For several seconds, neither moved. The room was large enough to make their silence uncomfortable, and Mara passed Daniel on her way to the windows.
He turned before he meant to. Her perfume was subtle, warm and familiar in a way he could not account for. Attraction would have been simple enough to understand. Instead, he had the irrational certainty that she had passed him like this before, somewhere he could not remember.
When she reached the window, the sensation weakened. Both noticed. Neither mentioned it.
Manhattan stretched away below them. Daniel crossed to the sitting area and sat on the arm of a chair, putting a little more distance between them.
“Did we both experience what happened in that lift, or was that just me?”
“I don’t know what happened.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
“Yes.”
“Yes what?”
“Yes, something happened. But I don’t know what.”
She folded her arms, studying him.
“What about reception? The clocks. The glass.”
“You saw that?”
“I thought I did.”
“So did I.”
“I convinced myself it was in my head.”
“If you imagined it, apparently I imagined the same thing.”
He allowed the answer to settle before going to the small bar built into the suite.
“Drink?”
“No.”
“What do you drink?”
“I said no.”
He poured whisky into a glass and reached for another.
“You don’t listen much, do you?”
“Not when people make bad decisions.”
“That must make life difficult.”
“Mostly for other people.”
She almost smiled as he replaced the bottle.
“Has anything like this happened to you before?”
“No.”
Her answer came too quickly. Daniel picked up the glasses and crossed towards her, feeling their proximity strengthen with each step. This time he was watching for it. The slight change in her posture told him she felt it too.
He stopped a few feet away, aware of every inch between them, and offered her the glass.
Their fingers touched as she accepted it. The glass slipped, and before either could catch it, the world stopped.
It hung between them with a round bead of whisky suspended beside its rim. Outside, a yellow cab stood halfway through an intersection and a pigeon hung above the opposite building, its wings extended.
Only they were moving.
“Daniel.”
Her voice sounded strange in the silence. He looked at her, then reached towards the glass, which was still falling so slowly that he had time to close his fingers around it before it reached the carpet.
Pale silver threaded through Mara’s brown irises.
“Your eyes,” she said.
“Yours too.”
He held her gaze. Something familiar lay beyond the light, but he could find no memory to explain it.
Then traffic noise and the air conditioning returned together. Whisky struck the inside of the glass and splashed across his hand, making them both jump.
Mara backed away.
“What was that?”
“I have absolutely no idea.”
“That isn’t possible.”
“I agree.”
“No, I mean that literally isn’t possible.”
“I know what literally means.”
She was about to reply when three ordinary knocks sounded at the door. Their familiarity was almost as unsettling as the silence had been.
“Expecting someone?”
“I don’t think so.”
Daniel put down the glass and opened the door to a concierge.
“Mr Ashcroft. Your car is ready downstairs, sir.”
He frowned, then remembered.
“Right.”
When the concierge left, Mara looked at him.
“Car?”
“I was supposed to be somewhere twenty minutes ago.”
“Then you should probably go.”
“Come with me.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I barely know you.”
“We’ve apparently stopped time together. I think we’re past introductions.”
“That isn’t the argument you think it is.”
He collected his jacket.
“I’m going to the Natural History Museum.”
“The museum?”
“A friend works there.”
“Good for him.”
“Come for an hour.”
“I have a job.”
“Your manager just sent you upstairs to find me.”
“He did not send me anywhere.”
“He strongly implied.”
“He did not.”
Daniel smiled. She shook her head.
“No.”
“One hour.”
“No.”
“You’re curious.”
“So are you.”
“Exactly.”
She considered the door before looking back at him.
“One hour.”
“Two.”
“One.”
“Fine.”
The waiting car was black, long and polished enough to make Mara feel underdressed. Its driver opened the rear door before Daniel reached it.
“Mr Ashcroft.”
Daniel climbed inside without appearing to notice the courtesy. Mara followed, wondering whether this happened every day.
The awareness between them returned as the door closed. It was weaker than in the suite, but the rear seat offered less room than either seemed to want. They sat at opposite ends while Manhattan passed outside.
Daniel had always looked at buildings through their connections: supports, services, routes and the movement around them. Until now, he had assumed everyone did. A bridge ahead drew his attention, and he began considering the distribution of forces through its structure.
Mara watched the same bridge. She noticed a repaired joint, rust around another and a section carrying more load than it should.
“What?” Daniel asked.
