Chapter 2 - The Name That Changed the Room
“No.”
It was the only word my brain could produce.
Dominic Vale held Caleb’s access card between two fingers while four armed-looking men watched me react.
“No,” I repeated. “Caleb has never been here.”
Dominic tilted his head.
“You were looking directly at him inside my nightclub ten minutes ago.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Do I?”
I hated his calmness.
I hated the room.
I hated Caleb most of all.
“He told me he was meeting a client.”
Dominic glanced at Marco.
“Interesting client.”
My stomach twisted as Chloe’s face flashed through my memory.
“Maybe she was the client.”
Marco actually smiled.
Dominic didn’t.
“What does Chloe do?”
“She’s a marketing consultant.”
“For?”
“Different companies. Freelance mostly.”
“What companies?”
“I don’t interrogate my friends before brunch.”
“You might want to start.”
My eyes burned.
“Can you stop talking about me like I’m an idiot?”
That changed the room again.
The guards looked at Dominic.
Apparently people didn’t speak to Dominic Vale that way.
He looked at me for a long moment.
Then, unexpectedly, he pulled out the chair again.
“Sit.”
“I’m tired of being ordered around.”
“Then consider it a suggestion.”
“A suggestion made inside a locked room?”
His jaw moved.
Then he walked to the door and unlocked the deadbolt.
He stepped aside.
“There.”
I stared.
“You can leave.”
That was too easy.
“Really?”
“Yes.”
I looked toward the hallway.
Dominic returned the key card to the table.
“But before you walk through that door, understand something.”
I waited.
“Someone put Caleb’s restricted access card inside your purse.”
My hand tightened around the strap.
“Someone disabled a security door seconds before you reached it. Caleb appeared in a club he knew he was forbidden from entering. And according to you, you happened to discover him betraying you minutes before you accidentally entered the one private room in this building he has spent months trying to access.”
My feet stayed planted.
Dominic didn’t smile.
“That’s either an extraordinary sequence of coincidences, Harper…”
My pulse skipped.
“I never told you my name.”
Marco lifted my driver’s license.
“Right.”
Dominic finished quietly.
“…or somebody wanted you moving exactly where you moved.”
The open doorway suddenly looked less like freedom.
“Why would Caleb want me in here?”
“That,” Dominic said, “is a question I would very much like answered.”
I turned toward him.
“Why was he banned?”
Nobody spoke.
Dominic walked back to the mahogany table.
“Caleb used to work for one of my companies.”
My confusion deepened.
“He told me he had been at Halcyon for six years.”
“He has.”
Dominic poured another drink but didn’t touch it.
“Before that, he spent eleven months as a financial consultant for Vale Logistics.”
I remembered Caleb saying his first Chicago job had been “boring audit work.”
That suddenly sounded different.
“What happened?”
“He copied confidential financial records.”
“Why?”
“We never proved that.”
“You fired him?”
“Yes.”
“And banned him from your properties?”
“After he tried to enter one of our secure offices six weeks later.”
The words landed slowly.
“That doesn’t sound like Caleb.”
Dominic looked directly at me.
“Neither did kissing your best friend fifteen minutes ago.”
That hurt because it was true.
I sat.
Not because he ordered me.
Because my legs no longer felt trustworthy.
Dominic pulled the access card closer.
“Did Caleb give you this purse?”
I looked down.
The red leather handbag had been a birthday present.
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Three months ago.”
“Does he ever borrow it?”
“What man borrows his fiancée’s handbag?”
Marco answered from behind him.
“One planting evidence.”
I turned sharply.
Dominic gave Marco a warning look.
But the thought was already inside my head.
“What kind of evidence?”
Dominic tapped the key card.
“This, for a start.”
I stared.
“Why frame me?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then stop acting like you know everything.”
A brief flash appeared in Dominic’s eyes.
Not anger.
Approval, strangely.
“Good.”
“What?”
“Stay angry. Fear makes people accept convenient explanations.”
I didn’t know whether that was advice or manipulation.
Maybe both.
A knock sounded at another door.
A guard entered quickly.
“We found West.”
Dominic stood.
My heart jumped.
“Where?”
