Chapter 1 - The Dead Man Who Knew My Husband
My three-year-old son lay across a dead man's chest and whispered:
"Captain Bear will keep you warm."
Mafia boss Alessandro Romano opened his eyes and closed one hand around a gold wedding ring.
Inside the band were three tiny characters.
C.W.D.
I suddenly knew the ring had belonged to my husband.
For several seconds, nobody moved.
Not the doctor standing at the foot of the bed.
Not the nurse staring at the heart monitor.
Not the four men in black suits who had spent the last three hours terrifying everyone on the VIP floor.
And definitely not me.
My name is Catherine Winters.
At that moment, however, I barely remembered it.
All I knew was that my son Logan was lying on top of a man who had been pronounced dead less than five minutes earlier.
And that man was staring at me like he had been waiting two years for me to arrive.
"David Winters," Alessandro Romano rasped again.
My knees almost gave out.
One of the suited men stepped toward the bed.
He was enormous, with a shaved head and dried blood across one cuff.
"Boss, don't talk."
Alessandro ignored him.
His dark eyes remained fixed on mine.
"How do you know my husband?" I whispered.
Logan lifted his head.
"Mommy?"
That broke whatever spell had frozen me.
I rushed forward.
Two guards reacted instantly.
Hands moved beneath jackets.
The older doctor snapped, "Nobody pulls a weapon in my trauma room."
The largest guard didn't even look at him.
I stopped beside the bed.
"Logan, come here."
My son frowned.
"But he's cold."
"Now."
Logan reluctantly sat up.
Alessandro's hand remained loosely around his small wrist, not restraining him, almost as if he feared the boy might vanish.
Then the monitor beeped again.
A nurse rushed forward.
"Pulse is getting stronger."
"That's impossible," another doctor said.
Apparently it wasn't.
Alessandro drew another shallow breath.
The doctor began checking him while ordering blood pressure, oxygen and another scan.
Nobody seemed to understand how a man with no detectable pulse minutes earlier was suddenly conscious.
I didn't care.
My entire world had narrowed to the ring in his hand.
It was gold.
Simple.
Scratched near the bottom.
Exactly where David's ring had been scratched after he caught it against the metal frame of our old apartment balcony.
I remembered laughing when it happened.
David had examined the mark and said, "Good. Now it looks married."
I had buried that ring with him.
I knew I had.
I had touched it before they closed the coffin.
My fingers started trembling.
"Where did you get that?"
Alessandro's eyes shifted toward the guards.
The large one immediately understood.
"Lock the door."
A click sounded behind me.
I turned.
"Open it."
No one moved.
My supervisor had warned me to stay away from the VIP wing.
She had told me to finish cleaning and keep my head down.
If she could see me now, she would probably faint.
I was a night-shift cleaner standing in a locked trauma room with Baltimore's most feared organized-crime figure, four armed men, several doctors, and a child who thought teddy bears could resurrect people.
"Mommy," Logan whispered, "is Daddy's ring?"
Every head turned toward him.
My chest tightened.
"Yes."
Alessandro closed his eyes briefly.
Pain crossed his face.
The doctor leaned over him.
"Mr. Romano, you've suffered massive blood loss. You need to remain still."
Alessandro opened his eyes.
"Get the woman and the boy somewhere secure."
The guard nodded.
I stared at him.
"We aren't going anywhere with your men."
"Then you'll die here."
The statement was so calm that it frightened me more than a threat would have.
"What?"
"The people who shot me know who David Winters was."
My skin went cold.
Two years earlier, a police officer had come to my apartment at 4:36 in the morning.
David had supposedly been driving home after helping a friend with a broken-down truck.
A drunk driver crossed the center line.
There had been a fire.
Identification was difficult.
His wallet survived.
His dental records matched.
The funeral happened four days later.
I had been six weeks postpartum.
I barely remembered standing beside the grave.
I remembered Logan crying in my mother's arms.
I remembered rain.
I remembered David's closed coffin.
And I remembered pressing my hand against the wood and promising him I would raise our son to know what kind of man his father had been.
A good man.
A building-systems engineer.
A father who sang terrible country songs while changing diapers.
A husband who left sticky notes on our refrigerator.
Nothing about that life included mafia bosses.
"You're lying," I said.
Alessandro looked almost sympathetic.
"I wish I were."
The large guard stepped closer.
"Boss, we need to move."
"No."
"Whoever hit the convoy knows you're alive."
Alessandro's gaze sharpened.
"That's why she can't leave."
I pulled Logan into my arms.
He clutched Captain Bear against my neck.
"I don't know anything about you."
Alessandro's eyes dropped to my son.
"You know more than you think."
I hated him instantly for saying it.
"David is dead."
"No."
The word hit harder than a scream.
I stared at him.
"Don't."
"He survived the crash."
"Stop."
"The vehicle was staged."
"Stop."
"David Winters disappeared because someone needed Catherine Winters and her newborn son to believe he was buried."
I slapped him.
The crack echoed across the trauma room.
