"Are you following me?" Helena asked. She kept her voice steady, though her pulse was racing.
The rear door didn't open. Instead, the front passenger door swung out. A man stepped onto the sidewalk. He was huge, built like a linebacker in a suit that struggled to contain his shoulders.
He moved between Helena and the rear window, blocking her view of the grey eyes.
"The Principal wanted to ensure your safety, Dr. Hensley," the bodyguard said. His name was Lucas, though she didn't know it yet.
"I'm perfectly safe," Helena said, stepping back. "As long as you people stay away from me."
She looked past Lucas, trying to catch a glimpse of the man in the back. "Tell your boss I have his cufflink. I'll return it."
A low chuckle came from inside the car. It was amplified slightly, as if he were speaking near a microphone.
"Consider it a consultation fee, Doctor," the voice said.
"I don't accept payment from criminals," Helena snapped.
"Keep it," the voice commanded. The tone shifted, losing its amusement. "You'll need it."
Lucas pulled a card from his pocket. It was heavy, matte black stock. There was no name, just a number embossed in silver.
"If you have trouble," Lucas said, pressing it into her hand. "Call."
He turned and got back into the car. The window rolled up, sealing the grey eyes away. The Maybach pulled into traffic, moving with the aggressive grace of a shark in water.
Helena looked down at the card. She felt a mix of anger and fear. She walked back to the table and ripped the card in half, dropping the pieces into the ashtray.
"Who was it?" Whitney asked, eyes wide. "Mafia?"
"Just an arrogant jerk," Helena said.
Inside the Maybach, Collis Vincent winced as the car hit a pothole. He pressed a hand to his side. The makeshift bandage held, but the ache was a constant, throbbing reminder.
He picked up a manila folder from the seat next to him. It was labeled HENSLEY, HELENA.
He flipped it open. Her dissertation on tracking illicit funds through fine art sales. Copies of her bank statements. Her dual degree transcript from Columbia-Art History and Forensic Accounting, both summa cum laude.
"She's Harrison's fiancée, sir," Lucas said from the front seat, glancing in the rearview mirror.
"Ex-fiancée," Collis corrected. He ran a finger over a photo of Helena. She wasn't smiling in the picture. She looked formidable. "She moved out last night."
"Harrison is a fool," Lucas muttered.
"Harrison is a child," Collis said. "He doesn't know what he had."
"Do we need to neutralize her?" Lucas asked. "She saw you bleeding. She knows you were compromised."
Collis closed the folder. "No."
He remembered the way her hands had moved in the dark. Steady. Precise. She hadn't panicked. She had staunched the bleeding with a strip of her dress and told him to shut up.
"She is a perfect asset," Collis said softly. "Keep the injury quiet. Especially from the estate."
"Yes, sir."
Collis looked out the window. He felt a strange sensation in his chest. It wasn't pain. It was the thrill of the hunt.
Helena returned to her new apartment that evening, exhausted. She had a major auction preview scheduled for the morning, and she needed sleep.
As she unlocked the door, her foot hit something on the floor.
A box. Wrapped in dark blue paper.
She frowned. She hadn't ordered anything. Whitney was out.
She picked it up and carried it to the kitchen table. She tore off the paper.
It was a wooden case, polished mahogany. She opened the lid.
Inside, nestled in black velvet, lay a set of exquisitely crafted antique tools-slim, elegant, and deadly precise. There were fine-bladed knives, curved slicers, and slender awls, their steel gleaming under the kitchen light.
Helena recognized them immediately. They were 19th-century bookkeeping knives, once used by forensic auditors of a bygone era to slice through the wax seals and stitched bindings of fraudulent ledgers-to literally "dissect" the books. The set was a collector's piece, a darkly beautiful fusion of her two obsessions: art history and the anatomy of financial crime.
On the handle of the main knife, her initials were engraved: H.H.
There was no card.
Helena stared at the knives. They were beautiful. Deadly. And incredibly expensive.
He knew where she lived. He knew what she really did. And he knew exactly how to speak to the part of her that saw financial fraud as a body to be autopsied, a puzzle to be taken apart piece by piece.
It was terrifying.
