Chapter 3 - Room 814
By midnight, Tessa should have been home.
Instead, she was sitting inside a private hospital suite guarded by two men who looked capable of buying the building or removing anyone from it.
Rafe occupied the bed.
He hated it.
Every few minutes he glanced toward the door.
Every few minutes Tessa told him to stop.
Finally he said, “Are you staying because I require monitoring?”
“No.”
“Then why?”
“Because someone used my dead father's identity.”
“That seems fair.”
Tessa folded her arms.
“You're remarkably calm.”
“I've learned panic rarely improves mathematics.”
“What mathematics?”
“Who benefits. Who knows what. Who had access. Who expects me to react.”
Tessa studied him.
This was the part of Rafe Calder newspapers never understood.
His size was what people saw.
His mind was why people obeyed him.
June entered carrying two coffees.
She handed one to Tessa.
“Congratulations.”
“For what?”
“You got him into a hospital.”
Rafe looked offended.
June smiled.
“I've been trying for twelve years.”
Tessa took the coffee.
“You're welcome.”
Rafe muttered something in Italian.
June ignored him.
“Malcolm found a reservation.”
Rafe sat straighter.
“Where?”
“Room 814.”
“Whose name?”
June looked at Tessa.
“Elias Ward.”
Tessa stopped moving.
“When was it booked?”
“Six months ago.”
“That makes no sense.”
Rafe asked, “Has anyone entered?”
“Hotel manager says the room has been unoccupied.”
“Then why keep paying?”
June placed a small envelope on the table.
“Because whoever rented it wasn't using it to sleep.”
Inside were printed photographs.
Tessa lifted the first.
Rafe entering a restaurant.
Another.
June leaving her apartment.
Another.
Malcolm outside Calder headquarters.
Then Tessa reached the fourth photograph.
Her hands went numb.
It showed her.
Leaving Massachusetts General Hospital.
Taken three months ago.
Rafe saw her reaction.
“What?”
She turned it around.
June whispered, “Oh God.”
Rafe's expression went dead cold.
Someone had been watching Tessa before tonight.
Long before she had ever met Rafe Calder.
The final photograph showed Tessa standing beside her mother's grave.
On the back, someone had written six words.
ASK HER WHAT ELIAS LEFT BEHIND.
Tessa reread it.
“I don't understand.”
Rafe looked toward June.
“Who knows she's here?”
“Hospital staff. Malcolm. Me.”
“Change rooms.”
Tessa shook her head.
“I'm not hiding.”
Rafe looked at her.
“That wasn't a suggestion.”
“Interesting.”
“Tessa.”
“You don't give me orders.”
“You are in danger.”
“So are you.”
“That is normal.”
She stared.
June covered a laugh with her coffee.
Rafe looked irritated.
Tessa leaned over the photographs.
“What did my father leave behind?”
Rafe said nothing.
“Did he ever mention something?”
“He mentioned you.”
Tessa looked up sharply.
“What?”
“When?”
“The last time I saw him.”
“What did he say?”
Rafe looked away.
That alone told her the answer mattered.
“Rafe.”
“He said he had a daughter.”
Tessa's throat tightened.
“He said she was stubborn.”
June smiled.
Tessa ignored her.
“What else?”
“That she wanted to become a nurse.”
Her eyes burned.
She had told her father that six weeks before his deployment.
“He remembered.”
“Yes.”
Rafe's voice softened.
“He talked about you for nearly an hour.”
Tessa sat down.
Fourteen years.
She had spent fourteen years believing her father’s last months had been fear and chaos.
Now this impossible man was giving pieces of him back.
“What did he leave?”
Rafe slowly reached for his phone.
“Maybe nothing.”
“Maybe?”
“Elias gave me another thing.”
“What?”
“A sentence.”
Tessa waited.
Rafe said:
“If anything happens to me, tell Teresa the music box doesn't play anymore.”
Tessa stared at him.
“My mother’s name was Teresa.”
Rafe nodded.
Tessa stood immediately.
“Her house.”
“What?”
“My mother kept a music box.”
Rafe swung his legs off the bed.
“No.”
“No what?”
“You aren't going alone.”
“You aren't going anywhere.”
“I am.”
“You just had surgery.”
“I've had worse.”
“That isn't medically persuasive.”
June stepped between them.
“I'll drive.”
Both turned toward her.
June smiled.
“Problem solved.”
Forty-five minutes later they entered the Ward family house outside Boston.
Tessa hadn't been there in six months.
Everything smelled like cedar and old memories.
She led them upstairs.
Her mother’s bedroom remained nearly untouched.
On the dresser sat a small wooden music box.
Tessa lifted it.
Turned the key.
Nothing happened.
“The music box doesn't play anymore,” she whispered.
Rafe moved beside her.
Tessa examined the bottom.
There was a tiny recessed latch she had never noticed.
She pressed it.
The base opened.
Inside was a brass key.
And beneath it—
a photograph.
Tessa pulled it free.
Her father stood beside another man.
A younger Rafe Calder.
Behind them was a clinic.
Written on the back:
**Boston Federal Savings — Box 327.
Trust Rafe only if he still carries the medal.**
Tessa looked at the medallion around Rafe's neck.
He hadn't removed it.
Not once.
Then June whispered from the doorway.
“Rafe…”
They turned.
The front door downstairs had just opened.
Someone had entered the house.
And Tessa knew one thing with absolute certainty.
May you like
Nobody else was supposed to have a key.
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