Chapter 105

[ 915 words ]

Katia’s POV

I had known it would be a Windsor aircraft — it had been in the travel itinerary Sam received from WEG’s events coordination three weeks ago. A private jet for the IG Technologies team, departure confirmed, fully covered as part of the partnership arrangement. The Windsor way of doing things — making the gesture so complete that declining it would have been the awkward choice.

What I had chosen not to think about was whether Julian would be on the same flight.

He was.

Already seated at the front when we boarded, laptop open, coffee beside him, was the composed, focused stillness of a man who had been working since before the car arrived. He looked up when we came through the door. His eyes found me the way they always found me — immediately, without scanning.

“Ms Kensington,” he said. “Sam p>

“Mr Windsor,” I said.

Sam moved toward the rear of the cabin with the purposeful efficiency of a woman who had decided where she was sitting and was implementing it before anyone could suggest otherwise. Zane was behind Julian. He looked at me with the expression he wore when he was trying not to have an expression.

“Good morning,” he said.

“Good morning, Zane p>

I took the seat across the aisle from Julian. Not beside him — across. The correct professional distance. He looked at that choice for exactly half a second, then returned to his laptop. He had noted it. He had filed it. He was not going to comment on it.

The jet taxied. The engines built. New York fell away beneath the windows – clean and efficient, the way things always moved when money removed the friction. I opened the Dubai expansion brief. I was absolutely reading it.

Across the aisle Julian was absolutely reading whatever was on his screen.

The cabin was quiet. Outside the window the Atlantic opened below us, and the sky went on forever, and Dubai was seven hours away.

Six minutes into the flight Julian said, without looking up: “The phase one deployment. Your team moved the Amsterdam node p>

“Davies confirmed it yesterday,” I said, also without looking up. “It aligns with Frankfurt now p>

“Good p>

Silence, then, four minutes later: “The circuit layout for the 24 Hour Race,” he said. “They’ve changed the back straight configuration. Have you seen the updated map p>

I looked up. He was still looking at his screen. His face gave nothing.

“Why would I have seen the circuit layout?” I said.

He looked up then. Dark, steady eyes. “You follow Catwoman,” he said. “You said so yourself. She’ll be racing this weekend. I assumed you’d be following the circuit coverage p>

The cabin hummed around us. Sam behind us had gone very still in the way she went still when she was listening to everything and pretending not to.

“Send me the updated map,” I said.

Something moved at the corner of his mouth. Not quite a smile. The thing that happened before a smile when Julian Windsor found something privately satisfying and had decided not to show it fully.

He sent it.

I opened it. I looked at the back straight configuration and the revised final corner approach, and I did not think about the specific way those changes would affect a driver coming in hot off the last bend with the field behind her and the clock running.

I did not think about it at all.

Dubai was seven hours away.

I went back to the expansion brief. Julian went back to his screen. The jet moved through the morning sky, and the Atlantic spread below, and somewhere in Brooklyn Aiden was already at the kitchen table with Gail planning their week, and everything was as it should be.

I was absolutely not thinking about that corner. Absolutely not.

Dubai hit like a wall.

Not just heat, though the heat was immediate and absolute, the kind that pressed against you the moment the aircraft door opened and the kind that had weight and intention rather than just temperature. It was everything simultaneously: the light, white and relentless off every surface; the scale of it, buildings that made Manhattan look modest arranged against a sky that was a specific shade of blue that didn’t exist anywhere else; and underneath all of it, the smell — salt and construction and something expensive that Dubai seemed to exhale permanently, the scent of a city that had decided it was going to be extraordinary and had not yet finished the project.

I had been here twice before. Both times as Catwoman, both times in the dark, both times gone before the city fully woke up.

This was different.

The WEG motorcade was waiting on the tarmac, three black vehicles, precise and unnecessary, the kind of arrival arrangement that existed to establish something rather than achieve anything practical. Julian’s team moved like people who had done this before: luggage transferred, vehicles loaded, doors opened in the correct sequence.

Sam appeared beside me as the cars were arranged. She looked at the lineup. She looked at me.

“You’re in the car directly behind his,” she said.

“I noticed p>

“Just making sure you noticed p>

“Sam p>

“I’m just saying p>

She got into the second car with a perfectly neutral expression. I got in after her. The motorcade pulled away from the tarmac and into the Dubai afternoon, and the city opened around us like something that had been waiting.

The Burj Al Arab rose ahead.

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