Your Terms

You wake up with the phone still in your hand and the conversation still open on the screen.

You read it again before you're fully awake. His texts are exactly like him: short, complete sentences, no emoji, a period at the end of everything like a door clicking shut. And then, every time, the door opening again. A question. A choice handed back to you.

Carys is asleep on the other end of the couch with her boots still on, a quart container of soup on the coffee table and an actual crowbar on the floor beside it. She came at two-forty. She held your hand and said a gray Volvo? A mob boss drives a gray Volvo? and you said I don't know that he's a mob boss and she gave you a look you'll be seeing in your sleep.

Your father is in the kitchen frying eggs in his undershirt, humming. He took one look at you at six this morning, said "Oh, kid," and put the kettle on. He hasn't asked yet. He will.

At 7:40 Mort calls.

"Ava." His voice is even more nasal than yesterday. "Where are you?"

"My dad's. Mort, someone broke into my apartment last night and took my Brightwater file. I left you a voicemail about the—"

"Brightwater terminated the engagement." He says it fast, like ripping off a bandage. "This morning. Six a.m. A call from their holding company. They're unhappy with the scope, they're unhappy with the timeline, they've paid us through Friday and they want everything returned."

"They're unhappy because I found three point eight million dollars that doesn't exist."

Silence. Then a long, wet breath. "I don't want to know that."

"Mort."

"I'm sixty-four years old. I have a dental practice under my office that complains when I use the stairs too loud. I do tax returns for dry cleaners." His voice drops. "I'm putting you on leave. Paid through Friday, then we'll see. Don't go back there. Don't call them. Please, Ava. I'm asking you as a friend."

You sit very still on your father's couch. Downstairs, your father's eggs pop in the pan.

"Who called you from the holding company?" you ask.

"Some finance guy. Very polite. Merkulov."

You don't take anyone's car. You take your father's 2009 Buick, which smells like WD-40 and peppermints, and you drive it to Neptune Avenue in the gray morning with the heater roaring and your laptop on the passenger seat like a passenger.

You've decided something. You decided it at about four a.m., staring at the ceiling, and it held up in daylight, which is how you know it's real.

The baths are open. Old women in robes are going in for the morning steam. The chess players are already at their tables. The one in the cardigan with elbow patches looks up and nods at you like you have an appointment.

Vadim meets you at the bottom of the stairs, hatless this time. "He's upstairs."

"I know," you say. "I'm here to see him."

Aleksei is standing at the window again, a glass of tea in his hand. He turns as you come in. He's in a dark sweater today, sleeves pushed up, and in daylight he's worse: you can see the lines at the corners of his eyes, the silver catching the light, the scar through his left knuckles. You'd hoped daylight would make him ordinary. It hasn't.

"Ms. Dunne."

"My firm dropped your company this morning," you say. "Your finance guy called them at six a.m. A man named Merkulov. My boss put me on leave."

Something moves behind his eyes and goes very still. "Ruslan called Feinblatt."

"Yes."

"I didn't ask him to."

"I didn't think you had." You put the laptop on his empty desk. "I've got the only full copy of the work. I know where to look next. And somebody in your company wanted me gone badly enough to drill through my door. So I'm going to finish this audit. For you. As an independent contractor. On my terms."

He sets down his glass. "Tell me your terms."

You pull a single printed page out of the laptop sleeve. You wrote it at your father's kitchen table at six this morning, with your father reading it upside down over his eggs and saying you want a comma there. You put it in front of Aleksei Borodin.

"Engagement letter," you say. "Forensic review of Brightwater Linen Supply and related entities. My rate is two hundred fifty an hour. That's high. I'm worth it. I set my hours. I work from wherever I want. If you want a guard on me, he stays outside: outside my building, outside my office, outside my life. I can terminate this engagement any day for any reason and you pay me through that day and that's the end. My findings are my findings. Nobody edits them." You take a breath. "And while you're my client, nothing personal happens. Nothing."

He reads it. All of it, slowly, every line, while you stand there with your heart going.

When he reaches the last line he stops. He looks up at you, and something passes over his face that you can't name, and then it's gone.

"Nothing personal," he says.

"You're my client."

"I understand." He picks up a pen from somewhere, a heavy black fountain pen that looks older than you, and signs at the bottom without another word. A. Borodin. Then he holds out his hand. "Your terms, Ms. Dunne."

You shake it. His hand is warm and dry and swallows yours, and he lets go first, exactly on time, like a man keeping a rule.

He introduces you to the building.

Vadim Lukin, who you've met, his oldest friend, who runs the baths and apparently everything else and tells you a joke about a tax collector and a goat that you don't get until the stairs. Timur Akhmadov, who is lean and quiet with a boxer's broken nose and very kind eyes, and who shakes your hand and says, "Outside. I understand. I have a book." He holds up a paperback western. You like him immediately.

Then a door opens down the hall and a man comes out of it laughing into his phone, and stops.

He's beautiful. There's no other word. Mid-thirties, golden-haired, a tailored navy suit, a face like an ad for something you can't afford. He ends his call and comes toward you with his hand already out and a smile that could heat the building.

"You must be the auditor. Ruslan Merkulov. I run the money side of Neptune Avenue Holdings, God help me." His handshake is warm, perfect, two pumps. "I owe you an apology. I called your firm this morning in a panic after I heard about the break-in. I thought we were putting you in danger. I didn't realize Aleksei had other plans."

"I have other plans," you say.

His smile doesn't change at all. "Even better. Anything you need. Files, logins, coffee. I mean it."

Behind him, a young woman comes up the stairs. Dark-blond hair, a pale wool coat, a face that is Aleksei's eyes in someone softer. She looks at you, then at her father, then at you again, and her expression goes flat as a closed door.

"Sonya," Aleksei says. "This is Ms. Dunne. She's—"

"I heard." Sonya takes Ruslan's arm. "We're late for the supplier at nine, Ruslan." She walks him past you without another word, and he throws you an apologetic little grimace over his shoulder.

"My daughter," Aleksei says, after a moment. "She's twenty-five. She's very good at being angry with me."

Twenty-five. One year younger than you. You file that in a column you don't want to have.

On your way out the chess player in the cardigan holds up a hand. "Miss. You drop this."

You didn't drop anything. He presses a folded paper napkin into your palm anyway and goes back to his game, moving a knight with one crooked finger.

You don't open it until you're in your father's Buick with the doors locked and the heater roaring.

Four words in old-fashioned spidery ballpoint.

Look who signs for Kestrel.