Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN STANDING BY THE SAFE
Camille reached into the safe.
Declan pushed the bedroom door open.
“Stop.”
One word.
Quiet.
But Camille reacted as if a gun had fired.
Her shoulders jerked.
Her hand froze inside the safe.
For one suspended second, nobody moved.
Then Camille slowly turned.
Declan had imagined this moment thousands of times.
He had imagined her eyes opening.
Her fingers moving.
Her lips forming his name.
He had imagined himself falling to his knees beside the bed and thanking every god he had ignored since childhood.
He had never imagined finding her fully dressed with one hand inside his safe.
“Declan.”
Her voice nearly destroyed him.
He knew that voice.
Low when she was tired.
Softer around the edges when she was afraid.
Exactly the same.
He lowered the Sig Sauer, but he did not put it away.
“You can talk.”
Camille’s eyes filled.
“Yes.”
“How long?”
Behind him, Tessa remained in the hallway.
Declan looked at her.
Then back at his wife.
“How long?”
Camille removed her hand from the safe.
She was holding a cream-colored envelope and a small navy velvet box.
“Eight months.”
Declan stared at her.
The number did not make sense.
“Eight days?”
“No.”
His face changed.
Camille swallowed.
“Eight months.”
Something inside Declan seemed to split cleanly in half.
For eight months, he had sat beside her bed.
He had read newspaper articles aloud because a nurse once told him familiar voices might reach patients trapped somewhere inside themselves.
He had told her about rainstorms.
Business meetings.
The neighbor’s cedar tree falling during a windstorm.
He had apologized for the bombing so many times the words had become a prayer.
He had held her hand.
She had heard him.
“You knew I was there.”
Camille looked down.
“Most of the time.”
“And you let me think—”
“I was trying to stay alive.”
The words stopped him.
Camille looked toward Tessa.
“Close the door.”
Tessa hesitated until Declan nodded.
Then she did.
Camille crossed the room.
Declan instinctively noticed everything the doctors had told him should have been impossible.
Her posture.
Her balance.
The strength in her legs.
“You should barely be able to stand.”
“I spent six months learning again.”
“With whom?”
“Dr. Aris.”
Declan’s expression hardened.
Camille saw it.
“Don’t.”
“He lied to me.”
“He protected me.”
“From who?”
Camille’s silence lasted too long.
Declan stepped closer.
“From me?”
Her eyes lifted.
That hesitation cut deeper than an answer.
Declan actually moved backward.
“You thought I would hurt you.”
“I didn’t know what to think.”
“You’re my wife.”
“I woke up after more than a year inside a body I couldn’t control. I remembered an explosion. I remembered a man beside the car. Then I learned you had spent almost two years killing people because of me.”
His jaw tightened.
“They tried to murder you.”
“And you turned half the waterfront into a cemetery.”
“They deserved it.”
“Did they?”
Declan went still.
Camille placed the envelope on the dresser.
“That’s the problem.”
Tessa looked between them.
Camille continued.
“The people you punished may not have planted the bomb.”
Declan felt the room tilt.
“That investigation was done by people I trusted.”
“I know.”
“Ballistics. Explosive residue. Traffic cameras.”
“I know.”
“Then what are you saying?”
Camille held up the velvet box.
“The morning of the bombing, I came down to the garage early.”
Declan remembered.
Camille had been going to a foundation breakfast in Bellevue.
He had planned to leave later.
She had taken his car because hers was being serviced.
“I saw someone leaning into the driver’s side.”
Declan’s breathing slowed.
“You never told the police that.”
“I couldn’t speak when they interviewed me.”
“Before the bombing.”
“I thought it was you.”
He frowned.
Camille opened the velvet box.
Empty.
Declan recognized it immediately.
His father’s signet ring had rested inside that box for almost eleven years.
Heavy white gold.
Black onyx.
A tiny Walsh crest engraved into the face.
His father had worn it until the night he died.
Declan had locked it away because he hated the memories attached to it.
“Where is the ring?”
“I don’t know.”
He stared at the empty indentation in the velvet.
Camille’s voice lowered.
“The man beside the car was wearing it.”
Declan looked up sharply.
“That’s impossible.”
“I saw his hand on the doorframe.”
“You were twenty feet away.”
“Twelve.”
“Camille—”
“I stared at that ring for fifteen years whenever your father sat across from us at dinner. I know what it looked like.”
Declan picked up the box.
“When did you notice it missing?”
“After I woke.”
“You opened my safe?”
“I remembered the ring.”
“And you remembered my code.”
A trace of sadness touched her face.
“It was our anniversary.”
Of course it was.
Six digits.
The date they married.
Declan almost laughed at the cruelty of it.
He looked at Tessa.
“How much of this do you know?”
“Not much, sir.”
“Don’t call me sir right now.”
Tessa nodded quickly.
“I found Mrs. Walsh standing about three weeks ago. She made me promise not to tell anyone.”
“And today?”
Tessa looked toward Camille.
Camille answered for her.
“She saw someone enter the medical supply room.”
“Who?”
Tessa opened her mouth.
Camille interrupted.
“We don’t know enough yet.”
Declan’s patience broke.
“My wife has been pretending to be unconscious for eight months, somebody may have poisoned her medical care, and my father’s ring disappeared from a safe inside a fortress I pay armed men to protect. I’m done with ‘not enough yet.’”
Camille flinched.
He saw it.
The anger drained slightly from his face.
When he spoke again, his voice was quieter.
“Who could open this safe?”
Camille looked at the keypad.
“You.”
“You.”
She nodded.
“And one emergency access holder.”
Neither of them spoke.
Tessa’s eyes moved between their faces.
Declan had granted one other person override authority after an attempted home invasion seven years earlier.
A man who had known him since he was twenty-one.
A man who knew every vehicle rotation, every camera angle, every guard schedule, and every vulnerability in the Mercer Island estate.
Declan closed the velvet box.
“Gavin.”
Camille did not answer.
She did not have to.
May you like
Gavin Shaw, Declan’s head of security, had access to the safe.
And on the morning Camille’s car exploded, Gavin had sworn he was forty miles away.
