Welcome to Miami

11:20 a.m. Miami, Florida. Eighty-eight degrees and rising.

There were two kinds of heat, in Vega's professional opinion. There was the dry kind, which tried to kill you quickly, and there was the Miami kind, which tried to marinate you first.

She stepped off the jet onto the tarmac and the air closed around her like a wet palm. Her black clothes, chosen in New York for their ability to disappear, now seemed designed to cook her. Behind her, Roman Ashcombe descended the steps in a charcoal suit with his collar buttoned and not a single bead of sweat on his face.

"That's disturbing," she said.

"What is?"

"You're not melting."

"I am extremely disciplined." He slid on a pair of dark glasses. "And I do not enjoy admitting weakness to a climate."

Silas followed, carrying nothing and looking murderous. Behind him came four of the men, and behind them, last, Dante Ferris, who stopped at the top of the steps, spread both arms to the sun, and sighed as though he'd come home.

"God," Dante said. "I love this city. Everyone's tan, everyone's lying, and no one's wearing socks."

"You are not here to vacation," said Silas.

"Of course not. I'm here to breathe."

"Breathe less."

Vega stifled something that might have been a snort, and caught Roman's eye by accident. He did not smile. But the left corner of his mouth went in by a millimeter, and she felt it land somewhere under her ribs like a thrown dart.

…

The meeting was set for six that evening, aboard a yacht called the Halcyon.

She learned this in the car. Roman said it as he might have said the time of day, looking at the road, and Silas, in the front seat, immediately began to lay out a security plan. Four positions. Two sniper overwatches. A fallback route to the airport. A medic on standby.

"And Vega," Silas finished, "remains in the vehicle."

"No," said Roman.

Silas stopped.

"Sir?"

"She comes with me."

"Sir, with respect, she is a driver. She is not trained in close protection, she has no counterintelligence background, and she has been on the payroll for nine days." Silas turned in his seat. For the first time since she had known him, his voice had an edge on it. "If Kessler recognizes her, or uses her as leverage—"

"Then he will learn what I already know."

"Which is?"

"That she notices things." Roman's voice was entirely even. "Kessler has a driver, a pilot, and a second pilot. I want to know which of them is armed. I want to know who watches whom. I want to know how the crew reacts when he lies." His glasses turned toward Vega. "I want someone who spends her whole life watching the road to watch the room."

Vega looked at him.

"You want me to be your spy."

"I want you to be my eyes. I am aware that the distinction is thin." A pause. "Is it a difficulty?"

She thought of the bullet, and the tea, and the camera in her bathroom mirror. She thought of Juno in a stone manor in Switzerland, and she thought, with a small acid twist, that she'd been a spy since the day she was born. Nobody who grew up in a house full of debt was ever not.

"It's a salary," said Vega.

"It is."

"Then I'd like a hat."

"A hat."

"It's a yacht. I'll need a hat."

Dante, in the back seat, made a noise like a deflating tire.

"Get her a hat," said Roman, without moving a muscle.

…

The Halcyon was a hundred and fifty feet of white fiberglass and bad taste.

It rode at anchor off Biscayne Bay with its running lights on, a floating wedding cake with a helicopter pad. Brass rails. White leather. A marble bar on the sun deck, and a smell of expensive sunscreen and cold money. A string quartet played something by Vivaldi at the stern, with the glazed expressions of musicians who had been told to expect nothing and had been paid accordingly.

Vega boarded in a black sleeveless dress that Roman's people had found, God knew how, in her exact size, with a wide-brimmed hat that she'd chosen specifically because it hid her eyes. She walked three paces behind Roman's left shoulder, hands clasped, face blank. It took every bit of her training not to look at the exits.

Gangway. Sun deck. Bar. Stairs down. Lifeboat. Helicopter. Rail. She took them in at a glance, like a woman reading a menu. Water's cold at night, and sharks like Biscayne in spring.

A man was waiting at the top of the stairs with his arms spread wide.

"Roman!"

Adrian Kessler was fifty, perhaps, and looked forty-five by an act of great financial will. He had silver hair swept back from a tanned forehead, a white linen shirt open three buttons to show a gold chain, and the kind of teeth that came in a box. His smile was enormous. His eyes were blue, and warm, and very, very bright, like a lamp in a house where somebody is being held in the cellar.

"Romy," he said. "Look at you. Not a day older. Still the best-dressed corpse in the Western Hemisphere."

"Adrian."

"You haven't called in two years. I was hurt."

"You were not."

"I was furious. It's the same thing in this climate." Kessler clasped his shoulders and kissed the air beside each cheek. Roman bore it as a rock bears a gull. Then the blue eyes slid sideways and found Vega. "And who is this? Don't tell me. A new associate. A new friend. Romy, you naughty man."

