Part One: The Parking Lot The morning started the way most of Aurora’s mornings started. Badly. She was walking through the parking lot of the Grand Meridian Hotel with Molly’s hand in hers, heading toward the event that Chuck had told her she was required to attend. Required was the word he had used, not…
Part One: The Dress She Made Herself The cream dress had taken Marigold three weekends to finish. She had found the fabric at a discount outlet on the south side of Chicago, a bolt of soft ivory cotton-blend that had been marked down twice because of a small flaw in the weave near one end….
Part One: The Man At The Art Gallery The first time Nova met Damian Sterling, he was standing in front of a seven-foot abstract painting that nobody else at the gallery opening was paying any attention to. The painting was one of those enormous, moody things that galleries put in corners because they know most…
Part One: The Man In The Walls Gateway Halo Station had been floating in the same spot for sixty-three years. It occupied a precise point in space calculated by three separate alien civilizations over five years of tense negotiation, a location equidistant from three rival territories, close enough to all of them to be useful,…
Part One: Grey Soup The soup was grey. Danny Carter did not know what was in it. He had stopped asking that kind of question about three years ago, somewhere around the same time he stopped asking most questions about most things. What was in the soup. What was the name of the planet he…
Part One: Four Words The message arrived on a Tuesday. Not that days of the week meant a great deal to Adrien anymore. When you spent the better part of your working life between star systems, time had a way of becoming approximate, a loose suggestion rather than a fixed structure. Tuesday was simply the…
Something flickered across Isabelle’s face. Hurt so old it had settled into her bones. “Elias,” she said. “His name is Elias Cameron Vale.” The hallway went silent around him. She had given the baby his name. After everything. Cameron pressed his fingers against the bridge of his nose. “Isabelle…” “No,” she said. “You don’t get…
“Now.” That was how Cameron Jenkins moved into the most dangerous home in Manhattan. The transition happened in under forty-eight hours. A driver collected her things from Astoria. Her tiny studio apartment looked even smaller when men in black gloves packed it into garment boxes and handled her cheap plates like museum porcelain. Her mother…
“Because the day I stop keeping count is the day I start lying to myself about what I’m doing.” Adrien set down his glass. “Why did you want to meet me?” Evelyn had rehearsed an answer. Something polished. Something strategic. Instead, she told the truth. “Because my husband took seven years of my life and…
“I don’t have that information.” Her phone rang. Unknown Milan number. She answered with shaking fingers. “Miss Carter,” said a polished male voice. “This is Marco from the Hotel Principe di Savoia. Your junior suite is ready. Your luggage will arrive shortly, and a car is waiting outside.” Elena went cold. “I’m sorry, what?” “Your…
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