“And I’m not. So please stop ambushing me with . . . stories. First about Pleski, now this.”

“Right,” he said, shifting gears. “Mister Pleski. Did he express any interest in my proposition?” He did have a job to do. And she’d brought it up.

“For God’s sake, Rafe.” She looked at the clock on the wall. It was time to shower and dress, to get to the bank. “No. I don’t know. It’s not going to happen.”

“Okay. Fine. But you shouldn’t be in business with him.”

“I shouldn’t? But you should?”

“He was in that deal with you, wasn’t he? The Kemper Media sale. Where the kid who was holding it up got murdered in a hit-and-run.”

He had to bring that up. She had read the articles. They hadn’t used the word.

“Murdered? It was an auto accident. In New York. Mister Pleski was in Geneva. I saw him that day.”

“So he has . . . associates. It was Pleski you called about the kid’s death when we had lunch, wasn’t it? When you told him, was he devastated? Did he burst into tears? I didn’t hear any sobs coming through the line.”

“Do you even hear what you’re saying?”

“Do you?” Rafe looked so serious. Catherine wasn’t used to seeing him like this. She wrapped her towel around her waist. “So Mister Pleski is a murderer, and you want him as a client?”

“I’m a startup, I can’t be picky. And I’d be taking a potential liability off your hands, someone who could hurt your reputation.”

“So . . . what you’re saying . . . taking a homicidal client into your unethical hedge fund . . . you’d be doing that for me?”

“Well,” he smiled, charming Rafe again. “I like you.”

“And other men just send flowers.”

She opened the door to the locker room. He took a step toward her. “You can’t come in.”

“Nothing I haven’t seen before.”

“Nothing you’re ever going to see again.”

Refugee

REFUGEE

Stavro still had no instructions. In the evenings he took to strolling up the Rue du Rhône, pausing by the shops. The glittering multi-colored diamond necklaces in the windows at Graff caught his eye, as did the two men in dark suits with wired earpieces who stood outside the shop’s door in conversation. Too chatty. Sloppy. Stavro thought they could be taken.

He lingered at the watch displays at Hublot and Richard Mille, designs that leaned heavily on displaying their innards, the gears and switches that made them work. He was thinking of buying one. It would be a nice way to remember Geneva. But for how much? Twenty thousand barely got you a band. He was considering his options as he turned into the Place du Molard one night. Passing the sixteenth-century stone tower at its entrance, he felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned quickly, automatically taking a step back.