Chapter 2 - Her Name in the Ashes
“They left something in the burned building.”
Vera stopped beside Dmitri’s SUV in the hardware-store parking lot.
“What?”
His expression had lost every trace of humor.
“A note.”
Her stomach tightened.
“What was on it?”
Dmitri looked directly at her.
“Your name.”
For a moment Vera heard nothing.
Not the traffic moving beyond the parking lot.
Not a shopping cart rattling against the curb.
Not the November wind snapping a faded banner above the hardware store.
Just those two words.
Her name.
“Exactly what did it say?”
Dmitri glanced around before answering.
“I don’t know everything.”
“That means you know something.”
“Nikolai should tell you.”
“Nikolai should have told me before I left the estate this morning.”
“He believed you needed some normality.”
Vera stared at him.
“I’m standing outside a hardware store being told that criminals wrote my name inside a burned building.”
Dmitri sighed.
“Yes.”
“How normal do you think my afternoon feels?”
“Considerably less normal than Nikolai intended.”
Vera folded her arms.
“Show me.”
“I don’t have it.”
“The note.”
“Nikolai has it.”
“Of course he does.”
Dmitri opened the SUV door.
“I can drive you back.”
“I have my truck.”
“The truck you threatened to repair with a hammer?”
“It responded well to intimidation.”
“You and Nikolai have more in common than either of you realizes.”
Vera gave him a look.
Dmitri wisely stopped talking.
Twenty-five minutes later, Vera turned through the iron gates of the Voss estate.
Security had changed.
She noticed because noticing small things was part of her work.
Normally two men stood near the entrance.
Today there were four.
Another SUV was parked behind the gatehouse.
A camera that had previously faced the road had been rotated toward the woods.
Someone had trimmed low branches along the east wall.
Not for landscaping.
For visibility.
The estate was preparing for trouble.
Vera drove straight past her cottage and stopped near the greenhouse.
Nikolai was there.
Of course he was.
She found him standing among rows of winter roses, wearing a charcoal overcoat over his dark suit.
One of the strangest things about Nikolai was his habit of coming to the greenhouse when his thoughts became dangerous.
He claimed it was quiet.
Vera suspected the roses simply didn’t argue with him.
She did.
The glass door slammed behind her.
“My name?”
Nikolai turned.
His eyes closed briefly.
“Dmitri told you.”
“Do not make Dmitri the problem.”
“I’m not.”
“Your enemies burn one of your buildings, leave my name behind, and you decide I don’t deserve to know?”
“It happened at three this morning.”
“So?”
“You had been awake half the night.”
“That explanation is insulting.”
“I wanted one more day before you had to think about this.”
Vera stopped.
Not because she was satisfied.
Because the answer sounded different from what she had expected.
“I decided,” Nikolai continued, “that you deserved one more morning when buying fertilizer was the most irritating thing in your life.”
The anger remained.
But it shifted.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
His expression hardened.
“Nikolai.”
“Vera.”
“Don’t.”
Silence.
It was all the confirmation she needed.
She stepped closer.
“What else was there?”
His eyes dropped briefly toward the pocket of his overcoat.
Vera noticed.
“Give it to me.”
“No.”
“Nikolai.”
“You don’t need to see it.”
“My name was on it.”
His jaw tightened.
“Give it to me.”
Slowly, Nikolai reached inside his coat.
He removed a clear evidence sleeve.
Inside was a piece of smoke-stained paper.
Vera could see only three typed words.
VERA SULLIVAN. ALONE.
A cold pressure formed beneath her ribs.
“There’s more.”
Nikolai didn’t move.
Her heartbeat increased.
“What else?”
For the first time since she had known him, Nikolai Voss looked like a man who genuinely wished he could take back what he was about to say.
“There was something attached.”
“What?”
“A photograph.”
Every trace of anger disappeared.
“Of who?”
He did not answer immediately.
That hesitation frightened Vera more than the note.
“Show me.”
Nikolai removed a second evidence sleeve.
The photograph inside showed a woman leaving a grocery store.
Beige coat.
Dark hair.
Green shopping bag.
Vera.
She stared at it.
The angle was from across the street.
Taken through something with a long lens.
She remembered the afternoon immediately.
The grocery store.
The cold air.
A mother arguing with her toddler near the entrance.
A delivery truck blocking half the road.
Nothing suspicious.
Nothing dangerous.
“Where did this come from?”
“The burned property.”
“No. Where was the picture taken?”
“Downtown.”
“I know where. When?”
Nikolai didn’t answer.
Vera looked up.
“When was it taken?”
His face changed.
Not toward her.
Toward whoever had been behind the camera.
“Yesterday.”
Vera went still.
Yesterday.
She had been alone.
Shopping.
Walking through public aisles.
Complaining internally about the price of coffee.
Believing nobody was watching.
Her hand tightened around the edge of a planting table.
“How long?”
“We don’t know.”
“You said they were watching the estate eleven days.”
“Yes.”
“Are they watching me separately?”
“We are determining that.”
“That means yes.”
“It means I don’t lie when I don’t have facts.”
“You lied last night.”
“I withheld information.”
“That is the favorite definition of lying used by men in expensive suits.”
He almost argued.
Then stopped.
Probably because she was right.
Vera studied the photograph again.
“What do they want?”
“Nobody knows yet.”
“You know what they usually want.”
His gaze met hers.
“Leverage.”
The greenhouse became painfully quiet.
Vera swallowed.
“Against you?”
“Yes.”
A thought came to her.
She hated it before she said it.
“Why me?”
Nikolai’s expression became unreadable.
“You work here.”
“So do thirty other people.”
“You live on the property.”
“So does Thomas. And Miriam. And half your security staff.”
No answer.
“Nikolai.”
He looked toward the roses.
“Nikolai, why me?”
“I don’t know.”
She stared at him.
“Lie number three.”
His eyes snapped back to hers.
Something sharp passed between them.
Vera suddenly remembered every moment from the previous year that she had chosen to dismiss.
Nikolai appearing beside the greenhouse with coffee after she had worked through lunch.
Nikolai personally replacing the heater in her cottage after she refused to wait for maintenance.
Nikolai standing in the rain while she argued that his landscapers had ruined a bed of hydrangeas.
Nikolai sending an armored SUV to retrieve her during a snowstorm and insisting it was because blocked roads were “an operational inconvenience.”
Had other people noticed?
Had his enemies?
“Nikolai…”
His expression warned her not to continue.
That frightened her more.
“You think they chose me because they think I matter to you.”
Silence.
Vera’s heart thudded once.
Hard.
“Do I?”
His voice, when it came, was controlled.
“This is not the time.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“No.”
“No, I don’t matter?”
His gaze sharpened.
“No. It isn’t an answer.”
Before Vera could respond, Nikolai’s phone vibrated.
He answered immediately.
“Dmitri.”
Silence.
Then Nikolai’s entire posture changed.
“When?”
Vera watched the warmth leave his face.
“How close?”
Another pause.
“Lock the gates.”
Her pulse jumped.
Nikolai ended the call.
“What happened?”
He took the photograph from her hand.
“Security found a camera.”
“Where?”
He looked through the greenhouse glass toward the northern edge of the estate.
“In the woods.”
Vera followed his gaze.
Her cottage stood less than a hundred yards from that direction.
“How long has it been there?”
“They’re checking.”
“What was it pointed at?”
Nikolai didn’t answer.
He didn’t have to.
Vera already knew.
May you like
Her cottage.
And somewhere inside the woods beyond the winter roses, someone had been watching her sleep.
