She looks at the stack of completed problems. "I actually did," she says, like this is a fact she's evaluating objectively. Then she looks at me. "You promised to come back."
"I said I'd like to," I say. "That's the same thing."
"People say things they don’t mean," she says, in the flat, informed tone of a child who has learned the gap between what people say and what they do.
I look at her for a moment.
"I don't.”
She studies me. Runs her calculation. Then she nods once, the nod of someone who has made a provisional decision and is reserving the right to revise it. "Okay, I believe you.”
I let myself out.
Mr. Roberts is in the lobby, predictably, with his papers reorganized and a mug that has replaced the one from earlier and the expression of a man who has been waiting to be talked to and is pleased the moment has arrived.
"Smart cookie, huh?" he asks, meaning Evie.
"She’s very capable," I admit.
He laughs, warm and genuine. "That she is. Both of them are." He shakes his head. "That little girl has been through things, I think. Don't know what exactly — Alex doesn't talk about it and I don't pry — but you can see it on her. She's braver than she should have to be."
He looks at me with the sharp eyes he keeps tucked behind the warm manner. He accepts this without asking what the occupation is, which tells me he's smarter than he lets on. "Was there something you needed? You said you know Alex — anything I can help with?"
"Actually." I look at the bulletin board, the hand-lettered notices, the photograph of a block party. "Are there any available apartments in this building?"
He blinks. Then the slow smile spreads, warm and thoroughly unsurprised, the smile of a man watching something arrive exactly when he expected it. "4D," he says. "Opened up last week. Good unit. Faces the same direction as Alex's."
"I'll take it," I say.
He looks at me for a long moment. "You move fast," he says, not necessarily disapprovingly.
"When something is worth it, I do.”
He nods, satisfied, like this is the right answer to a question he's been sitting with for a while. "Come by in the morning," he says. "I'll have the paperwork ready."
I thank him and walk out into the November dark and call David before I reach the car.
He answers on the second ring. "Well?"
"4D in the building," I say. "I need it furnished and ready by tomorrow evening. Whatever it takes."
A pause. The very specific pause of a man who has been expecting something and has just had it confirmed. "What exactly are your intentions here, Victor?"
I think about Evie's pencil tapping against the table and the scarring on her left hand and the way she saidshe worries it'll find uswith the flat certainty of a child who has already decided to be brave about it, regardless.
"Maintaining a possible liability," I say.
David grunts. Then: "I'll have it ready by six."
"Good." I get in the car. "And David — any updates on the background?"
"Still digging. But Victor—" He pauses again, differently this time. "She has no emergency contacts on any of her accounts. No family listed anywhere. No one to call." Another pause. "Whatever she ran from, she ran from all of it. There's no one behind her."
I look up at the fourth floor of the building. The window of 4C is dark. She'll be home in a few hours, tired from the shift, and she'll check her cameras and her locks, and she'll look in on the girl, and she'll do all of it alone because she has always done all of it alone.
"Keep digging," I tell him.
Chapter Five
