The warehouse district of lower Manhattan looked like a steel tomb at midnight, its rusted iron doors whimpering in the salty sea air. Ethan's old leather boots stepped through the standing water, the moonlight lengthening his shadow into the shape of a dagger. The muffled sound of metal on metal came from deep within the maze of stacked containers.
The light was still on in Joey, the freight manager's office, and the light leaking through the cracks in the blinds looked like cut gold. Ethan pressed himself against the wall and heard the hum of the printer gulping paper and Joey's ragged panting-he was destroying documents. As the first piece of paper drifted out the window, Ethan caught it: the shipping slip was signed by Nathan Vanderlinde and dated the day before the "missing shipment" report.
"Bang!"
The sound of something heavy falling to the ground made Ethan's pupils constrict. When he dashed into the office, Joey was crumpled on the floor with his neck covered, dark red blood oozing from between his fingers. The ether canister on the desk was still rolling and the sweet chemical odor filled the air.
"Who did this?" Ethan grabbed Joey by the collar, noticing fresh pinch marks on the other man's neck, the smell of cologne still lingering in the nail prints - Nathan's usual Creed Aventus.
Joey's pupils began to dilate, and he trembled as he pointed out the window, "Block B . . number 12..." He passed out before he could finish his sentence. Ethan fished a ticket out of the inside pocket of his suit: Buenos Aires, one way, leaving at three in the morning.
The iron door to Warehouse 12 in Area B was ajar, and moonlight seeped through the cracks, illuminating the messy footprints on the floor. Ethan turned on his cell phone flashlight, and the beam swept over the piles of luxury boxes: Hermes, Chanel, Louis Vuitton... They were all high quality imitations. His fingers brushed across the crocodile skin pattern, and suddenly he felt warm liquid on one of the boxes - it was gasoline.
"Bang!"
There was a metallic crash behind him, and Ethan quickly turned off his flashlight. Moonlight outlined a slender figure, the hem of her dark green velvet dress sweeping across the oil stains on the floor. Luna's heels made a crisp sound in the silence, like a scalpel slicing through the night.
"You followed me?" Ethan's voice echoed through the empty warehouse. He smelled Jo Malone's sage perfume on her, mixed with whiskey-she'd had a lot to drink tonight.
Luna kicked away the can of ether at her feet, the moonlight illuminating her pale face, "Father found an anomaly in the accounts." Her voice was tinged with drunkenness, "But apparently someone beat me to it." The cell phone flash suddenly came on, and in the blinding white light, Ethan saw the diamond streamers on her earlobes swaying.
"Do you know how much these fakes are worth?" Luna's fingers traced the box, "Enough to keep the Vanderlinde family on Wall Street for another fifty years." Her voice suddenly choked, "And you, a poor boy who can't even afford cufflinks, what gives you the right to ruin that?"
Ethan's temples jutted as he smelled the stronger odor of gasoline. When Luna raised her cell phone to take a picture, he lunged at her. The moment the Molotov cocktail exploded on the shelf, he could see the frost of three years ago on her eyelashes.
Flames licked the shelves like voracious tongues, and in the thick smoke Ethan dragged Luna toward the safe exit. The hem of her skirt caught fire from a spark and Ethan tore open his shirt to extinguish the flames for her. The burns on his back sent ripping pain through the heat, but he just held her tighter.
"Why did you save me?" Luna's voice was hoarse from the smoke, "Don't you hate me?"
When Ethan's palm pressed against the back of Luna's neck, the skin was cooler than he remembered. She'd trembled like that at his fingertips on their wedding night three years ago-except then she'd shattered a Venetian crystal goblet, and right now it was the blazing shelves behind her that were shattering.
"Let go!" Luna's struggles were unintimidating, the hem of her fishtail skirt wrapped around Ethan's calf like a dying sea serpent. Flames jumped across the faux alligator skin packing crates, coloring her pupils amber. Ethan suddenly remembered the same burning look she'd given him on their one and only date, on the dilapidated Ferris wheel in Coney Island: "You have no idea what real hunger tastes like."
The smoke began to eat away at the oxygen, and Luna's heels got stuck in the drain. As Ethan got down on one knee to remove her shoes, he noticed a pale pink scar on her ankle - the gingerbread house gift box he'd left outside her door on Christmas Eve last year had appeared in the garbage grinder the next day, the metal teeth marks matching the shape of the gash perfectly.
"Why..." Luna's questioning was crushed by the explosion as Ethan physically crushed her into the shadows. The moment the ceiling fell, he instinctively shielded her head, the burning beams branding his back. The pain was so familiar, like the scent of Dior Real Ego perfume that spilled through her closed bedroom door every morning when he passed by.
"You're always like this..." Luna suddenly reached out and touched the corner of his oozing mouth, "like a dog that will retrieve its slippers if it's kicked away." Her nails were dyed in the grayish-purple that was popular this spring, the exact color scheme of the Vogue cover Ethan had seen while cleaning out the trash last week. The magazine was covering the breakfast plate he'd prepared at the time, and bacon grease was swooshing comically tear-streaked across the supermodel's face.
The security exit was close at hand when Luna suddenly went limp. As her wrist slipped from Ethan's palm, the cuff flipped out of the lined silk label-the heirloom wedding dress he'd stayed up for three months restoring, now lined with dinner gloves she'd altered. The stitches exposed the clumsy mending in the firelight, like a wound that would never heal.
"Hang on!" Ethan scooped her up in a cross-armed hug, only to realize she was terribly light. Countless late nights, he'd watched her work through the study monitor all night long: lipstick marks on the rims of bone china mugs faded from cherry red to the faded brown of roses, securities report forms curled into pale butterflies at his fingertips.
In the curtain of water from the bursting fire hydrant, Luna's eyelashes fluttered like a dying phoenix butterfly." That year of bouquets..." She murmured suddenly, "It contained the sapphire Mother left behind..." The knot in Ethan's throat rolled violently-he had spent the night the day after the wedding salvaging the Hudson River, only to find the pearl necklace she had ripped off when she threw the bouquet.
As the ambulance's blue light stung his pupils, Luna's hand suddenly clutched his ripped collar." Your heartbeat..." Her gasp sprayed over the barcoded tattoo at his collarbone, "and three years ago... When I lied in front of the witnesses... Just as fast..."
The moment the paramedic wrenched her fingers away, Ethan got a good look at the shard of pearl embedded in her palm. They were the South Sea pearls he'd strung on his bouquet himself, and now they shimmered shimmeringly in her flesh and blood, as if they were the last unburned evidence in the ruins of their marriage.
As the paramedics picked up Luna, Ethan touched something hard on the inside of her skirt-it was a miniature tracker, still emitting a faint red light. He remembered the meaningful look she'd given him in the ballroom tonight when she'd spilled her wine.
The warehouse collapsed behind him, sparks falling like a meteor shower. Ethan stood outside the cordon, watching the ambulance go away. The phone suddenly vibrated with a message from an anonymous number: [Inheritance program activated]. Attached was an old photo: a seven-month pregnant mother ringing the bell at the Nasdaq exchange in 1999, the curve of the heartbeat monitor of the fetus in her womb amazingly overlapping with the Dow Jones.