Chapter 2 - THE TRACKER IN HER COAT
Leo noticed.
He did not grab Harper’s arm.
He did not repeat the order.
He stepped away from the Navigator instead.
“You don’t have to get in.”
Harper stared at him.
Rain ran down his dark hair and collected on the shoulders of his expensive suit.
Behind them, movement appeared through the diner window.
Trent had managed to get onto one knee.
Leo glanced toward him.
“You can stay here,” he said. “You can call the police. You can walk in another direction. You can get into this car. Those are your choices.”
Harper swallowed.
“And if I get in?”
“You decide when you get out.”
It was such a simple sentence that Harper almost laughed.
Men like Trent always advertised control as protection.
Leo was offering protection while deliberately surrendering control.
She climbed inside.
Cole closed the door.
The locks clicked automatically.
Harper immediately reached for the handle.
Leo, sitting beside her, pressed the unlock button.
The locks opened.
“Leave them that way,” he told Cole.
Cole’s eyes met his in the rearview mirror.
“Yes, boss.”
They drove.
For three blocks, Harper said nothing.
Then Cole abruptly frowned.
“Boss.”
“What?”
“Her coat.”
Harper stiffened.
Cole pulled the Navigator beneath the awning of a closed pharmacy and stopped.
“What about my coat?” Harper asked.
Leo turned toward her.
“May I?”
She hesitated before removing the wet jacket.
Leo handed it forward.
Cole produced a handheld scanner from the console.
Harper almost asked why anyone carried something like that in a car, then remembered who these men probably were.
The scanner chirped near the coat’s lower hem.
Cole looked at Leo.
“We’ve got a transmitter.”
Harper’s stomach dropped.
Cole carefully opened a loose section of stitching.
A black device no bigger than a quarter fell into his palm.
Harper stared at it.
“No.”
“You recognize it?” Leo asked.
“No. Trent told me he put something in my phone.”
“You left the phone.”
“Yes.”
Leo studied the device.
“He wanted you to believe the phone was how he found you.”
Cole turned it over.
His expression changed.
“What?”
Cole showed Leo a tiny serial number.
“Northline.”
Leo’s face became completely still.
Harper noticed because stillness seemed to be the way he displayed anger.
“What is Northline?”
“A security contractor,” Leo said.
“For who?”
His eyes lifted to hers.
“Me.”
Harper stopped breathing.
Cole immediately drove again.
Faster this time.
Harper wrapped her arms around herself.
“Trent bought me that coat.”
“When?”
“October.”
“A gift?”
She almost smiled.
“He gave it to me after he broke the bathroom door.”
Neither man spoke.
“He always bought something afterward,” Harper continued. “Flowers. A sweater. Dinner. Like if the apology cost enough, what happened before it disappeared.”
Leo looked out the window.
“My sister used to say gifts given after cruelty are sometimes receipts.”
Harper glanced at him.
“You have a sister?”
The pause was brief.
“Had.”
Something closed behind his eyes.
The Navigator entered an underground garage beneath a quiet brick building.
Cole scanned the area before they exited.
Inside, Harper expected marble, chandeliers, men with guns.
Instead, the apartment looked almost boring.
Gray couch.
Clean kitchen.
Two bedrooms.
No photographs.
“This isn’t your home,” she said.
“No.”
“A safe house?”
Leo removed his jacket.
“Something like that.”
Harper flinched at the phrase.
Leo noticed.
“Bad choice of words.”
Cole placed Harper’s tracking device inside a metal container.
“It stops transmitting in there.”
Harper stared at it.
“Can Trent still find me?”
“Not through that.”
“Through something else?”
Cole did not answer quickly enough.
Leo did.
“We don’t know.”
That frightened her more than a false reassurance would have.
Leo opened a cabinet and removed a first-aid kit.
“I have a physician who can come here.”
“No doctor.”
“You may have broken ribs.”
“No.”
He closed the kit.
“All right.”
No argument.
No threat.
No lecture.
Harper sank onto the edge of the couch.
Cole was already working on a laptop at the kitchen counter.
Leo poured water into a glass and placed it within her reach.
“What is your full name?”
Her eyes narrowed.
“Why?”
“Because a tracking device registered to one of my contractors was sewn into your clothing.”
“You think I did that?”
“I think somebody did.”
She studied him.
“Harper Bennett.”
Cole stopped typing.
It was subtle.
But Leo saw it.
“What?”
Cole slowly turned the laptop around.
“Boss, you need to see this.”
Leo walked over.
Harper remained where she was until she heard her own name.
“Bennett Logistics.”
She stood.
“What did you say?”
Cole looked at her.
“Bennett Logistics LLC.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
According to the screen, however, Harper Bennett knew exactly what it was.
Her name appeared beside an address she had never seen.
Her date of birth was correct.
So were the last four digits of her Social Security number.
Harper felt the room tilt.
“No.”
Leo scrolled lower.
“When was this created?”
“Fourteen months ago,” Cole said.
Fourteen months ago.
Harper remembered that month.
Trent had insisted they combine their finances because couples who trusted each other did not need separate accounts.
She had refused.
Three days later, he punched a hole through their bedroom door.
“Where did they get this information?” Leo asked.
Harper whispered, “Trent.”
Cole opened another page.
His expression darkened.
“There’s more.”
A transfer had been processed that evening.
Two million, four hundred thousand dollars.
The money had left one of Leo’s companies and passed through Bennett Logistics less than ninety minutes earlier.
Harper stared at the numbers.
She had been running through the rain ninety minutes earlier.
“I didn’t do this.”
Leo said nothing.
“I swear to you.”
“I heard you.”
“You think I stole from you.”
“If I thought that, we would be having a very different conversation.”
Harper’s pulse hammered.
“Then what are you saying?”
Leo rotated the laptop fully toward her.
On the authorization page was an electronic signature.
HARPER BENNETT.
Below it appeared another line.
TRANSFER APPROVED.
May you like
Leo’s voice became very quiet.
“According to my books, Harper, you stole two million four hundred thousand dollars from me tonight.”
