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**Chapter 54**
**Ray's POV**
I never thought I would end up forming an alliance with Bethany Kelman.
I knew her before I knew Cossette - not well, not personally, but the way you know people in overlapping circles. She existed in my peripheral vision at industry events and charity dinners, always somewhere near the edges of whatever was happening, always slightly louder than the occasion strictly required. I didn't dislike her. But I didn't particularly seek her out either. She was - extra. That was the word that had always come to mind.
Standing behind a tree outside Anika's apartment building at ten in the morning, watching Bethany peer through the branches with the focused intensity of someone who had watched too many spy films, I was understanding that feeling more than ever.
Even if - and I was not going to examine this too carefully - it was also somehow different now. Less irritating than it used to be. More like something I had quietly started looking forward to without noticing when that had happened.
I watched her part two branches and squint at the building entrance.
"How are we going to get in?" she said.
"Through the door," I said.
She turned and looked at me with an expression that communicated exactly what she thought of that answer.
"There's security, Ray. Guards. A front desk. We can't just -"
"This building," I said, "is owned by my cousin. I've been here before. I can walk in whenever I want."
The silence that followed had a very specific quality.
Then: "SO WHY THE HELL HAVE I BEEN HIDING BEHIND A TREE FOR FIFTEEN MINUTES?"
A bird somewhere above us left its branch in alarm.
"Keep your voice down -"
"A mosquito bit me!" She thrust her hand toward me - and she was right, there was a red mark on the back of it, slightly swollen, genuinely irritated. "Look at this. Look at what you let happen to me."
I took her hand without thinking about it.
Looked at the bite.
"Stop acting like a child," I said, "and let's go in."
I released her hand and walked to the front entrance with the ease of someone who belonged there - because I did. The guardian at the desk looked up, recognized me, and smiled.
"Mr. Lether. Good morning."
"Good morning," I said, and walked through with Betha half a step behind me.
Inside the elevator she turned to me.
"Remind me of the plan," I said.
She straightened. "Accidental meeting. Fated encounter." She stepped slightly closer, lowering her voice. "She can't know we came here looking for her. It needs to look completely coincidental."
"A fated encounter with Anika," I said. "That sounds like the opening of a horror film."
She laughed - short and genuine. "Just let me handle the setup. You handle the charm."
We found her floor. Her apartment was at the end of the corridor - 4C, according to the building directory Betha had memorized with the thoroughness of someone who took reconnaissance seriously.
Betha stopped me ten meters from the door.
"Okay," she said quietly. "I ring. You walk the other way - make it look like you're heading to a different apartment. When she opens the door she'll see your back. I disappear. You take it from there."
I looked at her.
"And if she doesn't open?"
"She'll open." Betha said it with the certainty of someone who knew their subject. "Anika always opens her door. She likes to know what's happening in her vicinity."
I nodded once.
Walked past 4C toward the end of the corridor, unhurried, jacket straight, hands in my pockets - the particular posture of a man with somewhere to be and no reason to explain himself to anyone.
Behind me I heard the knock.
Three seconds of silence.
Then the door opened.
"What are you doing here?"
Anika's voice - sharp, suspicious, instantly alert. I turned slowly, as if the sound had caught my attention incidentally.
She was standing in her doorway in a silk robe, hair loose, green eyes moving between me and the empty corridor where Betha had been approximately two seconds ago and was no longer.
"My cousin lives in this building," I said easily. "I was visiting."
Her eyes narrowed. "Did you ring my door?"
"Why would I ring your door, Anika?" I said it with the mild reasonable tone of someone who found the question slightly absurd. "I didn't even know this was your apartment."
A pause.
She looked at me.
I looked back at her - calm, direct, entirely unbothered - and let the silence do the work that words would have done less efficiently.
Something shifted in her expression. The suspicion didn't disappear entirely but it moved sideways, making room for something else. The particular calculation of a woman reassessing a situation in real time.
"Well," she said. Slightly different tone now. "Small world."
"Very small," I agreed.
I let one corner of my mouth lift - just slightly. Just enough.
"It was nice to see you, Anika," I said. Warm. Easy. Nothing that could be called flirtation and nothing that could be called indifference either. The precise middle ground.
I turned and walked back toward the elevator.
I did not look back.
But I heard it - the soft sound of her door staying open a beat longer than it needed to. The particular quality of someone watching you leave and deciding something about it.
I pressed the elevator button.
The doors opened.
Betha was inside.
I stepped in. The doors closed. We looked at each other.
"Well?" she said.
"She watched me leave," I said.
Betha's smile spread slowly. "Perfect."
The elevator descended in silence for a moment.
Then she said: "You're actually good at this."
"Don't sound so surprised."
"I'm a little surprised," she said honestly.
I looked at her.
She looked at the elevator doors.
That particular quality of silence settled between us - the one that had been showing up more frequently lately, the one I was choosing not to examine too carefully for reasons that were becoming increasingly difficult to justify.
The doors opened at the ground floor.
"Step one complete," Betha said, walking out ahead of me.
"Step one complete," I agreed.
And followed her out into the morning.