Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN HE WAS NEVER SUPPOSED TO FIND
“Savannah knows where you are.”
Those five words frightened me more than the black SUV parked outside the grocery store.
I stared at Declan Voss’s face on the phone screen.
For fourteen weeks, I had imagined what I would say if I ever saw him again.
I had rehearsed angry speeches while washing dishes. I had cried over memories of his hands resting on my waist. I had even imagined telling him about our baby.
But I had never imagined our reunion would happen while I stood between a display of apples and a freezer full of ice cream, wondering whether someone was coming to kill me.
“Why are you calling me?” I whispered.
“Because you need to leave that store.”
“Your engagement announcement was pretty clear, Declan.”
His expression tightened.
“Amelia, listen to me. The men outside aren't all mine.”
I looked toward the windows.
Another vehicle had stopped across the street.
A gray SUV.
Two men climbed out.
Neither looked toward the grocery store. One studied the mountains. The other adjusted something beneath his jacket.
My stomach tightened.
“Who are they?”
“I don't know yet.”
“Then how do you know they're dangerous?”
“Because Savannah hired a private security company yesterday, and those men are wearing its identification pins.”
The man holding the phone lowered it slightly.
“Miss Mason,” he said, using my assumed name, “I'm Jonah Briggs. Mr. Voss sent me to bring you somewhere safe.”
I almost laughed.
Safe.
That word had lost its meaning the afternoon I heard Declan promise to resolve me quietly.
“I'm not getting into your car.”
Declan leaned closer to the camera.
“Then choose where you want to go. Jonah will follow your instructions.”
“You don't get to give me choices after taking away every other one.”
Pain moved across his face.
For a moment, he looked less like the man who controlled half of Chicago's criminal underworld and more like the man who used to sit barefoot on my studio floor, watching me restore paintings.
Then he looked down.
“Is the baby mine?”
Everything inside me went still.
I pressed my palm against my stomach.
“Don't.”
“Amelia—”
“You don't get to ask about my baby while you're wearing another woman's engagement ring.”
“I'm not married.”
“You made your choice.”
“No,” he said quietly. “I made a terrible mistake.”
Behind Jonah, the grocery store's automatic doors opened.
One of the men from the gray SUV entered.
He wore an expensive tan coat and carried no shopping basket.
His eyes moved across the aisles.
Searching.
Jonah immediately stepped between us.
“Boss, we've got company.”
Declan's expression changed.
“Get her out through the back.”
The man in the tan coat spotted me.
And smiled.
Not warmly.
Like someone who had finally found a missing possession.
“Miss Mason,” he called. “We just need a few minutes.”
I backed away.
He reached into his coat.
Jonah grabbed my wrist.
“Move.”
We ran.
An elderly cashier shouted as we hurried through the employee entrance.
The store manager, a heavyset woman named Maria who had sold me groceries every Friday, looked up from a delivery invoice.
“Claire? What's wrong?”
“Please,” I gasped. “Don't let that man follow me.”
She took one look at Jonah's face and shoved open the loading door.
“Go. I'll handle him.”
Cold mountain air struck my cheeks.
A delivery truck blocked part of the alley.
Jonah guided me behind it.
Then a familiar blue pickup rolled toward us.
Mrs. June Whitaker leaned across the passenger seat and pushed open the door.
“Get in, sweetheart.”
I had never been so grateful to see another human being.
I climbed inside.
Jonah hesitated.
June glared at him.
“Are you coming or planning to stand there looking important?”
He got in beside me.
June drove away before either of us could fasten our seat belts.
For ten minutes, nobody spoke.
Then June looked at my trembling hands.
“Is this about the baby's father?”
I turned toward her.
“How do you know about him?”
She sighed.
“I've lived long enough to recognize heartbreak.”
But she wasn't looking at me.
She was watching Jonah in the rearview mirror.
And Jonah was watching her.
Something passed between them.
Recognition.
I noticed it immediately.
“Do you two know each other?”
“No,” Jonah said.
June answered at the same time.
“Not personally.”
I felt the familiar warning inside my chest.
Someone was lying.
Again.
“Pull over.”
“Amelia,” Jonah began.
“Pull over!”
June turned onto a narrow road beside an old stone church.
The pickup stopped.
I opened my door.
Jonah climbed out first but kept his distance.
“Miss Mason, those men weren't there to hurt you in public. They were there to take you somewhere your family couldn't find you.”
“My family?”
He glanced toward my stomach.
I understood.
They weren't just coming for me.
They knew about my baby.
My knees weakened, and I caught the doorframe.
June hurried around the truck.
“Sit down, honey.”
“Don't touch me.”
She stopped.
Tears filled her eyes.
That frightened me more than anything else.
For three months, June had been the closest thing I had to family. She brought me homemade soup when morning sickness kept me upstairs. She left fresh towels outside my door. When I bought those tiny yellow socks, she'd smiled and said every baby deserved something cheerful.
Now she looked guilty.
“June,” I whispered, “what haven't you told me?”
Before she answered, Jonah's phone vibrated.
He checked the screen.
Then his face drained of color.
“Boss says we can't take her back to the shop.”
“Why not?” June demanded.
“Because someone got inside.”
I stared at him.
“My room?”
He nodded.
I thought about my little apartment above the antiques shop.
The faded curtains.
The secondhand crib catalog hidden beneath my pillow.
My grandmother's ring beside my bed.
Everything I had collected to build a life away from Chicago.
“Was anything stolen?”
“We don't know.”
June covered her mouth.
Jonah continued.
“Mr. Voss wants you to go to a secure property twenty miles from here.”
“No.”
“Miss Mason—”
“I am not being locked inside another house by another man who thinks he knows what's best for me.”
Jonah said nothing.
I looked at June.
“Did you tell someone I was staying with you?”
Her eyes filled.
“I told someone about your grandmother.”
My heart dropped.
“What?”
“Evelyn Mason.”
Hearing that name felt like someone had reached into my childhood.
Grandma Evelyn had taught me how to repair broken picture frames. She had shown me that something damaged could still be beautiful.
She had also given me the gold ring I carried everywhere.
“What does my grandmother have to do with Declan?”
June shook her head.
“More than you know.”
“Then tell me.”
“I will. But not here.”
Jonah interrupted.
“Amelia, there's something else.”
He turned the phone toward me.
A photograph filled the screen.
At first, I saw only a familiar patchwork quilt.
Then my own sleeping face.
My hand rested protectively over my stomach.
The yellow baby socks sat on the nightstand.
It was my bedroom.
My bed.
And the picture had been taken less than six hours earlier.
From inside my apartment.
I began shaking.
“Who took that?”
Jonah enlarged the corner of the photograph.
A man's reflection appeared in the dark window.
He stood beside my bed, wearing a charcoal suit.
On his wrist was a silver bracelet with the Calloway family crest.
Then Jonah pointed to the timestamp.
2:14 a.m.
May you like
And June whispered something that made my blood run cold.
“That's the same time they came for Evelyn.”