“What?”
“You’re staring.”
“So are you.”
“At the bridge.”
“So am I.”
“What are you seeing?”
She pointed.
“That section. There’s something wrong with it.”
He could not see the defect she meant, but the way the bridge should work was clear to him.
“Probably nothing.”
“You don’t believe that.”
“No.”
They continued through the same streets, finding different things to notice.
The American Museum of Natural History rose ahead in stone and shadow. A member of staff recognised Daniel before he had fully stepped out of the car.
“Hello, Frank.”
Inside, two more greeted him by name. They treated him with the easy recognition of someone they expected to find there.
“Do you own part of this place?” Mara asked.
“No.”
“You sure?”
“Fairly.”
A young man approached them in the main hall. Perhaps twenty-two, he carried three folders beneath an arm and wore spectacles that seemed in danger of slipping down his nose.
“About bloody time.”
“Good to see you too, Jonathan.”
They embraced briefly. Jonathan looked at Mara, and Daniel caught the movement of his eyebrows.
“Don’t.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were about to.”
“Jonathan Reed.”
“Mara Bennett.”
“You’re American.”
“So far everybody seems surprised by that.”
“I was surprised Daniel knew anyone in America who wasn’t sixty and on a board of directors.”
“Still charming,” Daniel said.
Jonathan led them through the hall.
“Come on. I’ve got twenty minutes before someone notices I’m enjoying myself.”
“Why does everyone here know you?” Mara asked Daniel.
“Been coming here a long time.”
“That’s one version,” Jonathan said. “His father’s company helped engineer half the mounting systems we’re using in the new fossil halls.”
“You didn’t mention that.”
“It wasn’t relevant.”
“Apparently your family building museums isn’t relevant.”
“We didn’t build the museum.”
“Give his father another year,” Jonathan said.
“My father’s company supplied some structural engineering and specialist fabrication.”
“And money.”
“Some.”
“Quite a lot of some.”
Mara smiled. Daniel did not.
Beyond a staff door, the finished galleries gave way to scaffolding, crates and temporary lighting. Steel supports surrounded sections of enormous skeletons waiting to be assembled. The air smelled of dust, timber and old stone.
“Jesus,” Mara said, stopping beneath a partly mounted dinosaur.
“Better than the public bit, isn’t it?”
Jonathan spent the next half-hour showing them the new fossil halls. Bones rested on padded tables, technicians worked around steel frames and handwritten diagrams covered temporary walls.
Daniel asked questions throughout. Occasionally Jonathan paused before answering, as though Daniel had noticed something worth checking.
At a large reconstructed skeleton, Daniel pointed towards a support bracket.
“That’ll vibrate.”
“No, it won’t.”
“It will once you’ve got weight through the upper frame. The load isn’t going straight down. It’ll twist.”
Jonathan crouched to examine the fixing, then called over a technician. Mara watched them listen to Daniel. Whatever his family’s connections had given him, they did not entirely account for that.
Eventually Jonathan stood.
“I hate you.”
“You’re welcome.”
He led them back to the public galleries. Mara was beginning to understand the hotel, the car and the people who knew Daniel’s name. He was accustomed to finding doors open, but he was also very good at something she was not sure she could explain.
In a quieter gallery, stone figures, ceremonial objects and jewellery from Mexico and Central America filled the cases. Daniel walked several steps before noticing that Mara had stopped.
“What?”
She stared at a small pendant, its gold or bronze darkened by corrosion. It was simpler than the surrounding objects. The label placed it within a ceremonial burial assemblage.
She knew its weight and the shape of its clasp. The certainty strengthened as she approached, although she had never seen it before.
“There’s a mark on the back.”
Jonathan joined them.
“What?”
“That pendant. There’s a mark behind the clasp.”
“How do you know?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’ve seen it before?”
“No.”
“Book?”
“No.”
“Catalogue?”
“I’ve never been here before.”
Jonathan looked towards Daniel, who was no longer smiling.
“What kind of mark?”
“Small line. Like it cracked and someone repaired it.”
“You can’t see the back from here.”
“I know.”
His expression changed.
Coffee seemed sensible. Jonathan found a quiet table in a staff area and returned with three cups. Mara sat opposite Daniel, keeping the distance they had begun to observe.
“You’ve unsettled me,” Jonathan told her.
“Sorry.”
“You don’t look sorry.”
“She rarely does,” Daniel said.
