Chapter 2 - THE MAN WHO KNEW MY NAME
Gabriel studied me for several seconds before answering.
“In his office.”
I nodded and headed for the security-room door.
“Harper.”
I stopped.
Gabriel leaned back against the console, arms crossed over his black shirt. Damian’s cousin was younger than him by maybe three years, but the resemblance between them became obvious whenever Gabriel stopped joking. Same dark eyes. Same dangerous stillness.
“He doesn’t blame you.”
“I hit him.”
“You slapped his hand.”
“In front of twenty-two people.”
“Twenty-one now.”
My stomach tightened.
Gabriel’s expression hardened.
“One of the guests left in an ambulance.”
“Shot?”
“Heart attack.”
“Oh.”
“He’ll live.”
That was apparently what passed for good news in this house.
I reached for the door again.
Gabriel spoke behind me.
“There’s something else.”
I looked back.
He tapped a keyboard.
The frozen image of the dining room disappeared. Another photograph filled the screen.
A man lay facedown on frozen grass near the northern tree line, dressed in dark tactical clothing.
I immediately looked away.
“Why are you showing me that?”
“Because he had this.”
Gabriel clicked again.
The screen changed.
My employee photograph stared back at me.
It was the picture taken by the staffing agency six weeks earlier.
My name appeared beneath it.
HARPER ELLISON.
Age thirty-one.
Emergency contact blank.
Current address.
Previous addresses.
Employment history.
My blood went cold.
“That’s my file.”
“Most of it.”
“Where did he get it?”
“We’re working on that.”
I stared at the screen.
“Was he the shooter?”
“One of them.”
“One of them?”
Gabriel’s jaw tightened.
“The round that hit your chair came from the northeast ridge. The man our team took down was positioned north.”
I swallowed.
“He didn’t shoot at me?”
“He fired the first shot through the west window. The one that sent everyone to the floor.”
My brain struggled to arrange the pieces.
“So the first shooter…”
“Was a distraction.”
“And the second one?”
“Escaped.”
I gripped the edge of the desk.
Every part of me suddenly felt too exposed.
My apartment.
My bus route.
The coffee shop where I stopped after my Sunday shift.
My employee file.
Someone had known exactly where I would be standing.
Gabriel shut down the screen.
“You understand now why Damian wants the estate locked down.”
“Does he think someone inside gave them my information?”
Gabriel didn’t answer immediately.
Which was an answer.
I left the security room without another word.
Damian’s office was on the first floor at the end of a corridor staff members normally had no reason to enter. The doors were walnut, nearly eight feet tall, and guarded by two men who moved aside when they saw me approaching.
Apparently being shot at had upgraded my access.
I knocked once.
“Come in.”
His voice sounded exactly as it had beneath the table.
Calm.
Controlled.
As if bullets exploding through windows were an inconvenience rather than a threat.
I opened the door.
Damian stood near the fireplace with his jacket off and his white dress shirt rolled to his elbows. A thin cut crossed his cheek. Another ran along the back of his hand.
Blood had dried at his cuff.
For the first time since I had met him, Damian Romano looked slightly human.
He was holding a tumbler of whiskey.
He noticed me looking at it.
“Doctor’s orders.”
“Doctors usually recommend whiskey?”
“Mine has adjusted his expectations.”
I almost smiled.
Almost.
Then I remembered the destroyed chair.
His expression changed.
“Close the door.”
I did.
“Gabriel showed me the footage.”
“I assumed he would.”
“You saw the laser.”
“Yes.”
“And you knew it was aimed at me.”
“Yes.”
“So you grabbed me.”
“Yes.”
His answers were maddeningly simple.
I folded my arms.
“You could sound a little less calm about this.”
His gaze sharpened.
“I’m not calm.”
Something in his voice stopped me.
He set the glass down.
“When I saw that dot move across your tray, I had approximately two seconds to decide whether to explain myself politely or move you.”
My throat tightened.
“So you moved me.”
“I would make the same choice again.”
My pulse jumped.
Damian stepped closer, then deliberately stopped several feet away.
The distance was intentional.
He had noticed what grabbing my wrist had done.
That realization somehow made the room feel smaller.
“I shouldn’t have touched you like that,” he said.
I blinked.
Of all the things I had expected from Damian Romano, an apology was not one.
“You saved my life.”
“That doesn’t erase what happened before the bullet.”
“You had no choice.”
“I always have choices.”
His gaze dropped briefly to my wrist.
“You looked terrified before the gunshot.”
My fingers automatically curled around the place he had grabbed.
“That wasn’t because of you.”
“I know.”
The certainty in his voice bothered me.
“How?”
“You said his name.”
My stomach dropped.
“What?”
“Under the table.”
I stared at him.
“You kept saying, ‘Tyler, let go.’”
For a moment, the office vanished.
Cheap beige carpet.
A broken lamp.
Tyler Bennett blocking the apartment door with one hand while the other crushed my wrist hard enough to leave purple fingerprints.
You’re not walking away from me, Harper.
I shoved the memory down.
“That was years ago.”
Damian waited.