“Security cameras caught him leaving through the north exit four minutes ago.”
“With Chloe?”
“Yes.”
My chest tightened.
Of course Caleb ran.
The guard continued.
“They got into separate vehicles.”
Dominic frowned.
“Separate?”
“Yes.”
“Track both.”
Harper the devastated fiancée wanted Caleb chased down.
Harper the rational adult understood that a suspected criminal organization tracking her fiancé was probably not comforting.
“What happens when you find him?”
Dominic looked at me.
“We talk.”
“Your version of talking?”
“My version usually involves sentences.”
Marco looked at the floor to hide another smile.
I crossed my arms.
“I want to go home.”
Dominic’s expression changed.
“Do you live with Caleb?”
“Yes.”
“You’re not going home.”
“There we go again.”
“Harper.”
It was the first time he used my first name.
“You entered a restricted room carrying stolen security credentials belonging to a man involved in something I haven’t fully identified yet. If Caleb planted that card on you, your apartment may be the last place you should go.”
“My cat is there.”
Dominic blinked.
“What?”
“My cat.”
He stared at me.
“Your objection to a possible security threat is that your cat is home?”
“His name is Winston, he has anxiety, and Caleb forgets to feed him.”
For one unbelievable second Dominic Vale looked like he might laugh.
He didn’t.
“Marco.”
“Yes?”
“Send someone for the cat.”
“No.”
Dominic looked at me.
“You are not sending one of your terrifying men to kidnap Winston.”
“We’ll bring him here.”
“This is a nightclub.”
“Not here. Somewhere safe.”
“Where?”
Dominic paused.
“My penthouse.”
I laughed.
Actually laughed.
“No.”
“You prefer a hotel?”
“I prefer my normal life.”
His face softened by one almost invisible degree.
“I suspect your normal life ended before you walked through my door.”
That silenced me.
My cracked phone vibrated suddenly.
Every man in the room looked toward it.
I pulled it from my purse.
A text message.
CALEB.
My hands became cold.
WHERE ARE YOU?
A second message appeared.
HARPER, PLEASE ANSWER ME.
Then a third.
YOU MISUNDERSTOOD WHAT YOU SAW.
The old Harper would have wanted to believe that.
My stomach turned.
I typed.
YOU WERE KISSING CHLOE.
Three dots appeared immediately.
IT WASN’T WHAT YOU THINK.
I almost threw the phone.
Dominic watched me carefully.
“Ask him where he is.”
“Why?”
“Because right now he believes you know nothing.”
“I do know nothing.”
“That makes you useful.”
“To you?”
“To finding out why your fiancé apparently wanted you inside this room.”
I hated that he made sense.
I typed.
WHERE ARE YOU?
Caleb responded.
AT HOME. PLEASE COME BACK SO WE CAN TALK.
Dominic held out his hand.
“May I?”
I hesitated, then handed him the phone.
He read the message.
“Security saw him driving south twelve minutes ago.”
“So?”
“Your apartment is north.”
My throat tightened.
“He’s lying.”
“Yes.”
Dominic handed the phone back.
Then Caleb sent something else.
A photograph.
It was our living room.
Winston sat on the sofa.
The digital clock beside the television read 11:46.
Current time.
My breath stopped.
“He is home.”
Dominic’s expression hardened.
Marco stepped closer.
“What?”
Dominic enlarged the photograph.
Then turned the screen toward me.
“Is that your living room?”
“Yes.”
“Anything different?”
I looked.
Couch.
Wedding magazines.
Bookshelf.
Lamp.
Winston.
Nothing.
Then I saw it.
The picture frame on the table behind Winston.
It normally contained a photograph of Caleb and me at Lake Michigan.
Now it contained a plain white sheet of paper.
Three typed words were visible.
COME HOME ALONE.
My skin went cold.
Dominic was already moving.
“Lock down the building.”
I stood.
“My cat—”
“Harper.”
Dominic turned toward me, and whatever controlled civility had existed moments earlier was gone.
“Caleb isn’t asking you to come home.”
He showed me the photograph again.
“He’s telling us he knows exactly where you are.”
May you like
And beneath Winston’s paw, almost hidden against the sofa cushion, lay a second black access card.
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