Chapter 1 - The Man Who Was Supposed to Die
Dominic’s hand caught Grace’s wrist as the monitor screamed.
“Are you real?” he whispered.
Grace looked down and saw a silver crucifix tangled beneath his blood-soaked shirt.
There was a tiny engraving on its back.
G.W.
Grace suddenly knew this shooting had something to do with her.
For half a second, she stopped breathing.
Then the monitor shrieked again.
“Grace!”
The resident’s voice snapped her back into the trauma bay.
Dominic Vale’s eyes rolled shut. His grip slipped from her wrist, leaving a streak of blood across her skin.
“Pressure’s dropping!”
“Get another line in!”
“I need O-negative now!”
Grace moved.
Fear could wait.
Questions could wait.
The dying man in front of her could not.
She pressed both hands where the bleeding was worst while another nurse cut away the rest of his ruined shirt. Three gunshot wounds. One high near the shoulder. One along the ribs. The third was lower and uglier, bleeding despite everything they did.
Outside the glass doors stood six men in black.
None spoke.
Marcus Reed stood closest.
The scar through his eyebrow made his expression look permanently severe, but Grace had worked trauma long enough to recognize what lived beneath that face.
Fear.
Not fear for himself.
Fear that Dominic Vale would die.
“Grace, he’s crashing.”
She bent closer.
“Mr. Vale. Dominic. Stay with me.”
Nothing.
She repositioned his airway.
His lips were cold.
The next seconds became procedure rather than emotion. Oxygen. Compression. Medication. Another alarm.
Then Grace leaned down and gave him the rescue breath that became the one moment she would remember long after she forgot the blood.
It was not romantic.
It was desperate.
Necessary.
Clinical.
But when she lifted her head, Dominic’s eyes opened.
Gray eyes found hers.
For one impossible second, everyone else vanished.
His fingers rose weakly and caught her wrist again.
“Grace,” he breathed.
Then his eyes closed.
The heartbeat steadied.
Grace stared at him.
She had never told him her name.
Not tonight.
Someone behind her said, “We have an OR.”
The stretcher moved.
Grace released him and watched surgeons rush Dominic toward the elevator.
Marcus remained behind.
His gaze had fallen to the crucifix.
Grace looked down too.
“Does that belong to him?”
“Yes.”
“Why does it have my initials on it?”
Marcus’s eyes rose.
For the first time, his composure broke.
Only slightly.
But Grace saw it.
“You’re sure those are your initials?”
“My name is Grace Walker.”
“I know.”
That answer chilled her.
“How?”
Marcus glanced toward the elevator into which Dominic had disappeared.
Then back at Grace.
“Because he knew your name before tonight.”
Grace stared at him.
“That’s impossible.”
Marcus said nothing.
“I have never met Dominic Vale.”
“I didn’t say you had.”
“Then why would he know me?”
Marcus’s jaw tightened.
“That’s something you should ask him.”
“If he survives.”
“He’ll survive.”
“You sound certain.”
Marcus looked toward the closed elevator.
“You don’t know Dominic.”
Grace stripped off her bloody gloves.
“No. And I’d like to keep it that way.”
She walked toward the sink.
Marcus followed.
“You may not have that choice anymore.”
Grace turned.
“Is that a threat?”
“No.”
“Good. Because threatening the nurse who just helped save your boss would be a strange way of saying thank you.”
Something almost resembling amusement moved across Marcus’s face.
Then disappeared.
“It’s a warning.”
Grace washed Dominic’s blood from her hands.
The water turned pink.
“About what?”
Marcus looked at the crucifix lying on the steel tray.
“About whoever wanted him dead.”
The operation lasted four hours and thirteen minutes.
Grace knew because she checked the clock seventeen times.
She told herself she stayed because she needed to finish paperwork.
Then because the surgeon might need details.
Then because the hospital was understaffed.
Every excuse sounded worse than the one before it.