He didn’t ask.
Maybe that was why I spoke.
“My ex-boyfriend.”
Damian’s face became unreadable.
“He hurt you?”
“Sometimes.”
“Sometimes?”
I gave him a tired look.
“You sound like you don’t believe the word.”
“I believe you’re minimizing it.”
I hated how accurate that was.
“He hasn’t been part of my life for six years.”
“Is he alive?”
The question came too quickly.
I looked at Damian.
“Why?”
“Answer me.”
“Yes.”
“At least I assume so.”
“You assume?”
“Tyler disappeared after I left Milwaukee.”
Damian went very still.
“Milwaukee.”
The way he said it made something twist inside me.
“Yes.”
“What year?”
“Six years ago.”
He turned toward his desk.
“Damian?”
He picked up his phone.
“Gabriel. My office. Now.”
I stared at him.
“What?”
Damian didn’t answer.
Gabriel arrived less than thirty seconds later.
Damian pointed toward me.
“She lived in Milwaukee six years ago. Her ex-boyfriend was Tyler Bennett.”
Gabriel’s expression changed instantly.
I noticed.
“What does that mean?”
Neither man answered.
I stepped forward.
“What does that mean?”
Gabriel looked at Damian.
Damian said, “Tell her.”
Gabriel exhaled.
“Tyler Bennett worked private security.”
“I know. Warehouses. Clubs. Whatever paid cash.”
“Not exactly.”
My stomach sank.
“For who?”
Gabriel walked toward the desk.
“Six years ago, Tyler Bennett was employed by Crane Protective Services.”
I frowned.
“Crane?”
Then the name landed.
Victor Crane.
The estate manager.
The man who had tried to fire me less than three hours earlier.
“That’s not possible.”
“It’s documented,” Gabriel said.
I shook my head.
“Victor manages this house.”
“Victor has worked for my family for nineteen years,” Damian said.
“Then maybe it’s a coincidence.”
Damian’s expression said he did not believe in coincidence.
I turned away.
Six years.
I had worked so hard to make Milwaukee feel like another lifetime.
I had changed apartments three times.
Changed jobs more times than that.
Stopped dating.
Stopped telling people why I hated being cornered.
Stopped looking over my shoulder every time a black SUV slowed near the sidewalk.
And now a bullet had nearly gone through my chest in a mansion two hours away.
“What happened the night you left Tyler?” Damian asked.
I looked at him.
“Nothing.”
Gabriel’s eyebrows rose.
“That answer usually means something happened.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
Damian’s jaw hardened.
“Someone just tried to put a bullet through you.”
“That doesn’t give you ownership of every bad thing that ever happened to me.”
“No.”
His answer was immediate.
“It gives me responsibility for what happens inside my home.”
“You’re not responsible for me.”
“Tonight I am.”
I laughed once, without humor.
“Because I’m an employee?”
“No.”
His voice lowered.
“Because someone used my house to hunt you.”
Silence spread between us.
Then a knock hit the door.
One of Gabriel’s men entered holding a clear evidence bag.
“Found this in the north shooter’s vehicle.”
Inside was a disposable phone.
Gabriel took it.
“Anything on it?”
“One incoming message received at 9:14.”
“What does it say?”
The guard looked at me.
I knew before he spoke that I wasn’t going to like it.
Gabriel unlocked the screen.
His eyes narrowed.
Damian took the phone.
Then his face changed.
Not dramatically.
That would have been less frightening.
Damian simply became completely still.
“What?” I asked.
He looked at me.
“Harper.”
“What does it say?”
He crossed the room and handed me the phone.
The message contained eight words.
ASK HARPER WHAT SHE SAW IN MILWAUKEE SIX YEARS AGO.
I stopped breathing.
Damian watched my face.
“What did you see?”
My hands began shaking.
Because suddenly I wasn’t remembering Tyler’s fist.
Or the apartment.
Or the nights I had slept with my shoes on because I needed to be ready to run.
I was remembering rain.
A warehouse loading dock.
Tyler arguing with another man beneath a yellow security light.
A third man kneeling on concrete.
Begging.
I had opened Tyler’s car door because I wanted to surprise him.
Instead, I watched him raise a gun.
And beside him stood a man in a gray coat.
Older.
Calm.
Wearing a silver ring shaped like a bird.
A crane.
I hadn’t remembered the ring in years.
But I had seen it again.
Every morning for six weeks.
On Victor Crane’s right hand.
My knees nearly gave out.
Damian moved forward, then stopped himself.
“What is it?”
I looked toward the office door.
Toward the hallway beyond it.
Toward the house I had believed was the safest place I had ever worked.
“He was there.”
“Who?”
I could barely force the words out.
“Victor.”
Gabriel’s hand went immediately to the gun beneath his jacket.
Damian’s eyes turned lethal.
“You’re sure?”
I nodded.
“Victor Crane was with Tyler the night I watched a man die.”
Then the office lights went out.
Total darkness swallowed the room.
May you like
A second later, the estate alarm began screaming.
And somewhere beyond the locked door, three gunshots exploded through the house.
