She awoke just after 4:00. The early rush hour traffic just begin to be noticeable, Nadia peered out her window to the sidewalk below. Three stories up in her Brooklyn flat, the young woman yawned. She folded her arms across her chest and moved over to her thermostat, and turned the dial up several degrees. It had grown cold through the night and the bare floor reflected it. The awkward metal radiators began to click and stir as they prepared to warm. The night before, after she arrived back at 2:00.

Nadia shuffled into the kitchen where she poured a glass of tomato juice, drank it, and left the glass on the counter. She went back into her bedroom where she pulled a black shirt and pair of pants form her drawer. She piled her blankets back onto her bed, then showered, before dressing again. Her head still wrapped in a towel Nadia refilled her glass and carried it with her into her bedroom.

The room was large and square, two windows from near the floor stretched to just below the high ceiling. Between them a low queen sized bed with white comforters and gray pillows extended out across the hardwood floor. On the wall to the right of the bed was a wardrobe, to the left a door to a small bathroom. There was nothing on the white walls.

For the next forty or so minutes Nadia dressed and prepared to leave. She left the apartment at five twenty and headed for the train.

It was a cement cave, suited and heeled people from every district passed beside her. A train rolled into the station. It was a R. For a moment the platform was flooded with people pushing in every direction. The passengers leaving their car were emptied onto the crowded space, the narrow doors not yet allowing people to enter. Nadia was showed twice, she swayed to keep her place, waiting. Then it filtered out. People filled the cars again, most of them standing, and people scattered up the stairs, out of view. Then the train pulled away, carrying it's passengers out of Nadia's sight as the windows of each car flickered past her, a brief glimpse at complete strangers vulnerable in their oblivion.

Nadia did not watch them. These things happened hundreds of times a day and now she ignored them. Her mind was ahead of her body, already floating though the night. Where to go, when to be there, how to get there, and what to do. She answered all of these in her head. She was doing nothing, but her mind worked, thinking and wandering. She waited.

Her train did come. It was a longer wait than any other time of day. Rush hour did that- slow things down. Conductors always had to stick their heads out of their basement sized windows to make sure the doors were clear. It was supposed to confirm that something or someone would be between the doors when they smashed shut. But it still happened, only at rush hour there was always one thing or another keeping the doors opened.

Nadia slipped on near the end of the car and lightly wrapped her hand around one of the steel poles that lined the car. The doors shut and the train slowly began to pick up speed as it plunged into the darkness of the tunnel. The car rocked back and forth then slowed as it came to another stop. Next to her a man stood and stepped off at the stop. She did not sit, not at this hour, it was too difficult to get off. Between standing up, moving between people and getting to the door she preferred just to stand, particularly near a door.

She too got off three stops later. Nadia worked her way up to the surface, the fresh air hitting her face like cool water. It was dark now, earlier than ever, and the chill air had settled. She pulled the cuffed of her leather coat around her wrists and headed west. The side walk were busy, especially near the theaters, and she keep her hands in her pockets as she walked. At the corner of ninth and forty-eighth, a man penciled silhouettes of the night buildings into the tattered sketching book in his lap. Around him chalk and water colored images of the city and celebrities were scattered, each wrapped in clear plastic. Nadia passed by at the sight of a red street light.

Her dark hair was casually pulled away from her face, tied once in the back. It brushed only lightly on her back as she walked. Her strides were brisk and long, for she was tall. A group of women on Nadia's right passed her. She heard them argue about were to find an R station.

Nadia stopped and pulled open the heavy glass door. The white letters floating on the door spelled "Houlahans". By the time it shut she was through another and half way up the stairs that winded to above.

Two stories up, the restaurant window spanned around the corner of it's building. Oak finished wood shined in the soft lighting alone with deep reds and greens. Nadia stood and absorbed the environment. "The Metro" by Berlin rolled through the air like waves, radiating from a jute-box in the corner. Her eyes searched the room. It was nearly full, and every one in the room talked amongst their parties of two, three, four or so on, all competing with the catchy tune that drifted from the corner.

Across the room from her, a woman sat alone. She was seating at a table near the corner of the building, just near the intersection that roared below outside. She read the menu silently, never looking up.

Nadia walked up to her, and sat down. The chairs where high and the woman looked up before Nadia could climb onto it. The woman smiled.

"Nadia. Getting late."

"Only on Saturday's." she replied. "Have you ordered?"

"I was waiting for you." The woman said, flipping a strand of her strawberry hair away from her face.

"Rush hour's a bitch." Nadia said, leaning back into the chair, vulnerable in a moment of metal exhaustion.

"I figured as much. No matter." She said, then out of the blue. "How hungry are you? Are you going to begin with starters, or are you just going with a meal?"

"Probably just a meal," then as the red haired woman had done, Nadia too rolled into another thought. Irritated. "Is everything alright, Sarah?"

"Excuse me?" she looked up. It was clear in Nadia's eyes that she was serious. "Yes." She nodded and looked back at her menu.

"Really?"

"Is every thing ever alright."

"Unless you think it's wrong."

"Well there's you answer." Sarah leaned against her arm on the side Nadia sat, and immersed herself into the menu for the third time.

"Wait, wait, wait." Nadia said drawing the woman's hand down, trying force eye contact. "K.V.'s still in on the deal. Right? That was what you said."

"You know, Nadia, this is one of those days we need to really practice our flexibility for the more serious of situations, you know?"

