“Then that’s our way in, whether he’s ready or not,” Abe retorted. “Victoria is now fascinated with Henry and Delilah Thornhill, so that’s who you will become.”
“But he’s also never been undercover before. He’s…he’s awkward, slow to respond. He can’t read me, we have no flow. No chemistry.”
“And Victoria wants to show off the books she’s potentially stolen to people she perceives as being antiquities experts. That is not you. Or Freya. You have a very specific set of skills, Delilah,” he continued. “Henry complements them with the fact that he speaks four languages and knows more about rare manuscripts than anyone else I’ve ever met.”
“He can’t be my partner,” I said, exasperated.
“Why?”
“Because he’s not Freya.” Freya and I fit. In the middle of an undercover case, she could arch an eyebrow at me and I’d know what she meant. What we needed to do. “There’s no trust there. He can’t shoot a gun. He doesn’t know hand-to-hand combat. He can’t watch my back, and he can’t protect himself.”
“Last time I checked, Delilah Barrett was perfectly capable of protecting herself,” he said gently.
I glanced over at him. Abe was smiling—a rare gesture. “I’m not trying to be insubordinate. I’m just concerned.” I blew out a breath. “I might have convinced you to go after a case that doesn’t exist.”
He let a comfortable quiet hang between us—he’d known me long enough to understand when I was processing my thoughts.
“Do you ever think a person’s instincts can disappear for good? If they’ve been wrong—really wrong—in the past?” I asked, finally.
My boss knew which parts of my past I was talking about.
“I don’t believe that at all. Our instincts never disappear, regardless of what may have happened. You’re still the most brilliant detective I know.”
“I’m the office Jezebel, Abe.” I could still remember the sickening shame that had invaded my body the first time I saw those words in print. And they weren’t a quote from the reporter. Mark had said it. “And I might have led us on a giant wild goose chase,” I said grimly.
“For the record, Freya and I are more than willing to beat the living shit out of Mark for calling you that.”
“You’ve made that clear, thank you,” I said. But I did smile at him.
“And secondly, your instinct led us to Francisco, who confirmed our suspicions almost immediately.” He nudged my shoulder. “Your suspicions. And believe it or not, Henry’s background knowledge attracted Victoria to the two of you. I’d call that a good partnership.”
“You’re not nervous about what happened back there?” Because I certainly was.
Abe was silent—staring out at the sea of city lights like a ship’s captain, alert for hidden dangers beneath the surface. “I wouldn’t have done any of this if I didn’t trust both of you to handle it.” He stood up, placed a hand on my shoulder. “Now you need to figure out how to trust each other.”
9
Henry
The first time I’d examined a rare manuscript, I’d felt a sense of awe infuse my very bones. I was newly graduated, interning in special collections at the Oxford Library, translating a sixteenth-century German journal that had been recently discovered.
It was small, bound in vellum, the pages dry and almost too fragile to turn. I hadn’t grown up in a religious household—my parents worshipped at the altar of academia. But sitting in that room, with the scent of history all around me, I’d felt something akin to grace.
I searched for that feeling now as I carefully removed the bindings that protected the recovered copy of Fahrenheit 451. It was the morning after we’d fled to Francisco; the morning after I officially became fake married to my coworker, Delilah. I’d woken up feeling jostled, thoughts scrambled—as if I need to run or jump or scale a tall building. Abe had encouraged all of us to head home, get a good night’s sleep—that we’d make a plan as soon as we were back in the office.
But in the space of a few hours, I’d gone from office researcher to undercover agent. It was so beyond the edge of my understanding it was like trying to leap to the moon from the earth. It felt, quite simply, impossible.
So I’d come in early instead, attempting to reconnect with the feelings of awe that had shaped the majority of my life until now.
“Hey.”
I looked up to find Delilah, leaning against the doorway. She was dressed neatly in a gray pencil skirt and sleeveless blouse, the streaming dawn light setting flames to her black hair.
“Good morning,” I said.
“You’re in early.”
“I know Abe wanted this done. And I needed some quiet reflection after the night we had.”
She crossed her arms. “So I guess we’ll be working together on this Copernicus case, huh?”
“It looks like,” I replied. “You don’t seem too happy about that.”
“I’m used to working with Freya,” she explained. “We’ve been partners for two years. And you’re…”
“Terrible?”
“No,” she said quickly. “Just new. Green. This is going to be high-profile, and we’re going to have to be fully undercover as a married couple. We barely know each other, let alone having the kind of trust we need to work this case.”
I crossed my arms, mirroring her pose. “Tell me what you mean by that.”
“It’s the reading of the other person, their gestures, their body language. Like you can read their mind. That’s what I have with Freya. If you and I had been partners for years, this would be fine. But we can’t fake that kind of intimacy. It comes with time.”
I rubbed the back of my neck. “Delilah, I want to do a good job on this.”
“I know you do,” she said. Her posture was hard, unyielding.
“And it seems like we’ll need to convince Victoria that we’re in love.” I thought I saw the faintest blush in her pale cheeks. “That means trust, right?”
She nodded. “Trust is the single most important thing. I need to feel like if I fall, you’ll catch me.” She tilted her palms up, like a plea. “I’m not sure I can get us there in the amount of time that we have. It feels impossible.”
“That’s interesting,” I said. “I had the same feeling when I woke up this morning.”
A painfully awkward silence stretched between us.
“So what do we do?” I asked.
“We have our marching orders.” Her tone was brisk. “Abe wants us to be fake married, so I guess I better have Freya photoshop a picture of us dancing under rose petals in the middle of Ireland or whatever.”
I laughed, surprised—and her lips curved in a cautious smile.
But then the smile quickly disappeared.
“So the auction is in a week,” she said. “We should start working together on some things. Get to know each other better so that our undercover roles feel more comfortable and less stilted.”