Chapter 2 - The Name He Shouldn't Know
Enzo drew his weapon.
Rachel moved instinctively toward Caleb.
The door handle turned again.
Locked.
Three knocks.
Two.
One.
“Who is it?” Enzo demanded.
No answer.
Caleb whispered one word.
“Marco.”
Enzo looked at him.
“Impossible.”
Rachel's patience snapped.
“Who is Marco?”
Neither man answered.
Enzo opened the door abruptly.
The hallway was empty.
One of Caleb's guards lay unconscious near the nurses' station.
Beside him rested a white envelope.
Enzo picked it up.
“Don't touch it,” Rachel said.
He already had.
Inside was a single photograph.
Rachel recognized herself.
It had been taken that morning outside her apartment.
On the back:
FORTY-SEVEN SECONDS CHANGED NOTHING.
Rachel's blood ran cold.
Caleb held out his hand.
Enzo gave him the photograph.
Caleb stared at it for a long time.
“Get her somewhere safe.”
Rachel laughed once.
“No.”
Both men looked at her.
“You don't get to turn my life into a spy movie and then move me around like luggage.”
“Someone followed you.”
“Then tell me why.”
Caleb's jaw tightened.
“Your father worked for me.”
Rachel stared.
“That photograph was taken eleven years ago. You would've been—”
“Twenty-four.”
“What kind of work?”
Caleb looked away.
“Accounting.”
“That's a lie.”
His eyes returned to hers.
“Yes.”
The honesty startled her.
“Try again.”
“He kept records.”
“Of what?”
“Everything.”
Rachel understood.
Money.
Crimes.
Names.
Her father, who packed her lunches and fell asleep watching baseball, had worked for Caleb Rossi.
“You're telling me my father was a criminal.”
“No.”
“Then what?”
Caleb hesitated.
“A witness.”
Daniel Hayes had been an accountant at a shipping company. Rachel remembered that much. He had complained about long hours but never about danger.
Caleb explained that Daniel discovered money moving through shell companies connected to Caleb's organization.
Instead of running to police, Daniel approached Caleb.
“Why?”
“Because some of the transactions weren't mine.”
Someone inside Caleb's organization had been stealing money and using Rossi businesses to finance something worse.
Weapons trafficking.
Human trafficking.
Corrupt officials.
Daniel had found the ledger.
Then he had died.
Rachel backed away.
“You knew he was in danger.”
“Yes.”
“And you did nothing.”
“I tried.”
“He died.”
“I know.”
Her voice broke.
“You knew for eleven years?”
“Yes.”
Rachel slapped him.
Enzo moved.
Caleb raised one hand.
“Don't.”
Rachel's eyes burned.
“You let my mother and me believe he fell asleep driving.”
“I kept you alive.”
“You don't get credit for that.”
“No.”
The answer robbed her anger of its target.
Caleb looked exhausted.
“I thought the people responsible were dead.”
“Marco?”
“Marco Bellini.”
Caleb's former adviser.
His mentor.
The man who had taught him how power worked.
And the man Caleb believed ordered Daniel Hayes's murder.
“Marco died eleven years ago,” Caleb said. “Three weeks after your father.”
“How?”
“Warehouse fire.”
“Body?”
Silence.
Rachel almost laughed.
“You never found one.”
Caleb shook his head.
Her phone vibrated.
Unknown number.
A text.
ASK CALEB WHAT DANIEL SAID BEFORE HE DIED.
Rachel showed him.
Caleb's face changed.
“What did my father say?”
“Rachel.”
“What did he say?”
Caleb stared at the photograph.
Then finally:
“He told me there was one person I could never trust.”
“Who?”
Another message arrived.
Rachel looked down.
This one contained a photograph.
Her mother.
Sitting inside her house.
Taken through a window.
Rachel stopped breathing.
Below it were six words.
ASK HIM WHO PULLED THE TRIGGER.
Rachel looked at Caleb.
He already knew.
She could see it.
“Who shot my father?”
Caleb opened his mouth.
May you like
The lights went out.
And from the darkness beside Rachel, a man's voice whispered her name.
