Chapter 8: Rings

The doorman gave Ray the lobby footage at ten that morning.

It showed the man on the sofa in a gray jacket, lifting his phone, and taking two photographs of the elevator doors.

He was in his forties, balding, with a lanyard that said VERTEX ELEVATOR SERVICE.

"He had a work order," the doorman said. "The manager signed it."

"Did the manager sign it before or after yesterday?"

The doorman blinked. "After, I think."

Ray copied the file and sent it to Joan.

She called back in twenty minutes.

"There's no Vertex Elevator Service contract with that building. It's a shell. I'm pulling the registration."

"Another burner."

"Another burner," Joan said. "Stay inside today. I mean it."

So they stayed inside, in a glass apartment above a gray lake.

Ray had never before had a client who made staying in feel like a gift.

Nico spent the morning at the long table with a laptop and a legal pad, writing out his timeline in neat columns.

At noon he stretched and took off his glasses.

At one he came and sat on the arm of Ray's chair.

By two Ray was holding his wrist.

It was the left one, the one that had worn the steel.

The skin was still faintly red in a thin line all the way around.

Another band, fainter and wider, circled the right one, where the silk had held him.

"It looks sore," Ray said.

"It looks like a bracelet." Nico smiled. "I looked at it in the shower this morning and I thought, I did that. I picked that."

Ray turned the wrist over.

He pressed his mouth to the inside of it, right on the mark.

Nico's breath caught.

He kissed it again, slowly, all the way around.

Then he did the other wrist.

By the time he was done, Nico was sitting in his lap with his glasses pushed up into his hair and his mouth parted.

"You know what I want?" Nico said.

"Tell me."

"I want you to let me do something to you."

"Anything."

"Don't say anything. You don't know what it is." Nico slid off his lap and reached into the bag by the couch. "Stand up."

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