Chapter 22 - The Shadow at the Window
That evening, the Mayfair townhouse felt impossibly quiet. Dante had stepped out to meet with an undercover financial informant near the Thames, leaving me alone with my laptop and the glowing security feeds. The digital perimeter was completely secure, yet an intuitive, cold prickle at the back of my neck warned me I wasn't entirely unobserved.
I stood up from the desk, walking slowly toward the tall French windows that overlooked the cobblestone courtyard. Through the rain-streaked glass, a lone figure stood beneath the amber glow of a Victorian streetlamp, motionless, staring directly up at my window. The man wore a heavy wool trench coat, his face cast in shadow, but the posture was unmistakable. It wasn't Stephen, and it wasn't one of Karen's fixers. It was someone older, sharper, and far more dangerous.
May you like
Before I could reach for the intercom to alert Marcus, my phone vibrated violently on the desk. An incoming text from an unlisted international number: You skipped a page in your mother's journal, Madison. Check the lining of the third volume.
My breath hitched. The third volume of my mother's journals had been locked in my Manhattan safe, but I had brought a high-resolution digital backup with me on my secure tablet. I hurried back to the desk, pulled up the scanned files of the final volume, and zoomed in on the binding seam where the pages were stitched together.
