Ben spent the rest of the evening being very boring. He called his aunt and uncle. He organized his records. He read a new book on Persian antiquities a collector had recommended. He went to bed.

He woke the next morning and tried to call Emilie before he went to go running with Zoots, but it went to voice mail. She’d probably already left for work. He left a message, then walked to the subway. After his run, he needed to go up to Hudson Heights. He’d found another insurance paper he’d forgotten to put in the portfolio. Emilie might be at work, but her grandparents were retired. He’d drop it off with her before he forgot.

Running and climbing with Zoots proved to be the perfect cure for the dark and twisted dream he’d woken from. The gravel crunched beneath his feet. He fell twice but managed to climb the new wall on his third attempt—without cheating—prompting Zoots to applaud when he reached the top. He was dripping sweat as he walked to the subway, but he didn’t want to head home when he was already halfway to Emilie’s. Ben grabbed the towel from his backpack and caught the northbound train.

The ride was long and boring, but at least the train was on time. Ben got off at the 190th Street Station and made his way down the tree-lined streets. The summer heat was baking the pavement, and he was grateful for the shade.

He buzzed the apartment when he reached the building on Fort Washington Avenue, but no one answered. A resident opened the door right after and Ben grabbed it. He walked up to the second floor and knocked at 202.

No answer.

Ben frowned. He tried calling Emilie again, but it still went straight to voice mail. Should he leave the insurance paperwork under the door? “Hey, Emilie,” he said after the beep, “I’m at your place and no one’s home. Do you want me to…” He heard a door open next door. “Call me back when you get this.” He hung up the phone and walked toward the older woman who was struggling with a trash bag. “Hey there.” He reached for the bag. “Let me help you with this.”

“Oh, thank you.” She adjusted her large glasses. “It’s so nice to have young people around. Everyone in this building is old like me.” She smiled broadly. “But we’re spry. Are you the new renter? I’m Mrs. Clark. It’ll be nice to have someone young. Not that I’m going to use you for labor. I have a grandson for that—good boy, he lives in Harlem—but every now and then…”

“New renter?” Ben smiled and walked to the shoot. “I think you’re thinking of someone else. I’m visiting my girlfriend. You know, the family next door to you. The Vandines. I’m dating Emilie.”

The old woman squinted behind her glasses. “The Vandines?”

“Yes.” He raised his voice. “I’m dating—”

“I’m not hard of hearing, young man.” Mrs. Clark tapped her ear. “I have my batteries in. But Mrs. Vandine passed away two years ago. What are you talking about?”

Ben felt a cold knot form in the pit of his stomach. “What?”

“Two years ago?” She cocked her head. “Maybe it’s been three. I do lose track of time.”

“No, I saw her yesterday. You must be thinking of…” Who? Emilie’s great-grandmother was dead. The old woman couldn’t be thinking about her.

“I know who the Vandines are, young man. I’ve lived here for fifty years.”

Ben looked around the hall, checked the door numbers. His heart began to race. “I’m dating their granddaughter, Emilie.”

“Who?”

“Emilie.” He reached into his backpack and removed the lockpicks he kept in the side pocket. “Emilie Mandel,” he said to himself. “She’s Emilie Mandel.”

Mrs. Clark shook her head slowly. “I don’t think the Vandines had a granddaughter. A grandson, yes. He’s the one who takes care of the place.”

Ben didn’t wait for another sentence. He pulled out his lockpicks and went to work on the door to the apartment.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Just… I’m worried something is wrong,” he lied. “With my girlfriend’s grandmother. She’s not answering the door.” The lock clicked open and the door swung in.

Ben walked into the living room and stopped in his tracks.

The painting over the mantel was gone, though all the furniture remained as it had been. Ben walked through the living area and into the kitchen. It was scrubbed clean, though it had a homey array of decorations and appliances on the worn counters. He walked back to the hallway and into the first bedroom on the right, the one where Emilie had shown him the trunk with so many clippings featuring Emil Samson’s work. Posters and postcards. Yellowed pages from newspapers and old pictures.

The bedroom was stripped clean.

The trunk sat at the foot of the bed, but when he threw it open, he was staring at the worn, curling paper lining the bottom.

No pictures.

No clippings.

Nothing.

Mrs. Clark had followed Ben into the apartment. She spoke from the doorway. “Their son rents it out to people from the internet. It’s a beautiful place, isn’t it? He left all their furniture here. His mother’s china and everything! I don’t know how he can sleep at night with strangers eating off his mother’s china, but I’m more traditional, I think.”

Ben stared at the empty trunk. Anger and inevitability warred in his head. “They’re gone.”

“I think they left last night. Were you interested in renting it?” She turned to leave. “I can get you the number if you—”

“Wait.” The cold lump that had formed in his stomach spread like black ice through his veins. “The people who were here weren’t the Vandines?”

“Are you feeling all right?” She frowned at him. “Didn’t I tell you Mrs. Vandine passed two years ago?”

He had to be sure. “And they didn’t have a granddaughter?”

The old woman shook her head, but all Ben could see was the tearful girl on the museum bench, fighting back tears in front of her dead uncle’s paintings.

Running away.

Luring him in.

Giovanni’s laughter on the phone.

“You do have a type, don’t you?”

Emilie smiling at him in the sunlight, dressed in a yellow sundress outside his regular haunt.

So what are the chances… in a city this big?

What were the chances that he’d randomly run into Emilie Mandel, a girl who pushed every one of his buttons, twice in the space of a week? A girl with a brilliant laugh and a smart mouth. A girl thrown in his path, tied to an art mystery with a sympathetic grandmother and a noble mission to retrieve a work of art stolen from her family by the Nazis.

A mystery tailor-made to tempt him.

So what are the chances?

“I don’t believe in chance,” Ben muttered.

Mrs. Clark said, “What?”

Ben forced himself to keep talking. “The people renting this place, did you get their names?”

Her brown eyes were wide. “Didn’t you say you were dating their granddaughter? You don’t know their names?”

The ice in his stomach moved up to his chest and began to burn. He forced a smile to his face. “A misunderstanding, ma’am. Did you say you got their names?”

“She called herself Mimi. I thought it was cute. I never saw the son.”

“The son?”

“Yes.” She nodded. “She had her son with her, but he was an odd man.”

“And when did they move in?”

“Three… four months ago, maybe? It was a long rental.” She wrinkled her nose. “You’re really not supposed to rent like that in this building, but most of the people have been so nice I didn’t want to say anything. But this family…”

“What?” Ben walked to the hallway and offered his arm to Mrs. Clark. “Was there something unusual about them?”

Ben began walking Mrs. Clark to the door. He’d come back to search the apartment later if he needed to, but instinct told him whoever Emilie and her “grandmother” had been, they were good enough not to have left anything behind.

Mrs. Clark said, “I thought it was just the older woman, Mimi, and her son. And the son was strange. Had an accent, but I’m not sure from where. The girl I only saw a few times. I thought she was visiting the son. She didn’t live with them, I can tell you that.”

His chest might have been burning, but his voice was calm. “I’d like the number of the owner, the grandson you mentioned, if you still have it.”

“Of course.” She patted his arm. “What a thing! To move on and forget to tell your own boyfriend. Who would do something like that? I don’t know if she’s the right girl for a thoughtful young man like you.”

Ben walked the old woman to her apartment and opened the door for her, pulling out his phone as soon as she walked in to look for the landlord’s number. He tapped on Emilie’s name and didn’t blink when he heard her voice on the recording.

“I will find you,” he said in a low voice. “You have no idea what you’ve done.”