The Lost Story of Eva Fuentes - 1

London

2024

She was late.

Not late by normal standards—when Margo Reynolds glanced at the secondhand Cartier watch on her wrist, she was relieved to see that she had five minutes before her appointment—but late by her standards. Even when she accounted for the unpredictable London commute in her calculations—would the Tube be delayed? Would the sidewalks be filled with tourists gawking at the sights? Would her heel get caught in one of the street grates requiring a dash into Harrods to purchase a replacement pump?—she hadn’t considered the fact that all three of those things could happen. So despite the cold, damp December day, she was now sweating beneath her coat collar, her legs transitioning to that stride somewhere between a purposeful walk and a full-out run as she fairly propelled herself to her meeting by sheer force of will.

Something wet fell on her head.

Margo looked away from the street in front of her for a moment to gaze skyward, praying that she was wrong, that they weren’t headed into the first snow of the season.

That five minutes was feeling more and more tenuous now.

Another wet drop of snow—if it could even be called that, considering the watery mixture—hit her square in the face.

She should have called a car.

“Is it snowing?” a woman exclaimed.

Margo winced at the delighted shriek beside her, at the way the word “snowing” seemed to travel through the crowd with the same unbridled glee as a celebrity sighting in front of a double-decker tour bus.

London might not have been Margo’s home by birth, but it was perhaps more powerfully by choice, and yet, on days like this when the throngs of tourists overwhelmed the sidewalks, she had to admit she had a love-hate relationship with the place. But weren’t cities like that? They didn’t make it easy for you to love them. No, they demanded sacrifice, that you hustle for the pleasure of calling them home. And just when you’d had a spectacularly bad day, when you thought to yourself, Maybe I should move somewhere quiet, somewhere easy , they dispensed a bit of magic your way in the form of a whimsical holiday shop window, or the perfect meal, or an unexpected connection with a stranger, ensuring you were really and truly ensnared.

London had its hooks in her whether she liked it or not.

Margo turned down the street in front of her, and then she saw it, up ahead on the right, exactly the way her assistant Bea had described it when she briefed her on the meeting’s particulars.

There was no number, no name over the entrance, just a simple, unassuming black door with a doorman posted out front, his impeccable dark coat fairly daring a drop of snow to besmirch it.

Margo took a deep breath, steadying herself, checking her watch once more.

Three minutes to showtime.

Hardly ideal, but at least she couldn’t be accused of being late.

She walked up to the club’s entrance, fighting the urge to smooth down her hair in case the drop of snow had done some damage.

The minor inconveniences of the day disappeared in an instant; the insecurities that nagged at her in the late hours of the night receded into the background of her mind. This was no place for impostor syndrome, no time to second-guess whether she would be taken seriously because she was young, and a woman, and many of her clients tended to look down their noses at women, particularly young ones.

Margo had earned every ounce of her reputation, and in these moments right before she had to impress, she buoyed herself with the knowledge that she had fought hard to get where she was, and no one could take that away from her.

She gave her name at the door, her American accent somewhat incongruous in such a bastion of all that seemed to represent the enclave of British society. There were clubs like this throughout the city, catering to a clientele that often wanted to exclude. Margo would always be an outsider here, but she’d come to welcome the position rather than shy away from it.

If Margo had set the meeting, she would have chosen a place on her terms where she could control the setting, where she would feel comfortable and in charge, but the client had pled discretion when requesting her presence at his club, and sometimes allowances were made, especially when six years after she’d finished grad school, student loans still needed to be paid.

It was always like this before an introductory meeting with a client. Sourcing valuable items—art, jewelry, antiques, and the like—wasn’t war, but given some of the negotiations she’d been a party to, the sting of defeat—and swell of victory—sometimes it seemed like it.

When you ran your own business, when you were your own brand, your successes and failures rested on your shoulders. Sometimes it was empowering, like Margo had the potential to decide her future. Other times, the pressure threatened to tear her down. She’d tried as hard as she could to keep the overhead of running Reynolds Acquisitions as low as possible. Her assistant Bea was her only staff, the office space they rented in Chelsea a necessity for the image it presented to her clients. Much like the watch on her wrist and the outfit she’d carefully selected.