Several guards moved.
Alessandro raised one hand.
They stopped.
The doctor looked appalled.
I barely noticed.
Tears burned behind my eyes.
"Don't use my husband to frighten me."
Alessandro touched his split lip.
Then he looked at the wedding ring.
"He gave me this eighteen months ago."
My breath left my body.
Eighteen months.
David had supposedly been dead for two years.
"That's impossible."
"He told me that if anything happened to him, I was to find Catherine and Logan."
I stared at him.
"Then why didn't you?"
Something changed in his expression.
Shame.
"I was trying."
"Trying for eighteen months?"
"Your husband made enemies who watched you more closely than you knew. Anyone approaching you openly could have gotten you killed."
I thought of collection calls.
Late-night shifts.
A broken heater last winter.
Walking two miles because I couldn't afford a rideshare after the bus stopped running.
I laughed once.
It sounded ugly.
"So my supposedly alive husband watched me struggle?"
"I didn't say he was free."
The room seemed to tilt.
"What does that mean?"
Alessandro turned toward the large guard.
"Marco."
The man approached.
"Bring her the photograph."
Marco hesitated.
"Here?"
"Now."
He reached inside his suit jacket.
I tensed.
Instead of a gun, he removed a folded photograph sealed inside a transparent evidence sleeve.
He handed it to me.
My fingers shook as I opened it.
The photograph had been taken in what looked like a warehouse.
Alessandro stood near the center.
He looked younger.
Beside him were three men.
I recognized none of them at first.
Then my eyes reached the man at the far right.
My heart stopped.
He had a beard.
His hair was longer.
There was a scar across his eyebrow I had never seen.
But I knew the shape of those shoulders.
The crooked half smile.
The way he stood with one foot turned slightly outward because he had fractured his ankle playing baseball in high school.
David.
My husband.
Alive.
A date had been printed in the lower corner.
Eight months after his funeral.
"No."
My voice barely existed.
I dropped into the chair beside the bed.
Logan climbed onto my lap.
He looked at the photograph.
"Who's that?"
I couldn't answer.
His little finger touched David's face.
"Looks like Daddy picture."
I began crying.
Not loudly.
There was no dramatic collapse.
Something inside me simply cracked.
I had spent two years grieving a man who might have been alive.
Two years telling our son his father loved him from heaven.
Two years sleeping on one side of the bed because I couldn't stand the empty space.
And somewhere, during at least part of that time, David had been breathing.
"Where is he?" I whispered.
Alessandro didn't answer.
I raised my head.
"Where is my husband?"
His silence frightened me more than anything else.
"Answer me."
"I don't know."
"You expect me to believe that?"
"I last saw David eleven months ago."
My stomach twisted.
"What happened?"
"He discovered someone inside my organization was working with a federal contractor, several city officials, and a private security group."
"What does that have to do with him?"
"Everything."
Alessandro looked toward the door.
Then back at me.
"David wasn't a building engineer."
I almost laughed again.
"Yes, he was."
"He used that job as cover."
"For what?"
Alessandro studied me carefully.
"Finding people who sold government surveillance technology to criminal networks."
My head shook automatically.
"No."
"David worked for a classified investigative unit."
"No."
"He infiltrated organizations like mine."
"No."
"He infiltrated mine."
I stood so quickly Logan nearly slipped.
I caught him.
"You're saying my husband was some kind of spy?"
"He hated that word."
The absurdity of that sentence almost broke me.
The David I knew forgot passwords.
He burned pancakes.
He cried when Logan was born.
He once spent forty minutes trying to assemble a crib backward.
That man had not infiltrated a criminal empire.
Except the photograph said otherwise.
Alessandro continued.
"At first, David was assigned to collect evidence against me."
I looked at him.
"Then why would you help him?"
"Because he discovered I wasn't the person his superiors were really after."
"Who were they after?"
Before Alessandro could answer, a violent burst of static came through Marco's radio.
A voice shouted something unintelligible.
Marco's face changed.
"What?"
He pressed the receiver.
"Repeat."
Static.
Then:
"East stairwell compromised."
The guards immediately drew their weapons.
The nurse gasped.
Marco locked eyes with Alessandro.
"They found us."
I tightened my arms around Logan.
"What is happening?"
Marco crossed to the lights and switched half of them off.
Another guard moved beside the door.
The doctor whispered, "This is a hospital."
Nobody answered him.
Alessandro looked directly at me.
"Catherine, listen carefully."
A heavy metallic sound came from the hallway.
Once.
Twice.
Like someone striking the locked security door.
"Take Logan into the bathroom."
I didn't move.
"Catherine."
"Who is out there?"
Alessandro's expression became colder than anything I had seen.
"The same people who arranged your husband's funeral."
The lights suddenly died.
Logan screamed.
Emergency red lighting flickered on.
Then somebody on the other side of the trauma-room door knocked three times.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
A man's voice came through the door.
"Catherine Winters?"
Every guard raised his weapon.
May you like
The voice continued.
"David sent me."