“You’ve known me for about four hours.”
“Feels longer.”
The answer silenced them both, but Jonathan missed it. Mara nodded towards the museum beyond.
“So what’s the real story with him?”
“Here we go,” Daniel sighed.
Jonathan smiled. “What do you want to know?”
“Why everyone knows him.”
Daniel reached for his coffee. “They don’t.”
“They do,” Mara said.
“Well, his father has been involved with the museum for years. Engineering, donations, introductions, fundraising.”
“My father likes projects.”
“His father likes putting his name near projects.”
“That too.”
“Daniel started coming over on school holidays. Used to follow people around asking questions until somebody gave him something to do.”
“I was twelve.”
“You were unbearable.”
“I still am.”
“Yes, but now you’re taller.” Jonathan turned to Mara. “The annoying part is he’s usually right.”
“About what?”
“Things.”
“That sounds very scientific.”
“Mountings. Reconstructions. Mechanical problems. Once spent forty minutes telling one of our engineers why a display mechanism would fail.”
“It did.”
“Three months later.”
“Still counts.”
Mara studied Daniel. People had spent his life interpreting what he could do as intelligence. Perhaps he had done the same.
A curator called Jonathan from the doorway.
“Excuse me.” He stood, looking back at them. “Don’t steal anything.”
Mara watched him leave.
Daniel reached towards the centre of the table.
“Sugar?”
“No.”
“You refused the whisky too.”
“And you ignored me.”
He slid the bowl towards her. Their fingers met as she reached for it, and Mara’s hand became older and darker. Fire burned nearby. The pendant rested in her palm while a thumb pressed its edge and twisted the clasp.
It opened with a click, revealing something inside.
She withdrew her hand sharply enough to spill coffee across the table.
“What did you see?”
“The pendant.”
“What about it?”
“It opens. There’s something inside.”
“You’re sure?”
“No.” She stood, looking towards the gallery. “Yes.”
When Jonathan returned, they were waiting.
“I need a favour,” Daniel said.
“No.”
“You don’t know what it is.”
“Experience.”
“The pendant. We need to look at it.”
“You looked at it.”
“Properly.”
“No.”
“Jonathan.”
“You cannot walk into a museum and ask me to dismantle an archaeological object because your new American friend has a feeling.”
“That’s fair,” Mara said.
“Whose side are you on?”
“The side where he doesn’t get fired.”
“I like her,” Jonathan said.
“She knew about the repair. She couldn’t see it.”
Jonathan stopped.
“What exactly do you think is inside?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you think it opens?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Pressure near the lower edge. Then twist the clasp.”
He considered her answer before exhaling.
“You two are going to get me murdered.”
“Probably not.”
“That isn’t reassuring.”
Twenty minutes later, the pendant lay beneath an inspection lamp in a locked conservation room. A curator had reluctantly allowed Jonathan to examine it, largely because its mount needed replacing.
Mara waited several feet from the table while he turned it over. Beside the clasp lay the fine repair line she had described.
He looked at her, then examined the lower edge. Daniel watched with an expression that had more concern than triumph in it.
“I don’t see any opening.”
“Here.”
Mara approached but stopped herself from touching it. Jonathan followed her finger to a tiny indentation and pressed gently.
“Twist.”
He turned the clasp. A faint click sounded, and a seam appeared around the pendant’s edge.
Jonathan whispered something as he opened it. Within the narrow cavity, something pale had been folded away.
He reached for fine tweezers.
“Don’t.”
Mara did not know why she had spoken, but he stopped. He changed tools and lifted a thin strip of fibrous material, darkened with age but preserved by the sealed compartment.
Small, precise characters covered one side.
“What language is that?” Daniel asked.
Jonathan bent closer without answering.
“Jonathan?”
“I don’t know.”
“You work in a museum.”
“Thank you, Daniel. I’d forgotten.”
The symbols meant nothing to Mara until she noticed a curved mark intersected by three short lines. She had seen it somewhere before, although she could not place it in any memory she understood.
Her head began to ache.
“Mara?”
She stepped back.
“Close it.”
“What?” Jonathan asked.
“Close it.”
“Mara—”
“Please.”
Her voice stopped them. Jonathan carefully lowered the strip onto the padded surface. She continued staring at the mark, briefly close to understanding it before its meaning escaped her.
What remained was the certainty that whoever had hidden the message expected someone, someday, to find it.