The man at the door handed her over to another man, who bid her to follow him as he led her through the club’s entrance and down a narrow, wood-paneled hallway flanked by framed paintings of—former members, perhaps? They certainly looked like the type who would frequent a club such as this one, their disdain dripping through the oil and canvas. The club’s interior was as small as it appeared from the outside, but then again considering the neighborhood in central London, real estate was ever at a premium even for the obscenely wealthy. The smell that Margo associated with antique shops, luxury goods, and exclusive clubs like this one instantly assailed her. It was the scent of history, and money, and the realization that beneath the layers of wood, citrus, and smoke, there were secrets and scandals lingering under the surface.

They reached the end of the hallway, where another man wearing a suit greeted them. He took Margo’s black pea coat from her, slipping it off her shoulders and whisking it away with the practice of someone who had done it thousands of times before.

There was a quiet efficiency to the club, a whisper of wealth that had found its way in her ear since the first moment she had approached the lacquered door.

Her new heels clicked against the wood floors.

Margo took a deep breath, and then another, the stiffness in her neck and shoulders loosening some. It had been ages since she’d been to a Pilates class, given the demands of her recent travel schedule, and the telltale tightness reminded her of the need for a break.

The choice of meeting place was beginning to paint a clear picture of how connected the client was. Today’s dossier was thinner than she would have liked, but sometimes that was part of the territory.

Besides, the fee the client was dangling in front of her was staggeringly high—as was the cost of living in London.

Margo clasped her hands together, trying to stave off the nervous energy that had lit its way through her body. Her fingers skated across her ring finger, ready to twist her engagement ring and wedding band around only to come up bare.

Divorce was staggeringly expensive, too.

Occasionally, the secrecy in her line of work was warranted—a high-profile client eager to obscure their identity—and other times, it was more a product of a dramatic imagination, a cloak-and-dagger desire that fueled the hunt for the prospective buyer. Some of her clients seemed to enjoy the search more than the attainment of the actual item, whereas others shot off quick one-line emails with little concern for the process, only the solution. Some of them appeared to view the entire business as something akin to a treasure hunt, and they relished playing up the romanticism and intrigue of such an endeavor as though it was a welcome departure from the duller aspects of their daily lives.

When they reached the end of the hallway, the man led her into a cozy dining room. Half a dozen round tables sat neatly spaced apart, only two of them occupied. One table was filled with a group of men, their laughter carrying through the room. The other table sported a lone occupant.

Presumably her new client.

The man sat with his back to the wall and his gaze at the entrance. He wore an expensive-looking blue gray suit and an open white-collared shirt, no tie, exposing a tan he certainly hadn’t acquired in the gloomy London winter.

He rose, his expression expectant, and she’d have bet anything that he had a dossier of sorts on her that was much thicker than hers, considering he seemingly recognized her immediately.

The man—William Greer, according to the appointment his assistant had scheduled with Bea—looked a decade or so older than her, early forties perhaps, his close-cropped dark hair interspersed with gray threads at the temples. There was something military-like in his bearing, in the way his gaze tracked her and the rest of the room, his body tense and alert despite the languid setting. He didn’t look like he was born to a private club like this one, and despite choosing the meeting point, he didn’t appear particularly comfortable, either.

“Ms. Reynolds,” he said in greeting, those two words revealing an American accent.

“Mr. Greer,” she returned, meeting his gaze, and holding it. He may have chosen the location for their meeting, but she refused to be cowed just because they were on his turf. She had no interest in a client who was going to be a pain to work with; better he learn now that her tolerance for ego was finite.

The corner of Greer’s mouth turned up in a ghost of a smile. He didn’t bother returning her perusal with one of his own, as though he had already gleaned everything he needed to know about her.

Most of her clients came to her by referrals from previous clients she had worked with or other professional contacts, ensuring that they had at least been somewhat vetted. Greer had been recommended to her by an art dealer in New York who she had collaborated with on a handful of transactions. In his introduction, he’d stated that Greer had deep pockets and a reputation for discretion. There had been nothing objectionable in his email—no tendencies to the illegal or immoral—and so she had agreed to this initial meeting.

Margo slid into the open seat, Greer following suit.

The maître d’ whisked himself away quietly, only to be immediately replaced by a waiter who took their drink order and was gone just as swiftly.

“I need you to find something for my employer,” Greer said, bypassing social pleasantries entirely. Somehow, the effect wasn’t as jarring as she’d otherwise have considered it. It fit the impatience that wafted off him.

Some of her clients became friends. They sent her Christmas cards and asked how she was doing, and had more recently begun trying to set her up on dates with men she had absolutely no interest in. Others were more transactional. She didn’t have a preference. Each had their benefits. Sometimes it was nice just to do a job and move on to the next. Other times—when she found a lost family heirloom or procured a gift for a beloved family member—she was invested in her clients’ lives, as though she had a place on the periphery of their histories. For as much time as Margo spent working and as little time as she spent on her personal life, if you whittled her phone contacts down to those who weren’t professional connections, she’d be left with a very thin list.

