Chapter 2 - The Name Buried Seventeen Years Ago
Harriet didn't scream.
She grabbed the steel box and stepped behind the bedroom wall just as the window rose another inch.
A hand appeared beneath it.
Then a voice.
“Harriet?”
She recognized it.
“Dominic?”
“Don't hit me.”
Harriet pulled the curtain aside.
Dominic Vale stood on the fire escape.
She stared at him.
“You climbed three floors?”
“Your front door was being watched.”
“That doesn't explain why you're at my window.”
“It explains why I didn't use your front door.”
Harriet lowered the tire iron she'd carried home.
Dominic glanced at it.
“You brought that with you?”
“You climbed onto my fire escape at two in the morning. Seems like I made the right choice.”
He climbed inside.
His ribs had been bandaged beneath a clean black shirt, but his movements remained stiff.
“You left the hospital?”
“I left before someone decided to finish the job.”
Harriet showed him the message.
Dominic studied the photograph.
His expression hardened.
“This was taken from across the alley.”
“How do you know?”
“The angle.”
He looked through the window.
The opposite rooftop was empty.
Harriet shut the curtain.
“You need to leave.”
“So do you.”
“No.”
“They know where you live.”
“I've been running for seventeen years.”
“And apparently they finally caught up.”
Harriet's jaw tightened.
Dominic looked at the photograph in the steel box.
“Lucy?”
Harriet's head snapped toward him.
“You don't get to ask.”
“Then don't answer. But whoever attacked me knew your old name, and one of them carried your initials.”
“They weren't my initials.”
“What were they?”
Harriet sat slowly.
“Hart. Lena. Lucy.”
Dominic waited.
Silence was something powerful men rarely tolerated.
Dominic did.
That made Harriet trust him slightly more than she wanted to.
“My name was Lena Hart,” she finally said.
Dominic remained still.
“My father owned a small trucking company. Hart Logistics. He hauled legitimate freight for anyone who paid.”
“Anyone?”
“That was the problem.”
Harriet looked at the old photograph.
“One client wasn't legitimate.”
Her father discovered sealed crates inside a shipment he'd been told contained imported machinery.
Cash.
Weapons.
Ledgers.
Names.
Enough evidence to destroy people who had spent decades making themselves untouchable.
“What did he do?”
“He copied everything.”
Dominic understood immediately.
“And they found out.”
Harriet nodded.
“The warehouse burned.”
“Your father?”
“Died.”
“Lucy?”
Harriet looked away.
“Missing.”
Dominic frowned.
“Missing isn't dead.”
“It was seventeen years ago.”
“That's still not the same word.”
Harriet hated him for saying it.
Because she had spent seventeen years forcing herself not to say the same thing.
That night, she and Lucy had run through the warehouse together.
Harriet remembered smoke.
Heat.
A collapsing beam.
Lucy screaming her name.
Then men entering through the loading doors.
Their father had told Harriet that if anything happened, she was to reach a former federal investigator named Arthur Bell.
Harriet escaped.
Lucy didn't.
Arthur gave Harriet a new identity.
Harriet Lawson.
A waitress nobody would notice.
“Why didn't you go into witness protection?” Dominic asked.
“Because Arthur said someone inside the investigation was compromised.”
“And you believed him?”
“Three days later, Arthur disappeared.”
Dominic's face tightened.
“That's convenient.”
“It kept me alive.”
“Maybe.”
Harriet stood.
“What does that mean?”
“It means somebody wanted Lena Hart erased without necessarily wanting Harriet Lawson dead.”
Harriet stared.
Dominic continued.
“If your enemies knew you survived, why wait seventeen years?”
That question had haunted her since the garage.
“I don't know.”
“I think I do.”
He placed the cuff link on the table.
“Something changed.”
Harriet looked at the initials.
“What?”
“Someone started looking for what your father stole.”
“My father didn't steal anything.”
“Copied, then.”
Dominic leaned forward.
“And whoever attacked me thinks you know where it is.”
Harriet shook her head.
“I don't.”
“Do you know who ordered the warehouse fire?”
“No.”
“I may.”
Harriet froze.
Dominic took out his phone.
He showed her an old photograph of three men at a charity gala.
One was Dominic's father.
The second was a judge Harriet recognized from television.
The third—
Harriet stopped breathing.
She knew that face.
He had been younger.
Thinner.
But she remembered him standing outside the warehouse while it burned.
“Who is that?”
Dominic watched her reaction.
“Victor Sloane.”
Harriet whispered the name.
Victor Sloane was one of the most respected businessmen in the state.
Hospitals carried his family's name.
Politicians attended his fundraisers.
His foundation paid college tuition for disadvantaged students.
And seventeen years ago, Harriet had watched him stand beside a burning warehouse.
“He was there.”
Dominic's eyes sharpened.
“You're sure?”
“I'll never forget that face.”
Dominic leaned back.
“Then we're dealing with something bigger than an attack in a garage.”
Harriet laughed once without humor.
“There is no ‘we.’”
“You saved my life.”
“That doesn't make us partners.”
“No. The fact that the same people want both of us dead does.”
Before Harriet could answer, Dominic's phone rang.
He looked at the screen.
His expression changed.
“Who?”
“My security chief.”
He answered.
Listened.
Then stood.
“What happened?”
Dominic ended the call.
“The six men weren't random contractors.”
“I figured.”
“They worked for someone inside my organization.”
Harriet folded her arms.
“Who?”
“My younger brother.”
Silence.
Dominic's brother, Adrian Vale, was almost as well known as Dominic.
More polished.
More public.
The charitable face of the Vale empire.
Harriet looked again at Victor Sloane's photograph.
“Why would your brother want you dead?”
Dominic's eyes were cold.
“I intend to ask him.”
“No.”
“You're staying here?”
“No. I'm coming.”
Dominic almost laughed.
“You just said there was no ‘we.’”
“There wasn't.”
Harriet picked up the tire iron.
“Then you mentioned Victor Sloane.”
They left through the rear stairwell.
Dominic's driver waited in an unmarked sedan.
During the ride, Harriet stared out the window.
Seventeen years of hiding had ended in one night.
She should have been terrified.
Instead she felt something she hadn't allowed herself to feel in years.
Anger.
They reached a private Vale property shortly before dawn.
Dominic's security chief met them.
“Adrian isn't here.”
“Find him.”
“We tried.”
The man handed Dominic a tablet.
“There is something else.”
Security footage filled the screen.
It showed the garage twenty minutes before the attack.
Six suited men entered.
Then a seventh figure appeared.
A woman.
Harriet leaned closer.
The image was grainy.
The woman wore a dark coat and kept her face turned away.
But when she reached the elevator, she lifted her left hand.
A silver bracelet caught the light.
Harriet stopped breathing.
“No.”
Dominic looked at her.
“What?”
Harriet took the tablet.
The bracelet consisted of tiny linked stars.
Harriet had bought one exactly like it with her first paycheck when she was nineteen.
She had given it to Lucy for her sixteenth birthday.
“It can't be.”
“Harriet?”
She enlarged the image.
The woman turned slightly.
Only half her face appeared.
But Harriet knew the curve of that cheek.
The small mark near the eyebrow.
Her sister had gotten it falling from a bicycle when she was nine.
Harriet's hands began shaking.
Dominic looked at the screen.
“Is that Lucy?”
Harriet couldn't answer.
The timestamp advanced.
The woman entered the elevator.
Before the doors closed, she looked directly toward the security camera.
Then she raised a piece of paper.
Three words were written across it.
Harriet zoomed in.
May you like
Her heart stopped.
DON'T TRUST DOMINIC.
