Chapter 1 - Fifty-Three Minutes Late
The elevator doors opened at 11:53 p.m.
Declan Morrow heard the dripping before he saw me.
Rainwater hit the polished black marble in slow, uneven drops. For one strange second, that was all I could hear—the rain falling from the hem of my tan coat and the mechanical hum of the private elevator behind me.
Then someone stopped talking.
Then everyone did.
Declan's penthouse office had never been a quiet place. Even near midnight, there were usually phones ringing, security men moving between rooms, lawyers whispering into headsets, somebody waiting outside the conference room with paperwork that could change the financial future of half a dozen companies.
That night, five men stood around the long marble table beneath the chandelier.
Every one of them stared at me.
But I only saw Declan.
He had been standing near the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Chicago River, one hand in his pocket, the lights of the city burning behind him. His black jacket was open. His dark hair looked as though he'd run his fingers through it several times.
He looked irritated.
For approximately half a second.
Then he saw my face.
The irritation disappeared.
I was fifty-three minutes late.
My left eye was almost swollen shut. My lip was split. My hair was wet enough to stick against my cheeks, and my coat felt like it weighed twenty pounds.
My right leg had stopped cooperating somewhere between the parking garage and the street.
I had reached the penthouse mostly through stubbornness.
I tried to smile.
“Sorry I'm late.”
Declan took one step toward me.
The floor moved.
Or maybe I did.
My hand slipped from the elevator frame.
“Gemma.”
There are moments when your body stops caring about your dignity.
Mine chose that one.
My right knee buckled, pain shot up my leg, and the marble came rushing toward me.
Declan crossed the room before I hit it.
One arm went around my waist. The other caught me beneath the shoulders.
The sudden movement shifted my leg.
I screamed.
Every man in the room froze.
Declan lowered himself with me rather than letting me fall.
“I've got you.”
His voice sounded wrong.
Too controlled.
Too quiet.
“I tried to get here faster.”
“Stop talking.”
“I couldn't drive.”
“Gemma.”
“I took a cab, but the driver wouldn't—”
“I said stop.”
Normally, I would have told Declan Morrow exactly where he could put an order delivered in that tone.
That night I didn't.
Because he had looked at my leg.
And something behind his eyes went cold.
Not angry.
Cold.
There was a difference.
Anger was loud.
Declan's anger could make experienced men stop breathing.
Cold was worse.
“Who did this?”
“Get me off the floor first.”
My voice sounded embarrassingly small.
His jaw tightened.
“Please.”
That word got him moving.
“Everything hurts.”
He lifted me.
I had never been a small woman.
I had spent enough years hearing comments about my size to build an entire personality around pretending they never bothered me. Boys in high school. Doctors who blamed every symptom on weight. Sales clerks who looked me up and down before telling me what sizes they carried.
And one spectacularly stupid former supervisor who once suggested that people might “take my financial presentations more seriously” if I lost thirty pounds.
Declan had fired him three weeks later.
Officially, it was for stealing expense-account money.
Unofficially, I always wondered.
Now Declan carried me across the office as though gravity had become negotiable.
“Clear the sofa,” he ordered.
Two men moved instantly.
The most surprised face in the room belonged to Sheldon Farris.
I noticed it.
I didn't understand it yet.
Sheldon had worked beside Declan's father before Declan inherited the Morrow organization. He was nearly seventy, silver-haired and immaculate, with the manners of an old-school banker and the eyes of a man who had survived things nobody discussed over dinner.
I'd always liked him.
That fact would bother me later.
Declan lowered me onto the leather sofa.
The moment he moved away, I grabbed his wrist.
“The phone.”
“What phone?”
“The encrypted one.”
His expression changed.
Everyone else's did too.
“It was in my bag.”
“Where is it?”
“They took it.”
No one moved.
The phone contained six weeks of work.
But calling it work was like calling a hurricane weather.
I was a forensic accountant.
Seventeen months earlier, Declan had hired me to audit Morrow Holdings after I found a $2.3 million discrepancy during a routine consulting assignment.
Most legitimate executives would have thanked me.
Declan had stared at me for thirty seconds and asked how many other discrepancies I thought I could find.
My answer had been, “How much are you paying me?”
That was how our relationship began.
Six weeks ago, I found something different.
Shell companies.
Property transfers.
Payments that appeared in one system but vanished from another.
Shipping contracts that should not have existed.
And routing information connected to the part of Declan's empire that nobody discussed in writing.
The encrypted phone held copies.
Not originals.
But enough.
In the wrong hands, hundreds of people could be compromised.
Including Declan.
Including me.
Declan pulled out his own phone.
“Doctor first.”
“Declan—”
“Doctor.”
He made the call.
Nineteen seconds.
Then he crouched in front of me.
“Stay awake.”
“I wasn't planning to sleep.”
“Good.”
“You look angry.”