Greer was an intermediary, then. No wonder she couldn’t find much about him. She’d bet anything that his employer was the one who was the club member. Had the art dealer known that someone else was behind the acquisitions? Somehow, she didn’t think so.

There was something in his voice, a hard edge that seemed at odds with the graceful lines of the club. His accent was difficult to place—American, yes, but she struggled to narrow it to a specific region. He was either a man who hadn’t lived in one place too long or had trained himself to eradicate traces of where he came from.

If her referral hadn’t realized he was dealing with an intermediary, what else was he wrong about?

“I don’t deal in illegal items,” she said. “Mr. Mitchell should have told you that. I won’t do anything unethical, either. No amount of money is worth more than me being able to sleep at night. I’m intentional about the items I source.”

Not that people hadn’t tried to press the issue a time or two. The problem with this line of business was that occasionally people forgot themselves when they wanted something badly, and they were ready to go to any lengths to obtain it. Collectors could become obsessive in their desires, and Margo often found herself wondering what she would do if she were in their shoes, if there was anything she was willing to go to any lengths to obtain. She couldn’t imagine it.

There was a dangerous side to sourcing the valuable and rare—after all, some of the items people were searching for were worth vast sums, and when money was involved, people could be capable of just about anything. She was careful in the clients she took on, in the items she searched for. She’d turned down a job a time or two—and wished she had more than once—when things ventured into grounds she wasn’t comfortable with. Despite the concerns her ex-husband had raised, she wasn’t reckless when it came to her safety, and no amount of personal ambition pushed her to accept clients who were involved in more nefarious matters like smuggling or theft.

Greer smiled again. “Of course. Like many of your clients, my employer is an avid collector, the sort of man who appreciates the beauty of things. Of late, he has taken an interest in books. There’s one book that has sentimental value for him. He’s tried to find it, but it’s a relatively obscure title and he hasn’t had much success. He would like you to acquire it for him.”

She hadn’t expected a book.

While she had found rare editions for clients in the past, books were hardly her specialty. Still, it sounded simple enough, considering she knew the perfect person to help her track down the title.

“My employer has authorized twenty thousand pounds for the book,” Greer added.

It wasn’t the most money she’d ever been authorized to acquire an item, but it wasn’t a small amount, either, considering Greer himself had described the book as “obscure.”

“Twenty thousand pounds is quite a sum for something with a value that is solely sentimental.”

“My client is a sentimental man. A private one, too. Everything we have been told about you indicates that you understand the need for discretion in this line of work.”

“I do.”

Greer reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. He handed it to her wordlessly.

Margo unfolded it.

Halfway down the page, a title was etched in a black type font, the author’s name dangling after it.

A Time for Forgetting

Eva Fuentes

She’d never heard of the book or the author.

“There is a small amount of urgency to the matter. There are whispers that the book might be coming up for sale, that there are other interested parties. My employer would like to acquire it before it goes to auction. Get it before the price rises considerably or before he loses the opportunity completely.”

It wasn’t an unusual circumstance for a client to want to preempt an auction to prevent a bidding war, nor was it odd to conceal one’s interest in an item lest the notoriety of their name draw undue attention. Still, there were too many unknown factors here. Surely, he was going to give her more to go on than this?

“I assume your client is only interested in a first edition. Do you know how many copies of the book are in circulation?”

“One.”

“One?” She was beginning to understand why he was willing to pay double her fee.

He nodded. “As I said, it’s an obscure title.”

“Yet there’s more than one party interested in it.”

“Yes.”

The first item she had ever sourced for a client was an antique dining table and matching chairs that she had tracked across two continents. She’d been a bit like a detective as she’d traced the sales history, located the pieces, and then notified her client of the good news. The hunt had been intoxicating, perhaps even more so than the final sense of accomplishment when she was successful. She was good at her job because she loved it.

“When was it published?” Margo asked him.

“1901.”

“How do you even know it’s still out there?”

“It is. We believe it was in Cuba at one point, but news of it disappeared after the revolution. Until now.”

There was something he wasn’t telling her, but she hadn’t built her reputation from strong-arming her clients into giving her information. It was annoying that he wouldn’t be entirely transparent with her, but it was hardly the first time it had happened, and it wouldn’t be the last. She’d just have to piece it together herself.

