Read Chapter 9: Down the Rabbit Hole

The rain had settled into that persistent London drizzle that seemed to soak through everything but clean nothing. Marcus stood at the window of the safe house's second-floor study, phone pressed to his ear, watching water bead on the glass and trace crooked paths downward. Behind him, Evelyn had curled into an armchair with a stack of mail she'd demanded from the office, her fingers working through envelopes with the restless energy of someone who'd stopped asking permission.

"Forty-eight hours," Marcus said into the phone. "I need something concrete by then."

The voice on the other end belonged to a man named Bill Cotter, a former Met detective who'd traded his warrant card for a private license and a client list that skewed toward the rich and paranoid. Marcus had used him twice before—once for a Saudi prince's wayward daughter, once for a tech CEO who suspected his wife was feeding trade secrets to a competitor. Bill was discreet, expensive, and effective.

"The photographer's name is Simon Pryce," Bill said, his voice carrying the low rasp of a man who'd spent too many years in smoky pubs. "Freelance, no agency ties. Broke, but not desperate—he's got a reputation for taking jobs others won't touch. The money trail's thin, but I'm pulling his phone records now. The burner he used to get the audition details pinged a tower in Greenwich six hours before the shoot."

"Greenwich," Marcus repeated, turning the word over. "Anything else on that tower?"

"Nothing yet. But here's the interesting bit—Pryce deposited a cash payment into his account two days after the audition. Eleven thousand pounds. Clean notes, no bank transfer. Someone wanted to make sure there was no digital trace."

"Can you trace the withdrawal?" Marcus asked.

"I'm working on it. Cash that size usually comes from somewhere, even if it's laundered through a business account. Give me another day. I'll have something."

Marcus ended the call and pocketed the phone, turning to face Evelyn. She'd abandoned the armchair, crossing to the desk where she'd spread out a dozen or so envelopes in careful rows. He noticed she'd organized them by postmark date, her finger tracing the handwriting on each one.

"There's a pattern," she said without looking up. "I've been going through the fan mail the office forwarded—the ones that passed the initial screening. The ones that were creepy enough to flag but not enough to send to the police."

She picked up an envelope and held it toward him. The handwriting was neat, almost architectural—each letter formed with deliberate care. Marcus took it, reading the short note inside.

*Miss Hart, you looked tired at the Ivy last Thursday. You should rest more. I'll make sure nothing bothers you while you sleep.*

"Last Thursday," Marcus said, scanning the postmark. "This was mailed two days before that dinner."

Evelyn nodded, her jaw tight. "I checked. There are seven others like it. The earliest is from four months ago—before Jemma left, before I hired you. Each one references something that happened within seventy-two hours before or after the postmark. Specific things. Things that weren't in the press."

She handed him another envelope. This one was postmarked three weeks earlier, referencing a private rehearsal she'd done at the National Theatre with only the artistic director and two crew members present.

"This isn't a fan," Marcus said. "This is surveillance."

"That's what I thought too." Evelyn's voice was steady, but he could see the tremor in her hand as she set down the letter. "I've been sitting here for two hours, going through these, thinking about all the times I was alone in my flat, in my car, walking my dog in the park at dawn when I couldn't sleep. And someone was watching all of it."

Marcus moved toward her, stopping a respectful distance away. The impulse to close the space, to offer some physical reassurance, warred with the training that told him to stay professional. Professionalism won, but barely.

"They're all mailed from different post offices," Evelyn continued, sliding a stack of envelopes toward him. "Central London, mostly, but a few from the outer boroughs. Whoever this is, they move around. They plan."

"Have you told the police about these?"

Evelyn laughed, a hollow sound. "I told them the stalker was an overzealous fan, remember? That I was handling it. That I'd put my faith in you." She met his eyes. "I'm starting to think that was a mistake. Not the lie—the faith."

Marcus felt the words land like a physical blow. He'd been holding back details to protect her, to shield her from the uglier implications of Danny's call, the missing medic, the surveillance photo that connected Hendricks to her life. But every withheld truth was creating distance between them, and distance was exactly what a threat like this needed to grow.

"I spoke to a PI," he said. "Bill Cotter. He's tracing the photographer's client."

Evelyn's eyebrows rose. "You hired someone without telling me?"

"I'm telling you now."

"After I had to drag the last truth out of you." She shook her head, but the anger in her voice was thinning, replaced by something closer to exhaustion. "Marcus, I'm not your enemy. I'm not a piece of cargo to be protected in the dark. If we're going to do this—if you're going to keep me alive—I need to be in the room."

Marcus considered his options. The truth would compromise his operational security. It would expose gaps in his own knowledge, uncertainties he'd been trained to bury. But Evelyn wasn't a civilian he was guarding at arm's length anymore. She was someone who'd started to see through the armor, and there was a strange relief in that.

"The photographer's client paid him in cash," he said. "Eleven thousand pounds, no digital trace. Bill's working on the money trail and the burner phone that pinged a tower in Greenwich. But there's something else you should know."

Evelyn waited, her hands stilling on the desk.

"The man who hired the photographer served in the military. That's what the photographer told me before he disappeared. Military bearing, short hair, the way he stood and spoke. And the man who's been sending you these letters—" Marcus gestured at the envelopes. "He's not just watching you. He's documenting your movements with a level of precision that suggests training. Professional training."

"Like yours?"

"Like mine. Like Danny's. Like Hendricks's."

Evelyn's face paled. "Your missing friend."

"The one who had your photograph in his flat." Marcus let the silence stretch before continuing. "This isn't a random obsessive, Evelyn. This is someone organized. Someone with resources. And I think—" He paused, testing the weight of the words. "I think it might be someone I knew. Someone from my unit."

The admission hung between them, raw and unfinished. Evelyn studied him for a long moment, her expression shifting from fear to something more complex—a recalculation, an assessment.

"Then you're not just my bodyguard," she said slowly. "You're a witness. Or a target."

"Maybe both."

Evelyn moved around the desk, stopping just in front of him. Close enough that he could smell the faint trace of rain on her jacket, hear the shallow rhythm of her breathing. "Then we figure this out together."

"Evelyn—"

"I'm not asking permission." Her voice carried steel that had been hidden beneath the fear. "You said you'd be in the room. I'm saying the same. Whatever connects your past to my stalker, we unravel it side by side. No more secrets."

Marcus held her gaze, feeling something shift in his chest. He'd spent years building walls, keeping people at a distance, believing that isolation was the only way to keep them safe. But Evelyn Hart was dismantling those walls brick by brick, and he wasn't sure he wanted to rebuild them.

"Bill's report comes in tomorrow," he said. "We'll know more then."

"And tonight?"

"Tonight, we go through every one of these letters again. Cross-reference the dates with your schedule, your movements, anyone who had access to that information." He picked up the first envelope. "We find the pattern. And then we find him."

Evelyn nodded, a small smile tugging at the corner of her mouth—fragile, but real. "For the first time since this started, I feel like we're actually doing something."

Marcus allowed himself a thin smile in return. "That's because we are."

But in the back of his mind, a question churned with cold persistence: if whoever was watching Evelyn had military training, and if that training traced back to the same unit Marcus had served in, then the threat wasn't just to Evelyn. It was to everything Marcus had built since leaving the army. And the pattern of the letters, the precision of the surveillance, the careful anonymity of the client—all of it pointed to someone who knew exactly how Marcus operated.

Someone who was playing a longer game.