"She is my driver."

"A driver." Kessler took her hand without being offered it, and raised it, and brushed his lips across the knuckles. His mouth was warm and dry. "Charmed, my dear. I do love a woman who can parallel park."

"I do love a man who knows where his hand is," Vega said pleasantly.

She withdrew it. Neither of them looked away. Behind her, very faintly, she heard Silas's boots shift on the deck.

Kessler laughed. It was a good laugh, rich and delighted, and for the shortest of moments she saw the thing under it: a brief flat flicker, like the shadow of a shark passing beneath a boat.

"Oh, I like her," he said. "Roman. You must let me borrow her. I'll give her back with a full tank."

"She is not available."

"Everyone is available. It is simply a question of terms." He turned, and swept his arm toward the saloon. "Shall we?"

…

The saloon was white and gold and decorated like a funeral for a very rich canary.

They sat at a long glass table, Roman at the head, Kessler at the foot, with Silas standing at Roman's shoulder. Vega took a chair against the wall, ten feet back, hat tipped, eyes lowered. She poured water for herself. She became furniture.

It took her nine minutes to understand that the meeting was a knife fight with the knives hidden under the tablecloth.

"The Caribbean corridor," said Kessler pleasantly. "The Port of Miami. Your shipments transit through my waters nine times a year, Roman. Nine. For nine years, I have allowed it. Out of respect."

"For nine years, you have been paid."

"A token. A courtesy. It does not compare to the profits." He swirled a glass of champagne. "Times change. My expenses go up. And frankly, you have become very visible, my friend. The Chicago business was loud. The newspapers have started asking questions."

"I am not interested in your newspapers."

"They are interested in you. A convoy was destroyed. Seven men dead. A foreign syndicate in the water." He said it lightly, as if reading the weather. "I would hate for the Foundry's reputation for reliability to be damaged."

"And you propose a remedy."

"A partnership." Kessler spread his hands. "Twenty-five percent. In perpetuity. I take the Caribbean, you retain your pride, and everyone sleeps better."

There was a silence. It was the quiet of a room in which a very large decision was being weighed. Vega, pretending to examine her glass, watched Roman's hands. They lay flat on the table. They did not twitch, or curl, or tighten. They might have been carved.

She had seen men take bad news a thousand ways. They sweated. They swore. They went white. Roman Ashcombe simply grew quieter, as though somebody had slowly turned the volume down on the world.

"No," said Roman.

Kessler's smile did not alter.

"Twenty-five percent," Roman continued, in the same polite, flat tone, "of a corridor I already control, for the privilege of being threatened on your boat. You have mistaken me for a man who needs a friend."

"I merely—"

"I do not need friends, Adrian. I have employees. They are cheaper and more reliable." The gray eyes rose. "I will give you ten percent of the transit fees for the next twelve months, to cover your inconvenience. After that the arrangement lapses. If you are dissatisfied, I invite you to say so in writing."

"In writing."

"I find that people are braver on paper."

Kessler stared at him. And now the smile did change. It did not fall, or sharpen, or darken. It just stayed, as a mask stays on a face, while behind it everything else departed.

"Well," he said at last, softly. "That's a pity."

…

On the way out, he stopped beside Vega's chair.

The others had already filed toward the stairs. Roman was at the rail, speaking low to Silas. Dante was talking to the quartet's cellist in what appeared to be a mixture of flattery and sign language. For a moment she and Kessler were alone in the tide of white light.

He bent. He did it gracefully, one hand on the back of her chair, like a man about to whisper a compliment.

"Tell me, my dear," said Adrian Kessler, in a warm and intimate undertone. "Do you know why they call him the Harvester?"

"I've heard a few stories."

"They're all untrue. The truth is much sillier." He smiled. His breath smelled of mint and champagne. "He doesn't harvest enemies, you see. He harvests friends. He plants them, and waters them, and watches them grow. And one day, when they've become useful, he cuts them down."

Vega raised her eyes from under the hat.

"That sounds like a metaphor."

"It is a warning." A pat on the shoulder. "Enjoy Miami, my dear. It's lovely this time of year. The sun, the sea, the sky."

He straightened. His voice dropped, almost kindly, so that only she could hear.

"So many things burn."

Then he was gone, a slim white figure moving through the gold, and the quartet struck up Vivaldi again with the air of men who knew that nothing would be paid for after this.

Vega sat very still. The cold in her chest was not from the air conditioning.

She looked toward the rail, where Roman stood with his back to the room and his hands in his pockets, watching the dark bay with a face that told her nothing. And she found, to her great annoyance, that she'd been counting the exits again.

Except this time she wasn't counting them for herself.