“And if the price does rise? Or the owner isn’t willing to part with the book prior to the auction? How badly does your employer want it?”

“Enough to hire you, Ms. Reynolds. Your reputation precedes you. As does your discretion. My client doesn’t want his personal business spread around. Nor does he want people to be apprised of his identity and risk it raising the price. Get him the book for a fair sum and he will be happy. This could be the beginning of a mutually beneficial business arrangement. You can consider this a test to see how you do. If it goes well, then perhaps he will hire you to source more valuable artworks for him. Do we have an agreement?”

She considered Greer for a moment, the prospect of further business down the road dangling before her, the money waiting for her enticing, the thrill of the hunt calling to her like a siren’s song.

The client wanted her to procure a book. How dangerous could that be?

“We have a deal.”

“How did the meeting go?” Margo’s assistant Bea asked over the phone.

Bea had been with her for three years now, and Margo couldn’t imagine her life without her. She’d originally been hesitant to hire an assistant; after a lifetime of relying on herself to take care of what needed to be done, it was difficult to relinquish responsibility to someone else, to trust another person with her business, which was central to her entire existence. But Bea was extraordinary and there hadn’t been a moment since she hired her that Margo had regretted the decision.

Margo tucked her mobile into the curve of her neck, using her free hands to secure the last few buttons on her coat.

It had indeed started snowing while she was at the meeting, the flurries falling more thickly now, sticking to the wet pavement.

A curse escaped her lips.

“Is everything okay?” Bea asked her.

“Yes, it’s just snowing now.”

Bea was a Londoner born and bred, so she understood better than anyone the implications of such an event in a touristy part of the city.

Ahead of Margo, people were stopping in the middle of the sidewalk, clearly dazzled by the falling wetness.

“And the meeting?” Bea asked in her ear. “Do we have a new client?”

“It was fine. He’s an intermediary. His client wants us to acquire a book for him.”

“That sounds easy enough.”

“You’d think. Apparently, it’s the only copy in existence.”

“You’re joking.”

“I’m not. Remind me later that what I love most about this job is the fact that it’s never boring.”

“There is that,” Bea agreed.

“I need you to check on the wire. Tell me if it has gone through yet.”

“Let me see,” Bea replied.

Through the mobile connection, Margo could hear the background noise of their little office in Chelsea.

Margo wove her way through the crowd, the snow falling even more steadily than before. It was going to be hard to get a taxi tonight.

Someone bumped her from behind, and Margo glanced back. Two teenage girls were texting on their phones, glossy carrier bags hanging off their wrists. They seemed as unmoved by the snow as Margo was. Margo looked past them, her gaze catching with that of a lone man in a black jacket walking a few steps behind the teenage girls. He wasn’t looking at the snow falling from above, but rather straight ahead at the girls, who seemed completely oblivious to his presence.

He was built like a linebacker, broad of shoulder and much taller than her own five feet, six inches. His blond hair was close-cropped, almost military in style.

Margo slowed slightly, giving the girls space to pass her, waiting to see if the man took the opportunity to continue behind them.

He didn’t.

Good. Maybe she was overreacting, but as a single woman in the city, she’d learned to be cautious, and she’d been the recipient of other women looking out for her, so it was right to do the same for them. There had been a rash of mobile phone thefts lately—

“Margo—”

Bea’s voice in her ear brought her back.

“Yes?”

“The wire’s good. The money hit the account.”

“Time to get to work, then.”

“Are you coming back to the office tonight?”

“No, I’m going to head to Notting Hill,” Margo replied.

“To see Mr. Thornton?”

“I figure he’s the best person to help me track down the book. He’ll probably be excited for the challenge.”

Margo turned down a side street, the crowd thinning considerably. The Tube station was a few blocks away still, but at least it was less congested off the familiar tourist street.

She glanced back over her shoulder once more, lengthening her strides a little bit.

The teenage girls were gone, replaced by a family of four, the mom arguing with her kids over the need to zip up their coats with the falling snow. The man in the black jacket was fifty or so yards behind the family.

His head was ducked so she couldn’t see his face, but his body moved down the sidewalk as though he was intent on his destination.

So why had he slowed down?

Margo hesitated, a flicker of unease filling her. She reduced her pace slightly, waiting for him to pass her.

He didn’t.

She glanced over her shoulder quickly.

The family was still there, at her heels now, but the man was nowhere to be seen.

Relief filled her, her heartbeat returning to normal.