"No, no, no." Nadia, said, shaking her head. "I don't do this and you know it. You don't fuck with the deal. If you don't know which way is up on your little par to the goddamn game that is your fault and you don't make a deal, not with me at least. Now tell me K.V.'s still in."

"I'm sure he would be-"

"If-"

"-if we knew where he was."

"You don't lose K.V. Wait."

"What?" Sarah asked, throw off by the sudden halt of the conversation.

"How long would you say that we've been trading." Sarah paused, a single finger frozen on a laminated dish of chicken.

"Three, maybe four years. Why?"

"I don't know really. Most traders usually screw one or another over in the first two years. I just don't know why you and K.V. waited so long."

"What?"

"I'm sorry I left the flat on such a crappy day for a crappy night." Nadia stood and began to turn.

"We waited because we liked you, Nadia. You knew that, you still do. You should never have ended up trading. People have been worse in than you have and they get out sometimes. You can't walk the line forever."

"Save it, Sarah. Give K.V. my regards. He knows he screwed me and I hope he doesn't forget it any time soon." And she left. She left Houlahans, she left the partnership, and she left Sarah Paterson alone at her table, silenced in the remaining shame.

She fumbled the door open and let it fall closed behind her. She fell across the couch and sunk into the depth of the cushions. Nadia ripped the small leather pouch that was tucked in a zipper in the side of the sleeve. She let it fall to the floor in anger. She never held onto hot goods for more than three days, now….now she did not know what to do with the diamonds. The trade was bust, the lift was for nothing, and now she had quarter million in stolen rock laying on her living room floor. Fuck them. Fuck Sarah. Nadia slammed her neck on the line again and again and after all of it the guillotine had finally fallen. She supposed that was what it felt like, to be abandoned because that's what she was right at that moment and not all of the diamonds in the world could help her.

__________

He was sitting a taxi, the only things in his pockets, two envelopes, a lighter, and a gun. It would be twenty-eight hours before he began. Huntings told him to pick up the essentials, anything else Dolan would need could be found where he was going. That was all he knew and it was all he needed to- for the moment. They were now twenty minutes out of London. He leaned forward and told the driver to stop in front of a café. Dolan removed forty pounds from one of the envelopes, passed it to the driver, and left with out a word.

He entered the small café at quarter past ten, ordered a cup of coffee and sat in the far corner, away from the counter, the window, and other tables. For the first ten minutes he flipped through the local paper he picked up from the counter, then, then a girl brought his coffee over. Dolan nodded and sipped it, folding the paper back up. Then, with one last look around him, he removed the second envelope from his breast pocket.

Dolan paused, hesitant for a moment. All motion in the café seemed to cease amplifying the little movement outside also. The only sound was a soft song drifting through the café, the steady ripple of coffee brewing. Nothing else. He ignored it and pulled the paper from the envelope. It was typed. No personal crest, no address, and no signature.

It simply said:

13 Elsberry Road, 3 30 AM

LNA gate 15, 5 30 AM

He read it twice, then one last time, before replacing it into the envelope. He went back to the local paper, sipping his coffee until he became bored. He took his coffee, taking his envelope in the other and went to the counter, and paid for his coffee and a metal thermos. Outside he walked to a playground, stars only visable in the center of the sky as if they crowded away from the light. It was still empty outside, no one awake so early. He sat at the bottom of a discolored slid and opened his new purchase, He folded his second envelope three times before sliding it into the thermos. Then, Dolan took his receipt, lit it on fire, and dropped it into the thermos, setting it down in the gravel, letting it burn in front of him. For a moment the air smelled of sulfur and smoke, and then it faded into the wind.

When the flames had burned out, and al that was left was black ashes, he kicked it over and stirred the ashes into the gravel. It was seven sixteen when Alec Dolan left the park that morning.

He had to finish some things before three thirty.

Dolan found Lucas Black in the basement of his home four and a half hours later. Black was developing pictures. He didn't look up from the work submerged in a glossy solution. Dolan waited for his eyes to adjust to the red light before his spoke. He liked to see people's faces.

"Lucas." Black looked up.

"What do you want? I have to have these pictures dry and shipped by four o'clock. You know what kind of rush that is?"

"If you call that a rush."

"The entire world isn't exactly in your business, Alec."

"I've come to call on that favor."

"What favor? We're square. Last one I owed you was that time from Liverpool. You saw me about that one, what was it, six months ago."

"Think farther back. Think Freeman pictures."

"Aw, no. You've got to be kidding me. I fractured three bones, on top of a clean break that week. All in my leg. I couldn't have done it, and if it wasn't done he would have killed me. Probably would have sent you."

"You owed me money and dead men can't pay."

"I am still taking painkillers-"

"Lucas, I need to be in a cab headed out of here five minutes from now with fifteen thousand dollars. One thousand of it in one hundred dollar bills, so you'd better start unlocking that safe of yours now. "

"I don't have that kind of money now, it'd take about twenty minutes to get to the bank."

"How much money are you getting for those pictures?"

"You are killing me, you know that? You are really killing me."

"That's what I do."

"So I hear."

Black knelt down and kicked a box away from his feet. He guided his hands over the old carpet. He found something and then shifted his position away a few feet and pulled back a long square of the carpet. Underneath it was a trapdoor. He pulled it up and headed into the darkness for a moment. Dolan's hand fell to his gun.

Black emerged again with a stack of bills. He handed it to Dolan and shut up the floor. Dolan counted it, fourteen hundred in thousands and another grand in hundreds.