Page 170 of Black Reign

Deliberately.

My thumb enlarges the image.

Smooth skin.

Full lower lip barely visible through strands of hair.

Same mouth from the other photograph.

Same woman.

Vesper.

I look beyond the office windows.

London stretches beneath me, wet and gray.

My attention returns to the photograph.

She’s here.

Not Europe in some vague theoretical sense.

London.

My city today.

I type.

GHOST: You’re getting careless.

Her answer arrives thirty seconds later.

VESPER: Am I?

I smile despite myself.

GHOST: No. You want me to think you are.

Pause.

VESPER: Arrogant.

GHOST: Accurate.

I zoom in again.

There are millions of cameras in London.

She knows that better than almost anyone.

Which means she chose the exact position, angle, light, and moment necessary to give me another piece without giving me anything I can use.

That isn’t carelessness.

That is seduction.

Vesper’s version of it, anyway.