“I am.”
“At me?”
His expression flickered.
“No.”
That should have comforted me.
It didn't.
Doc Riordan arrived eleven minutes later.
I knew because I watched the clock.
12:04 a.m.
By then the room had been cleared except for Declan, Sheldon, and two security men.
Riordan cut open the lower part of my pants and examined the leg.
I looked away.
“Compound fibula fracture,” he said.
Declan's hand closed around the edge of the table.
“Three cracked ribs. Scalp laceration. Orbital contusion.”
“English,” I muttered.
“You've had a terrible night.”
“I'd figured that out.”
He almost smiled.
Almost.
“No sign of internal bleeding. That's what matters.”
“Lucky,” he added.
I hated that word immediately.
Lucky people didn't crawl behind a concrete pillar while strangers searched their handbag.
Lucky people didn't hear their bones make sounds bones shouldn't make.
Lucky people didn't drag themselves through a parking garage because they were afraid the next person who arrived might be worse than the first two.
Declan sat beside me while Riordan stabilized my leg.
At one point I grabbed his hand.
Hard.
Another man might have complained.
Declan didn't even look down.
When the doctor finally finished, he turned toward Declan.
“She needs a hospital.”
“No hospital,” I said.
Both men looked at me.
“Gemma—”
“No.”
Riordan frowned.
“You need imaging.”
“Tomorrow.”
“Tonight.”
“Tomorrow.”
Declan stared at me.
I stared back.
He knew me well enough to realize something besides stubbornness was keeping me there.
He finally asked, “Why?”
I swallowed.
“Because I haven't told you the worst part.”
The entire room changed.
Riordan packed his equipment quickly after that.
Before leaving, he gave Declan instructions and made me promise I'd go for imaging at first light.
When the elevator closed behind him, Chicago glittered beyond the windows as though nothing terrible had happened at all.
Declan pulled a chair directly in front of me.
Sheldon remained near the bar.
The two security men stood by the door.
“Tell me,” Declan said.
I took a breath.
“Two men were waiting in the Huron garage.”
Declan didn't blink.
“They knew I park on level three.”
His eyes narrowed.
“They knew my car.”
Nothing.
“They knew what time I normally leave.”
His jaw tightened.
“They asked for one thing.”
“The phone.”
“Yes.”
“Did they call it a phone?”
I looked at him.
That question was why Declan was dangerous.
Not because he shouted.
Because he listened.
“They called it the ledger device.”
Sheldon shifted behind him.
A tiny movement.
Almost nothing.
I noticed anyway.
Declan did too.
He didn't turn around.
“Continue.”
“One of them grabbed my bag. I fought him.”
“Gemma.”
“What?”
“You fought two men?”
“I was attached to the bag.”
For half a second, something almost human crossed his face.
Then it disappeared.
“They found the phone,” I continued. “And the second man made a call.”
“To confirm possession?”
“Yes.”
“Speaker?”
“No.”
“How did you hear the other person?”
“The garage was quiet.”
I paused.
“And the man repeated part of what he heard.”
Declan leaned forward.
“What part?”
I could hear the voice again.
A stranger holding the phone.
Listening.
Then repeating the instruction.
Tell Mr. Farris we have it.
I had been on the concrete behind my car, tasting blood, pretending I was more dazed than I really was.
Then the attacker said the name.
And somebody answered loudly enough through his earpiece for me to recognize the voice.
A voice I had heard every Monday morning for seventeen months.
A voice that always asked whether I wanted coffee.
A voice belonging to a man standing twelve feet away from me now.
I looked at Declan.
That was the reason I had dragged myself across Chicago instead of calling.
Some names were too dangerous for telephones.
“Whose voice?” he asked.
My gaze shifted.
Sheldon saw it.
For the first time that night, the old man's polished expression cracked.
Just slightly.
I turned back to Declan.
“Sheldon Farris.”
Silence.
Declan didn't move.
Neither did I.
Behind him, Sheldon exhaled slowly.
“Gemma,” he said, “you've had a traumatic experience.”
I looked at him.
He sounded exactly like the man on the call.
“I know what I heard.”
“Head injuries can create confusion.”
Declan raised one hand.
Sheldon stopped.
That simple gesture frightened me more than shouting would have.
Declan stood.
He turned toward the man who had known him since childhood.
The man who had attended his mother's funeral.
The man Declan once called family.
And for the first time in seventeen months of knowing Declan Morrow, I saw something stronger than anger cross his face.
Betrayal.
Sheldon straightened his tie.
Then he made the worst mistake of his life.
He smiled.
“Declan,” he said calmly, “before you believe her, I think you should ask where Gemma was during those missing fifty-three minutes.”
My stomach dropped.
Because until that moment, I hadn't told anyone there were fifty-three minutes I couldn't fully account for.
May you like
And Sheldon Farris had just revealed that he already knew.
---
