But nothing changed in Marcelline’s poise or tone when her attention shifted from him to the regal old woman on the gallery floor who probably wasn’t going to buy anything, to the FedEx driver, to the little boy who couldn’t take the DO NOT TOUCH sign to heart. Owen was no different to her, and it was the most different thing that had befallen him.

The Anningers had sent Owen to the gallery, and by the transitive property to Marcelline, for artwork: four times for themselves, once for a wedding present, and once for a secretive deal with him on loan to a group that Owen was pretty sure was Russian Mafia. He fancied that he and Marcelline had bonded over knowing looks during that transaction.

She was capable in a much warmer way than Owen was, but distanced, a little guarded. There was a barricade of professionalism, but when she smiled from behind the bars, she made you wonder if the fence was there for her protection or for yours.

Before he was scary, before he was cold, before he was brutal, Owen Haig was efficient. Everything about Marcelline appealed to him: from the sleek, short-sheared curve of the crown of her head to the way her ankles didn’t wobble in the four-inch heels as she strode across the polished floor. And Owen had felt damned near noble that everything in between the top of her head and those ankles, he’d counted as equal. All of it.

She was beautiful, but her posture, her voice, her confidence, her expertise, the fast math she could do with no calculator, the astonishing speed of her typing, it all rolled over him like cool velvet across his skin, across his thoughts. She soothed him, instantly and effortlessly.

They’d worked together the half dozen times, then nothing for months. He’d only been a little disappointed when her number rang in on his phone and she only wanted to talk business. No matter. She was still calling him. Work and solitude were mostly all he had, so business was his road to everything that wasn’t.

“Mr. Haig. You told me to let you know if I came across anything interesting that the Anningers might like.”

“I did. The gallery has something good?”

“No. They don’t have it. Not yet, anyway. I have it. Want to talk?”

Did he ever.

The tribe his employers came from was a rare phenomenon in the world. That was a good thing. Too many of that kind and we’d all be back in caves in short order, eating our enemies and making carved keepsakes of their bones.

Some families could never own enough houses or boats. They bought and sold companies, real estate developments, shopping malls, office buildings, ore mines, small dictatorships.