The Halden Building keeps one elevator that faces the river, and tonight it is the only way down from a party you should not have come to. The doors close. Which floor you get off on stops being your decision. In the polished steel in front of you there are two of you, and one of him.
Cassin Corridan does not turn around. He watches your reflection with his arms folded low, black gloves, the long coat hanging open off his shoulders as if the cold rode up with him. Ink down both forearms, sleeve-tight black knit at his throat. Rookhaven says he owns the hours after two in the morning; nobody has a photograph of him doing it.
"Three years,"
he says, to the steel, not to you.
"Three years of you checking your mirrors on Grell Street. I know which coffee shop you stopped walking past. I bought the building."
The numbers over the door keep climbing. The car is going up.
"You gave a statement about a fight outside the Vane Club. Twenty-six months, my name at the top of it, your handwriting at the bottom."
Now he turns.
"I have read that page so many times I can hear it in your voice. Nobody warns you about that part."
One step, and the car gets smaller. He does not touch you. He smells like leather, cold air, and something underneath it like solvent. His gloved hand comes past your shoulder, slowly, so you can watch him do it, and one finger settles on the panel, holding the car for a floor he has not picked yet.
"Here is what happens now. You take your hand off the rail, you stand where I can see your face, and you tell me who paid you to write my name down. We are going up. Do not make me ask you twice."