She was mugged a few months after she’d first moved to London, the whole thing so quick, she hadn’t even realized it happened until she had gone to buy a coffee and noticed her wallet was missing, the memory of someone brushing up against her, of her purse strap slipping off her shoulder for an instant coming back to her. While the experience had been little more than a headache over canceled cards and a need for new identification, it had made her more wary when she was on the streets.

Margo turned the corner, the familiar sign for the Tube station coming into view.

The Tube would be crowded, particularly now that it was rush hour. She’d take the Victoria line train to Oxford Circus and transfer there to head to Notting Hill.

The bookstore was nestled in a nook in Notting Hill, a green awning and matching door inviting the public to come in from the cobblestones and find a life-changing adventure nestled within the pages of a book.

Mr. Thornton had run the bookshop for decades and was a staple in the London literary community. He was the person when it came to sourcing books. The title on his business card may have been “bookstore owner,” but in practice he was a book historian. He knew the books’ secrets, and he’d yet to disappoint her when Margo needed to track down a particularly difficult one.

He was also a mentor of sorts to her, one of the colleagues in her field that she most admired for his dedication, professionalism, and passion. He had always been kind and helpful to her, even when she was starting out and very few people took her seriously, considering her age and inexperience.

In the beginning, Margo’s business had started on social media, specializing in finding unique antiques that she sold through her online presence. She’d barely cleared enough to make her student loan payments, but it earned her a following and the ever-important client connections that had become the bedrock of her company.

One of her initial clients had come to her on referral and hired her to find a rare set of Dickens books. At the time, Margo had been desperate to have some income and to build her business. She’d reached out to one of her grad school professors, who immediately referred her to Thornton’s Bookshop. She’d never forget how Mr. Thornton had helped her or how he’d treated her. It wasn’t the first time impostor syndrome had snuck in, and it wouldn’t be the last, but in one of the moments of her career when success seemed out of reach and she feared she should give up, he’d encouraged her.

Margo pushed open the door, the gold bell at the top heralding her arrival, the familiar scent of old books and lemon furniture polish greeting her.

“One moment,” a voice called out from the shop, and even though she couldn’t see him from her vantage point at the entrance, Margo envisioned Mr. Thornton in the back, hunched over the mahogany table, a book in front of him. In a city that was constantly “on the move,” she loved these quiet spaces, these little retreats where you could dip in and instantly be transported, where the minutiae of daily life simply disappeared.

Margo busied herself with perusing the shelves, trying to remember the last time she’d had the opportunity to read a good book. It was always one of her resolutions when the year began—that she would read more, use her morning commute from her flat in Kensington to her office in Chelsea to listen to an audiobook, that she would join a book club, that she would finally tackle that never-ending list of books that she had mentally jotted down—recommendations from Mr. Thornton and others.

When she was younger, she had loved to read, had happily spent hours in bookstores and libraries. She had loved mysteries, had envisioned herself slipping between the pages of the books and taking the main character’s place. The adventures she read about became her adventures, and even though she had spent the entirety of her childhood in Virginia, in her wildest fantasies she had traveled through time and space, across oceans and centuries.

When had reading changed for her? When had she lost the ability to imagine things? Grad school, perhaps? Undergrad? Her studies had somewhat killed the pleasure of reading for fun for her. She remembered reading for exams, drying out highlighters on the papery-thin pages of her textbooks, remembered the anxiety of worrying whether her grades would slip, and she’d lose her scholarship. She remembered reading into the late hours of the evening, until exhaustion overtook her, the words blurring together as her head ached with the effort.

She couldn’t remember the last time a book had given her pleasure.

Margo reached out, stroking the spine of the book in front of her.

“Ah, that’s a good one. I think you’d like it.”

Margo glanced up, startled by the sight of Mr. Thornton standing before her, a bemused expression on his face. From his vantage point, it was impossible to see the gold-lettered title, but she wasn’t even remotely surprised he knew which book she was looking at solely from her position in the stacks. He was intimately familiar with each book in his shop.

“A gift,” he added, reaching over to the shelf, and plucking the novel into her waiting hands.

The familiar weight of it sent off a spark inside her, a muscle memory from when she was a little girl and her mother would take her to the library after school. Back then the fact that she could check out books for free and take them home with her to peruse at her leisure was magic.

Margo smiled. “Thank you.”

“It’s my pleasure. You look like you need a good book.”

“How can you tell?”

