Chapter 2 - The Man Outside Her Door
Emily followed Marcus into the private recovery room thirty minutes later even though hospital administration had ordered her to stay away from me.
She closed the door herself.
“You know my brother.”
It wasn’t a question.
Marcus glanced at me.
I dismissed him with a look.
When we were alone, Emily stepped closer to the bed.
“You recognized his name.”
“I recognized it.”
“From where?”
“Sit down.”
“No.”
“Emily.”
“Don’t use that voice with me.”
“What voice?”
“The one that probably makes grown men confess things.”
I almost smiled.
“Sit down because what I’m about to tell you isn’t something you should hear standing in a doorway.”
That finally stopped her.
She took the chair beside the bed but stayed on the edge of it.
Three years earlier, Thomas Carter had worked as an accountant for Larkin Freight, a transportation company operating out of Chicago’s South Side.
At least, that was what the public records said.
Larkin Freight also moved money.
Not drugs.
Not weapons.
Money.
Millions of dollars belonging to businessmen, corrupt contractors, gambling operations, and people who preferred cash to banks.
It wasn’t my company.
But some of my organizations had used it.
Thomas Carter had discovered numbers that didn’t match.
Then he had disappeared.
Emily listened without blinking.
“My brother told me he was doing an audit.”
“He probably was.”
“He said somebody at work was stealing.”
“That’s possible.”
“He called me the night before he disappeared.”
I waited.
Emily looked down at her hands.
“He told me if anything happened to him, I shouldn’t trust anyone who came asking questions.”
“Did anyone?”
“Police. Company lawyers. A private investigator.”
“Name?”
“Victor Sloane.”
My expression changed.
Emily noticed immediately.
“You know him too.”
I leaned back carefully.
Victor Sloane was the kind of man people hired when they wanted problems solved without paperwork.
Former cop.
Private security consultant.
Professional liar.
And until eighteen months earlier, someone my organization had occasionally used.
“He worked for people connected to me.”
Emily stood.
“So this is your fault.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You just told me my brother disappeared after discovering stolen money inside a company connected to your world, and then a man who worked for you questioned me.”
“He did not work for me directly.”
“That is an incredibly convenient distinction.”
“You asked for the truth.”
“I asked what happened to Thomas.”
“I don’t know.”
“Then why was his hospital badge used by someone trying to kill you tonight?”
That question bothered me too.
Thomas had never worked at the hospital according to anything I knew.
Yet the badge looked legitimate.
My phone rang.
Marcus.
I answered.
“Talk.”
“We checked Carter.”
Emily watched me.
“Thomas Carter’s employee record was created nine days ago,” Marcus said. “Temporary facilities department. Photo matches an old state ID.”
“He never worked here,” Emily said.
I repeated it.
Marcus continued. “Someone built the identity to get access.”
“Who approved the badge?”
“Administrator named Leonard Briggs.”
“Find him.”
“Trying.”
“Trying?”
“He left the building twenty minutes before the shooting.”
Of course he did.
“Get his home address.”
“Already moving.”
I ended the call.
Emily crossed her arms.
“You people say things like that very casually.”
“What?”
“Get his home address.”
“It’s an address.”
“It sounds threatening when you say it.”
“Everything sounds threatening when I say it.”
“That might be a personality problem.”
For the second time that night, she almost made me forget someone wanted me dead.
Almost.
“You need protection.”
“I need answers.”
“Protection first.”
“I have a locked apartment.”
“That’s adorable.”
She glared at me.
“My apartment is perfectly safe.”
“Does your building have armed security?”
“No.”
“Bulletproof glass?”
“No.”
“Controlled elevator access?”
“No.”
“Then it isn’t safe.”
“I am not moving into some criminal fortress because a stranger used my brother’s name.”
“You’re connected now.”
“To what?”
“To me.”
The words landed harder than I intended.
Emily went quiet.
So did I.
I meant the investigation.
The shooting.
The badge.
But something in the room shifted.
Emily was the first to look away.