At 3:17 a.m., the surgeon finally emerged.
“He made it.”
Grace closed her eyes.
Relief hit her harder than it should have.
Marcus noticed.
“He’ll be in intensive care.”
“When can he speak?”
“If there are no complications, tomorrow. Maybe later.”
Marcus nodded.
Then he looked at Grace.
“He’ll ask for you.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do.”
Grace picked up her bag.
“I’m going home.”
“You should have someone drive you.”
“I have a car.”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
Grace stopped.
Marcus’s expression had become serious again.
“Three bullets were fired at Dominic from inside a warehouse that only twelve people knew he would visit tonight.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
“Maybe nothing.”
“But?”
“One of those twelve people disappeared forty minutes after Dominic was shot.”
Grace felt cold.
“Who?”
“His accountant.”
“And you think he’ll come after me?”
“I think anyone who saw Dominic conscious tonight could matter.”
“I’m a nurse.”
“You were the last person he spoke to.”
“He asked if I was real.”
Marcus stared at her.
“That may be more important than you realize.”
Grace left anyway.
Her apartment in Dorchester was dark when she arrived.
Her younger brother, Noah, had fallen asleep on her couch with the television running.
At twenty-four, Noah had mastered the art of making temporary disasters look permanent. He had lost another construction job two weeks earlier and was staying with Grace until he “figured things out.”
She covered him with a blanket.
His eyes opened.
“You’re late.”
“Emergency.”
He looked at the blood stain she had missed near her sleeve.
“Bad one?”
“He survived.”
Noah studied her.
“You look like you’re not sure whether that’s good.”
Grace dropped her keys into a bowl.
“Go back to sleep.”
She went into her bedroom.
Only then did she remember the crucifix.
Not because she had taken it.
She had not.
Because there was already another one in her jewelry box.
Grace opened the drawer.
Her mother’s old belongings were inside.
A cheap watch.
Two photographs.
A hospital bracelet.
And a silver crucifix.
Grace picked it up.
She had owned it since her mother died twelve years earlier.
Her mother had told her it belonged to Grace’s father.
A father Grace had barely known.
She turned it over.
The back carried two engraved letters.
D.V.
Grace sat down.
Her pulse began pounding.
Dominic Vale had a crucifix marked G.W.
Grace Walker possessed one marked D.V.
“No,” she whispered.
She searched through the box.
At the bottom was a photograph she had not looked at in years.
Her mother, Catherine Walker, stood outside a restaurant sometime in the late 1990s.
Grace had always focused on her mother.
Tonight she noticed the man behind her.
Young.
Dark-haired.
Gray-eyed.
Grace brought the photograph closer.
He looked enough like Dominic to be family.
Her phone rang.
Unknown number.
She answered slowly.
“Hello?”
Silence.
Then a man spoke.
“You saved the wrong man.”
Grace stood.
“Who is this?”
“Ask Dominic what happened to your father.”
The call ended.
Grace stared at the phone.
Behind her, Noah appeared in the doorway.
“Grace?”
She turned.
His face changed when he saw hers.
“What happened?”
Before she could answer, headlights swept across her bedroom wall.
A black sedan stopped outside.
Grace went to the window.
Marcus stepped from the passenger side.
He looked up directly at her apartment.
Then her phone vibrated again.
This time it was a photograph.
Grace opened it.
Her stomach dropped.
The picture showed her leaving St. Bartholomew’s less than an hour earlier.
A message appeared beneath it.
WE KNOW HE SPOKE TO YOU.
Then another message arrived.
DON’T LET DOMINIC TELL YOU WHO YOUR FATHER REALLY WAS.
Someone knocked on Grace’s apartment door.
Three slow knocks.
Noah whispered, “Are you expecting somebody?”
Grace approached the door.
She looked through the peephole.
May you like
Marcus stood outside.
But behind him, at the far end of the hallway, another man stepped from the stairwell and slowly raised a gun...