In her line of work, you learned the importance of reading people, of understanding human behavior so that you could predict their wants and needs—and their vulnerabilities, too. Mr. Thornton had a knack for reading people, but there was something deeply soothing in the way he did it. Perhaps in being a procurer of books, he was also a procurer of dreams.

“You look distracted. Like you’re working out a problem you haven’t quite been able to solve. You work too much.”

“I could say the same about you,” she teased.

He laughed. “Very true. Are we about to embark on another literary adventure?”

“Possibly. I need some help,” Margo admitted.

“Let me guess, you have a client who has an impossible book request?”

“I don’t know how impossible it is, but I have a client who is looking for a book that is supposed to be coming up for auction soon and he wants me to procure it for him before it hits the market. Says it’s a sentimental acquisition. But there’s not much to go on, and apparently there’s only one copy of this book in existence.”

Mr. Thornton whistled, his smile growing. “That is a challenge.”

She grinned. “I had a feeling you would be up for it. Whenever I need a book, you’re always the person I think of.”

“I’m honored.”

He said it more as a formality than anything else. They both knew he had earned his reputation and the respect that came with it.

Margo pulled the folded sheet of paper out of her handbag and handed it to him.

He opened the paper, scanning the contents.

“Now that’s interesting,” he said, looking up to meet her gaze, a gleam in his eyes.

“What’s interesting? Have you heard of the book before?” Margo asked, excitement filling her.

Could it really be this simple? She’d come here hoping that if anyone could find the book, it would be Mr. Thornton, but considering how obscure the title was, she hadn’t dared to consider the possibility that he might be familiar with the book himself.

“A month ago, someone came to the shop asking about this very book.”

Her heart pounded. “Was it William Greer? With an American accent?”

“Not an American, no. It was a man, but I can’t remember his name.”

Was someone else trying to find A Time for Forgetting ? Had they already found it?

“A bit older than you, perhaps,” Mr. Thornton added. “Forties, maybe.”

“Did he say why he wanted the book?”

“Not that I remember.”

“Were you able to locate it?”

“No, and details were hard to come by. The author was Cuban. Deceased now. The book was published in English by a small publisher in Boston that’s no longer in business. I have the name in my records; I can find it for you. I gave him what I found, but then I never heard from him again.”

“May I see what you have on it? Any research you did before you stopped working for him?”

“Of course. If I can find it.” He winced. “My files are—”

She grinned. “A mess,” she finished for him.

He laughed. “You know me too well. I had a shipment come in from Antwerp, and I’ll confess, I’ve been thoroughly consumed.”

For as impeccable as the bookshop was, the back room where he handled the business operations was anything but. It was almost as though he exhausted the extent of his organizational efforts when he catalogued the books and there was nothing left over for anything as mundane as invoices.

“When do you think you’ll be able to get the information together for me?” Margo asked. “I know you’re busy.”

“Come by the shop tomorrow. I promise I’ll have everything. Why don’t you stop by around six, right after I close? We can catch up over a cup of tea.”

“That’s perfect. Thank you. And thank you for the book,” she added, gesturing to the title he had given her. “I’m excited to start reading it.”

Margo tucked the book in her purse and headed out of the shop, phone in hand. If someone else had already gone to Mr. Thornton about A Time for Forgetting , then time was of the essence.

The snow had thankfully stopped falling once she reached the Tube station, the crowds still thick from all the tourists and commuters. When she moved to London, she was originally drawn to the fact that the city never slept, that there was always something going on no matter the time of day. Some of that excitement had waned a bit, considering the practicalities of having to navigate daily life and responsibilities in such a place, but the city still energized her.

Margo weaved her way through the crowds, heading toward the platform just as the familiar roar of the Tube car coming down the tracks hit the station.

She boarded the train, inwardly groaning at the fact that it was beyond crowded this evening, no available seat in sight. She’d entertained a little fantasy about finding a nice place to sit and cracking open the book Mr. Thornton had given her, but it appeared she would be standing instead.

Margo maneuvered her way into a spot between two women dressed in suits, their bodies brushing against one another as they all tried to find a space to stand.

Just as the doors closed, she glanced up at the sea of unfortunate commuters who had just missed the train by seconds, one woman pounding on the doors as they shut in her face.

Margo’s breath hitched.

The man in the black jacket was there again, standing on the platform, the Tube doors the only barrier between them.

It hit her in waves, the memory coming back to her—it was the same man. The one she had seen on the street after she had gone to the meeting with Greer.

Margo watched as he seemingly scanned the cars, until—

Their gazes connected.

The train carried her away.