“I finish my shift in forty minutes.”
“You’re not going home alone.”
“Yes, I am.”
“No.”
She stared at me.
“You understand that outside this room you have absolutely no authority over my life, right?”
“I understand.”
“Good.”
“You’re still not going home alone.”
She made an exhausted sound and walked out.
Forty-two minutes later, I heard Marcus arguing in the hallway.
Not with Emily.
With a wheelchair.
“You were shot six hours ago,” he said.
“I’m aware.”
“The doctor said overnight observation.”
“I’ve been observed.”
“You ripped stitches once.”
“Technicality.”
Marcus looked toward Emily, who was standing with her coat over one arm.
“Tell him.”
Emily stared at me.
“You should stay.”
“Thank you,” Marcus said.
I reached for my shirt.
Emily sighed.
“Why are powerful men always exhausting?”
Marcus smirked.
“She’s growing on me.”
“Marcus.”
“Quiet.”
He stopped smiling.
Emily’s eyebrows rose.
Apparently she enjoyed seeing that.
Eventually I compromised.
I stayed.
But I sent two men with her.
She discovered them when she reached the parking garage.
Then she marched right back upstairs.
My door opened so hard it hit the wall.
“You sent bodyguards after me?”
“Yes.”
“I told them to leave.”
“They won’t.”
“I threatened to call police.”
“They’ve met police.”
“That’s not reassuring.”
“Emily.”
“No. You don’t get to make decisions for me because someone shot at your room.”
“They used your brother’s identity.”
Her anger faded by one degree.
“That doesn’t mean they know who I am.”
“They fired through a window while you were standing beside me.”
Silence.
I softened my tone.
“Let them drive behind you. You don’t have to speak to them. You don’t have to acknowledge them. But tonight, they stay.”
She looked like she wanted to argue.
Then she remembered the shattered glass.
“Fine.”
The word sounded painful.
“Only tonight.”
“Of course.”
She narrowed her eyes.
“You’re lying.”
I gave her the smallest smile.
“Good night, Nurse Carter.”
Her apartment was in Lincoln Park above a bakery that opened before sunrise.
Marcus told me this because I asked.
He also told me she stopped at a twenty-four-hour pharmacy, bought pain reliever and coffee, and yelled at one of my men for parking in a handicapped space.
That sounded exactly right.
At 6:20 the next morning, my phone rang.
Marcus again.
“Leonard Briggs is gone.”
“Gone how?”
“Apartment emptied. Phone disconnected.”
“Family?”
“Divorced. One son in Seattle.”
“Airport?”
“No travel.”
“So somebody moved him.”
“Looks that way.”
I stared out the hospital window.
Chicago was turning gray beneath the morning sky.
“What about Thomas Carter?”
“We dug deeper.”
“And?”
“There was a sealed police report from three years ago.”
“Why sealed?”
“Federal request.”
That made me sit straighter.
Marcus continued.
“Thomas wasn’t just auditing Larkin Freight.”
“What was he doing?”
“He was feeding information to the FBI.”
I looked at the closed door.
Emily had no idea.
“What kind of information?”
“Financial transfers. Shell corporations. Political payments.”
“Names?”
“One of them is ours.”
That didn’t surprise me.
“What else?”
Marcus hesitated.
“Your father.”
That did.
My father, Patrick Callahan, had been dead for four years.
He had built the Callahan organization long before I inherited it.
Brutal man.
Brilliant man.
Terrible father.
“What did Thomas have on him?”
“We don’t know. The report references something called the Gray Ledger.”
My breathing stopped for half a second.
The Gray Ledger.
I knew exactly what it was.
A handwritten accounting book my father kept hidden from computers.
Bribes.
Judges.
Police officers.
Business owners.
Every person Patrick Callahan had paid, threatened, owned, or protected for twenty years.
After his death, I had searched for it.
Never found it.
If Thomas Carter had found that ledger, half the city could have wanted him dead.
Including people inside my organization.
My phone buzzed again.
Unknown number.
