Read Chapter 3: The Compass

The safe flat smelled of bleach and someone else’s life. Evelyn stood at the narrow window, watching rain streak the glass of an unfamiliar Southbank street, and tried not to think about the photograph in Fiona’s handbag. A picture of her, mid-run, face caught in a wash of stage light. Taken from the wings. Taken by someone who shouldn’t have been there.

Marcus had been leaning against the kitchen counter for the better part of an hour, a mug of black coffee cooling in his grip, his eyes tracing the room’s exits with a patience that made her skin prickle. He hadn’t asked questions. He hadn’t offered comfort. He’d simply stood there, a wall of stillness, and waited for her to reach a decision.

“I want to go home,” she said finally.

“You can’t.”

“I mean my actual home. Not that glass box in Kensington the agency picked because it photographs well.” She turned from the window. “The house I grew up in. Camden. It’s still in my name.”

Marcus’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. “It’s not secure.”

“It’s got a garden wall, a neighbour who’s known me since I was six, and a father who installed a panic room in the basement because he was a screenwriter with too many conspiracy theories.” She let the words land. “It’s the safest place I’ve ever been.”

He studied her for a long moment. Then he set the mug down. “One hour. I sweep it first. You don’t leave my sight.”

The drive took thirty minutes through wet London traffic, Marcus’s reflection a dark blur in the passenger window. He didn’t put on music. He didn’t fill the silence with reassurance or small talk. Evelyn found herself noting the way his hands rested on the wheel—loose, ready, the fingers of his right hand drumming once against the leather at every red light. A man who counted seconds.

The house was smaller than she remembered. Childhood always did that. The brick was tired, the paint on the front door peeling at the edges, but the brass knocker still shone—Mrs. Okafor from next door had always been fond of that knocker. Evelyn pressed her palm to the wood before unlocking it, feeling the familiar grain against her skin.

Inside smelled of dust and old paper. Marcus moved ahead of her through the narrow hallway, checking rooms with a quick, practiced economy. A glance into the kitchen. A pause at the stairs. He didn’t touch anything, but she watched his gaze catalogue every detail—the photographs on the wall, the stack of unopened post, the worn rug where her father used to drop his bag.

“Clear,” he said, and something in her chest unclenched.

She led him to the study. It was the only room her mother had never redecorated after the divorce. Floor-to-ceiling shelves crammed with scripts and dog-eared paperbacks, a desk still scattered with notes in her father’s frantic handwriting, and above the fireplace, a framed photograph of the two of them at Brighton pier. She was eleven. He was laughing.

On the mantelpiece sat the compass.

It was brass, tarnished green at the edges, the glass face cracked along one corner. Her father had carried it through three war zones as a journalist before he traded truth for fiction. He’d pressed it into her hands the night before his heart gave out, told her it pointed north when she needed it to. It had been a lie, of course. The needle was jammed. But she’d worn it in her dressing room for every premiere since, and she’d never lost her way on a stage.

Evelyn picked it up. The weight was familiar, cool and solid.

“He said it would bring me luck,” she said, not looking at Marcus. “I keep telling myself it’s superstition. But it’s been in my hand for every opening night. Every audition that mattered. I don’t know how to start a scene without it.”

Marcus moved to the window, scanning the street below. “It’s not luck that keeps you safe.”

“No. It’s apparently a six-foot ex-SAS man with a resting hostility face.”

The corner of his mouth twitched. It was the closest she’d seen to a smile, and it vanished as quickly as it came. His body went still.

“Downstairs,” he said, his voice dropping to a register that made her stomach tighten. “There’s a man across the street. Dark coat. Cap. He’s been standing under the same bus stop since we pulled in.”

Evelyn crossed to the window, but Marcus’s hand shot out and pulled her back against the wall, shielding her body with his own. The pressure of his arm against her ribs was firm, impersonal, but she could feel the heat of him through his jacket, smell the clean trace of soap and rain.

“Don’t look directly,” he murmured close to her ear. “He’s not checking his phone. He’s not waiting for a bus. He’s watching this house.”

Her heart hammered. “The stalker?”

“Or someone working for him.” Marcus released her slowly, already moving toward the door. “Stay here. Don’t move. Don’t call anyone.”

She wanted to argue. She wanted to tell him he didn’t get to order her around in her own father’s study. But the cold clarity in his eyes stopped her. This wasn’t about control. This was about the threat outside.

He slipped through the front door without a sound, and Evelyn pressed herself against the hallway wall, listening. Rain filled the silence. A dog barked two streets over. She counted her heartbeats until she lost track, until the wait stretched thin and sharp.

Then the door opened. Marcus stepped back inside, water darkening his shoulders, his expression unreadable.

“He ran,” Marcus said. “Saw me coming and took off on foot. I chased him as far as the canal, but the rain washed his trail clean.”

“Did you get a look at his face?”

“Not enough.” He shook his head, and in the dim light of the hallway she saw the frustration tighten the muscle along his jaw. “But he wasn’t a casual observer. He had a position. He was watching the exact window of the study.”

The compass grew heavy in her palm.

“My father’s house,” she said quietly. “He knew I’d come here.”

Marcus hesitated. Then he said, “That means he knows you better than we thought. Birthdays. Habits. The places you run when you’re scared.”

Evelyn looked down at the compass, at the cracked glass and the jammed needle. North. It was supposed to point north.

“I’m not scared,” she said, and hated how thin her voice sounded.

Marcus’s gaze held hers for a long moment. “You should be,” he said. “A man who knows your safe places isn’t stalking you. He’s hunting you.”

He didn’t say anything else. But he reached out and closed her fingers over the compass, his hand warm and steady over hers, and for a split second the tremor in her chest quieted.

Then he let go, and pulled out his phone. “I’m calling the agency. We’re not staying here tonight.”

The compass’s brass edge bit into her palm. She didn’t put it down.