cleared her throat.
“Before this becomes a conversation neither of you wants witnessed, someone is coming.”
Footsteps echoed through the tunnel.
The security officers switched off their flashlights.
Silas pulled Evelyn behind a stone pillar.
His body covered hers.
She felt the weight of a weapon beneath his jacket and the controlled rise of his breathing. For twelve years, she had imagined confronting him. In none of those fantasies had she pictured herself pressed against his chest in a smuggler’s tunnel while armed men approached through the dark.
A flashlight beam swept across the chamber.
Two men entered.
One wore the uniform of a city utility worker. The other carried a pistol.
“You said the entrance was sealed,” the armed man muttered.
“It was.”
“Rook wants everything moved tonight.”
“What about the woman?”
“Once the building transfers, she becomes irrelevant.”
Silas’s arm tightened around Evelyn.
The utility worker walked toward the table.
Mara stepped from the shadows.
“Hands where I can see them.”
The armed man turned.
Everything happened at once.
He raised the pistol.
Silas pushed Evelyn behind the pillar and fired.
The shot struck the man’s shoulder, spinning him into a stack of crates.
The utility worker ran.
One of the officers tackled him before he reached the tunnel.
The wounded man screamed and clutched his arm.
Evelyn stood frozen.
The sound of the gunshot continued ringing inside her head.
Silas approached the injured man and kicked the pistol away.
“Who ordered the transfer?” he asked.
The man’s face had gone gray.
Silas crouched beside him.
“Look at me.”
The man obeyed.
Recognition appeared.
Then terror.
“Mr. Vale.”
“Who ordered the transfer?”
“I don’t know.”
Silas’s voice softened.
It became almost gentle.
Evelyn found that more frightening than anger.
“You walked into one of my tunnels with a weapon,” he said. “You entered a building under my protection and discussed removing its owner. You know exactly who gave the order.”
“Rook,” the man gasped. “Mr. Rook.”
Silas did not react.
“Julian Rook?”
“Yes.”
“What was to be moved?”
“The collection. The documents. Everything.”
“Why tonight?”
“Because you started asking questions.”
Silas rose.
The man closed his eyes in relief.
Silas turned toward Mara. “Call an ambulance. Then the police.”
The wounded man stared at him. “The police?”
“You expected an execution?”
No one answered.
Silas looked at the stolen art.
“I am trying to improve.”
Chapter Five
The Man Behind the Name
The police occupied the Lyric until dawn.
They photographed the tunnel, catalogued stolen objects, and asked Evelyn the same questions in different forms. She told them she had known nothing about the chamber.
That part was true.
She did not tell them Silas had paid her debt.
She did not know why she protected that fact.
At five in the morning, she found him alone on the stage.
Only the ghost light was burning—a single bulb on a metal stand left glowing in empty theaters to keep performers from falling into the orchestra pit.
Silas sat at the edge of the stage with his jacket beside him and his shirtsleeve stained with dust.
Evelyn remained in the aisle.
“You shot a man.”
“He had a gun.”
“You didn’t hesitate.”
“No.”
“Have you done it before?”
“Yes.”
The theater seemed to absorb the answer.
Silas looked toward the dark balcony.
“My family began controlling the docks before I was born,” he said. “At first, it was protection. Then protection became ownership. Ownership became politics. Politics required money that could not be recorded.”
“You run a criminal organization.”
“Yes.”
The direct answer left her with nothing to fight.
She walked closer.
“Smuggling?”
“Some.”
“Extortion?”
“Not under my authority.”
“Murder?”
He looked at her.
“I have killed people.”
Evelyn stopped beside the front row.
The boy she had loved at nineteen had once carried an injured pigeon across three streets because he could not bear to leave it in the rain.
The man before her could fire a gun without hesitation.
Both truths occupied the same face.
“Why did you leave?” she asked.
“My father discovered our plan.”
“You told him?”
“He had me followed.”
Their plan.
They had never called it love because both of them were young enough to believe naming a feeling would make it fragile. But they had planned to leave Greyhaven. Evelyn had been accepted into a costume-design program in London. Silas had intended to come with her.
He never arrived at the station.
“I waited six hours,” she said.
“I know.”
“How?”
“I watched from the other platform.”