I answered.
Nothing.
Then a distorted voice spoke.
“Tell the nurse to stop asking about her brother.”
My hand tightened around the phone.
“Who is this?”
“If she keeps digging, she’ll disappear like Thomas.”
The call ended.
I was already moving.
Pain tore through my side as I stood.
Marcus caught me before I reached the door.
“What happened?”
“Get the car.”
“You can barely walk.”
“Get the damn car.”
Emily didn’t answer her phone.
Neither did the men watching her building.
That was when fear arrived.
Real fear.
I had been shot before.
Threatened before.
Betrayed before.
None of it felt like this.
We reached Lincoln Park in eleven minutes.
One of my SUVs sat crooked against the curb.
Driver’s door open.
No driver.
I stepped out before Marcus could stop me.
The bakery downstairs had just begun setting tables.
The front door to Emily’s building was unlocked.
Third floor.
Apartment 3B.
Door half open.
“Emily!”
No answer.
I drew my weapon and entered.
The living room was empty.
Coffee mug broken on the floor.
A chair overturned.
Curtain moving beside an open window.
Marcus checked the bedroom.
“Clear.”
Bathroom.
“Clear.”
Then I saw blood.
A small smear near the kitchen counter.
My stomach turned cold.
Beside it lay Emily’s hospital ID badge.
And underneath the badge was a folded piece of paper.
I picked it up.
Three handwritten words.
SHE KNOWS NOTHING.
On the back was an address.
An abandoned church on West Adams Street.
Marcus read it over my shoulder.
“It’s a trap.”
“I know.”
“You’re wounded.”
“I know.”
“You can’t go.”
I looked at him.
He stopped talking.
Twenty minutes later, we were inside the church.
Dust covered the pews.
Morning light cut through broken stained-glass windows.
No Emily.
Then I heard a phone ring.
A cheap burner phone sat on the altar.
I answered.
The same distorted voice.
“You came alone?”
“No.”
A laugh.
“Of course not.”
“Where is she?”
“Safe.”
“For now.”
“What do you want?”
“The Gray Ledger.”
“I don’t have it.”
“Your father did.”
“My father is dead.”
“And Thomas Carter found what Patrick Callahan hid.”
I looked at Marcus.
“Thomas is alive?”
Silence.
Then the voice said something that changed everything.
“Ask Emily why her brother called her three weeks ago.”
The line went dead.
I stared at the phone.
Emily had told me Thomas had been missing for three years.
Not dead.
Missing.
But she had never mentioned a recent call.
Before I could process it, footsteps sounded behind us.
I turned.
Emily stood near the church entrance.
Alive.
Coat torn.
Hair loose.
Fury in her eyes.
Marcus raised his weapon.
“Don’t.”
I lowered mine.
Emily walked toward me.
“You followed the address.”
“You were taken.”
“No.”
“What?”
“I escaped before they got me into the car.”
“Then why didn’t you call?”
“My phone was gone.”
“And the blood?”
“Cut my hand on the window.”
She lifted her palm.
Small bandage.
I stared at her.
“Did Thomas call you three weeks ago?”
Emily froze.
That was answer enough.
My voice dropped.
“You lied to me.”
Her eyes filled—not with fear this time, but guilt.
“He called for eleven seconds.”
“What did he say?”
She looked around the abandoned church, as though the walls might be listening.
Then she whispered the sentence her brother had given her after three years of silence.
“He said, ‘Emily, Richard Callahan is not the man you need to fear.’”
A cold weight settled in my chest.
“What else?”
“He said there was someone close to you.”
“How close?”
She looked directly at me.
“Close enough to know where you sleep.”
Before I could answer, my phone vibrated.
A security alert from my house.
One line.
PERIMETER BREACHED.
Then another.
MASTER BEDROOM ACCESS DETECTED.
Someone wasn’t just hunting Emily.
Someone was inside my home.
And only seven people in Chicago had ever been given that access.
One of them was standing beside me.
May you like
Marcus Vale.
---
