Chapter 2 - THE NAME SHE WAS AFRAID TO SAY
“Please don't tell my brother I'm alive.”
Those were the first words Wynn spoke after revealing her name.
Hollis Brennan stood beside the kitchen counter, holding a cup of warm milk.
The nineteen-year-old girl sitting on her bed looked terrified.
“Why would your brother want to think you're dead?”
Wynn's fingers tightened around Posy's star-covered blanket.
“He wouldn't.”
Her voice cracked.
“But someone wants him to believe I ran away.”
Hollis set down the cup.
“Wynn, whatever happened to you, you're sick. Mrs. Marguerite thinks you need a hospital.”
“No!”
Wynn tried to stand.
Her knees buckled immediately.
Hollis caught her before she struck the floor.
“Easy. Nobody's taking you anywhere without explaining first.”
Wynn grabbed her wrist.
“You don't understand. They told everyone I was unstable. They said I was imagining things.”
“Who did?”
Wynn looked toward Posy.
The little girl sat at the kitchen table, carefully spreading peanut butter onto a piece of toast.
“Can we talk somewhere private?” Wynn whispered.
Hollis nodded.
“Posy, sweetheart, would you take Mrs. Marguerite her breakfast?”
Posy looked at the toast.
“Can I take two?”
“Of course.”
“Okay.”
She collected another slice and disappeared into the hallway.
When the door closed, Wynn began crying.
“My brother's name is Sullivan Mercer.”
Hollis went still.
She knew that name.
Everyone who worked at Halloran Tower knew it.
Sullivan Mercer controlled shipping companies, construction contracts, private security businesses, and several properties across Chicago.
Newspapers called him a businessman.
People who worked late shifts called him something else.
The man you never wanted to disappoint.
And among the people closest to him, he was known simply as Sully.
Hollis looked at the frightened girl.
“You're Sullivan Mercer's sister?”
Wynn nodded.
“Or I thought I was.”
She reached beneath the blanket and unfolded the damp scrap of paper.
Not of the same blood.
“My aunt told me that yesterday.”
“Your aunt?”
“Vivienne Mercer. My father's sister.”
Wynn swallowed painfully.
“She said Sully had spent nineteen years supporting someone who wasn't even his family.”
Hollis sat beside her.
“That doesn't mean he believes it.”
“You don't know my aunt.”
“No,” Hollis answered. “But I know what it feels like when someone decides you don't belong.”
Wynn looked at her.
For a moment, the girl seemed less frightened.
Then Hollis noticed something beneath the sleeve of Wynn's coat.
A dark bruise circled her wrist.
She gently pushed back the fabric.
Another bruise lay beside it.
Both were shaped like narrow bands.
“Wynn. Who did this?”
The girl pulled away.
“Please don't ask.”
Hollis's stomach tightened.
These weren't ordinary injuries.
Someone had restrained her.
Before Hollis could speak, Mrs. Marguerite entered carrying an old medical bag.
Posy followed with the empty breakfast plate.
“I checked on her twice during the night,” Marguerite said. “I don't like what I'm seeing.”
She examined Wynn's wrist and then noticed an angry red line disappearing beneath her sleeve.
“Let me see your arm, sweetheart.”
Wynn resisted.
Marguerite's voice became firm.
“I spent thirty-four years nursing people who told me everything was fine while their bodies were telling me otherwise.”
Slowly, Wynn rolled up her sleeve.
A poorly closed cut ran along her forearm.
The skin around it was swollen and hot.
Marguerite's expression changed.
“This could be infected.”
Hollis looked at her.
“How bad?”
“Bad enough that she needs an emergency department now. Fever medicine and towels aren't going to fix this.”
Wynn shook her head.
“They'll find me.”
“Then they'll have to get past me,” Hollis replied.
She picked up her phone.
Her hands shook as she called for an ambulance.
She had barely enough money to buy groceries.
She had no idea what helping Sullivan Mercer's sister might cost her.
But she knew what refusing medical help could cost Wynn.
Everything.
While Marguerite spoke to the emergency dispatcher, Hollis helped Wynn into a clean sweater.
Something metallic slipped from the pocket of Wynn's worn coat.
It landed against the floorboards.
A small silver wristwatch.
The glass was cracked.
The strap had been replaced with a piece of faded blue ribbon.
Wynn snatched it up immediately.
“Please. Don't take that.”
“I wasn't going to.”
“It belonged to my mother.”
Hollis studied the watch.
Two initials were engraved on its back.
E.R.
“Your mother was a Mercer?”
Wynn stared at the initials.
“I don't know anymore.”
That answer frightened Hollis more than the surname had.
An hour later, the ambulance crew carried Wynn downstairs.
Posy insisted on bringing her star blanket.
Wynn tried to return it.
“You need it,” she whispered.
Posy shook her head.
“You're colder.”
Hollis kissed her daughter's forehead.
“Stay with Mrs. Marguerite. I'll come home as soon as I can.”
“Will Wynn come back?”
“I hope so, baby.”
Posy took Wynn's hand.
“I saved you some toast.”
For the first time that morning, Wynn smiled.
It was small.
Exhausted.
But real.
At the hospital, the emergency physician ordered blood tests, intravenous fluids, and antibiotics.
Hollis stayed beside Wynn until a nurse asked her to step outside.
In the hallway, she checked her phone.
Three messages from her supervisor.
The first demanded to know why she had failed to confirm her next shift.
The second said the cleaning company had received a complaint about her presence behind Halloran Tower.
The third was worse.
Report to the office immediately. Your building access has been suspended pending investigation.
Hollis stared at the screen.
She hadn't stolen anything.
She hadn't damaged anything.
She had carried a sick girl out of an alley.
Somehow, that was already enough to threaten her job.
Then Wynn called from the examination room.
“Hollis?”
She hurried inside.
Wynn was sitting upright, trembling.
“I need to tell you something.”
“What is it?”
“Yesterday, I was inside Halloran Tower.”
Hollis felt the blood drain from her face.
“Where?”
“Second floor.”
Hollis remembered the offices she cleaned each night.
The locked conference room.
The expensive wooden doors.
The hallway cameras.
“Which room?”
“Two fourteen.”
Hollis knew that room.
She had mopped outside it less than twelve hours earlier.
Wynn grabbed her hand.
“They kept me there because I found something in the foundation's accounts.”
Before Hollis could ask what, footsteps approached.
Three men appeared at the doorway.
The one in front wore a black wool coat over an immaculate charcoal suit.
He was tall, broad-shouldered, with dark hair and a face that looked as though smiling had become an unfamiliar habit.
A faint tattoo disappeared beneath his shirt collar.
Hollis recognized him instantly.
Sullivan Mercer.
Behind him stood two security men.
The older one had pale eyes and a narrow scar beside his mouth.
Sullivan looked past Hollis.
His expression changed when he saw Wynn.
For a moment, he appeared unable to breathe.
“Winnie?”
Wynn recoiled.
Her eyes moved to the scarred man behind her brother.
She began pulling the IV line from her arm.
“No. No, please!”
Sullivan stepped forward.
“Winnie, it's me.”
But Wynn was staring at his security guard.
She pointed a shaking finger.
May you like
Then she screamed.
“Sully, don't let him near me! That's the man who tied my hands!”
