Chapter 2 - The Name She Buried
“Lock it, Vincent.”
It was the first time Hannah had ever used his first name.
Something in her voice made him obey.
Vincent slammed the nursery door, turned the lock, and crossed the room with his weapon raised.
Emma and Noah were pressed together inside Noah’s crib. Emma had both arms wrapped around her brother. Their cheeks were wet.
“Daddy!”
Vincent reached them.
“I’m here.”
Emma practically climbed into his arms.
Noah followed.
For several seconds, Vincent forgot Hannah, the unconscious intruder, and the man groaning beneath her knee.
He held his children against his chest.
“You came,” Emma whispered.
“Always.”
Across the room, Hannah flinched.
Vincent noticed.
Then the man beneath her laughed.
“You really think this changes anything?”
Hannah increased the pressure on his wrist.
His laugh became a grunt.
Vincent lowered the twins behind him.
“Who sent you?”
Silence.
Vincent stepped closer.
The intruder looked at him without fear.
That disturbed Vincent more than an answer would have.
Then Hannah spoke.
“Don’t.”
Vincent turned.
“Excuse me?”
“He wants you angry.”
“You seem to know a lot about what he wants.”
“I do.”
There it was.
The truth Vincent had felt coming since he opened the door.
He pointed his weapon at Hannah.
Emma gasped.
“Daddy, no!”
Hannah slowly removed her knee from the intruder and stood.
She made no attempt to reach for the pistol lying near the window.
“Tell me who you are.”
“Hannah Mercer.”
“Wrong answer.”
“It’s my legal name.”
“Who trained you?”
Her eyes shifted toward the children.
“Not here.”
Vincent’s jaw tightened.
“This is my house.”
“And someone bypassed six layers of your security to reach your children. Maybe stop worrying about whether I lied on a résumé.”
Before Vincent could respond, the intruder moved.
His hand shot toward his ankle.
Hannah reacted instantly.
She kicked his wrist aside.
Vincent crossed the distance and drove him back against the floor.
A tiny blade skittered beneath the crib.
Hannah stared at it.
Then at Vincent.
“That’s why.”
Within ninety seconds, armed guards flooded the hallway.
Daniel was alive. So were two other security officers found unconscious downstairs.
The intruders were restrained and removed.
Vincent ordered Emma and Noah taken to his bedroom.
They refused to leave without Hannah.
“No,” Vincent said.
Emma tightened her grip on Hannah’s cardigan.
“She saved Noah.”
Vincent looked at his daughter.
“What happened?”
Emma swallowed.
“The bad man grabbed Noah. Hannah hit him.”
Noah nodded solemnly.
“She hit him lots.”
Despite everything, Hannah almost smiled.
Vincent didn’t.
Twenty minutes later, Hannah sat across from him in the study.
No cardigan now.
The sleeve of her white sleep shirt was stained with blood.
Not hers, Vincent suspected.
His security chief, Marco Bellini, stood beside the door.
On Vincent’s desk lay everything taken from Hannah’s room.
Passport.
Driver’s license.
Phone.
Three paperback novels.
A photograph of an older woman.
Nothing unusual.
That made it worse.
“Start talking,” Vincent said.
Hannah touched the cut on her forehead.
“My father was Special Agent Thomas Mercer.”
Marco’s expression changed.
Vincent noticed.
“You know the name?”
Marco hesitated.
“Federal Organized Crime Task Force. Mercer disappeared seven years ago.”
“Six years and eleven months,” Hannah corrected.
Vincent looked at her.
“You’re FBI?”
“No.”
“CIA?”
“No.”
“Police?”
“No.”
“Then where did you learn to fight?”
“My father.”
“That doesn’t explain tonight.”
“No. It doesn’t.”
She inhaled slowly.
“My father spent four years investigating a trafficking network using legitimate freight companies to move people through East Coast ports.”
Vincent’s face hardened.
“My company doesn’t traffic people.”
“I know.”
“You sound certain.”
“Because my father knew.”
Hannah reached carefully toward her pocket.
Marco immediately raised his weapon.
“Easy.”
She withdrew a folded piece of paper.
Vincent opened it.
The paper was old, its creases nearly worn through.
There were six handwritten names.
The fifth was Vincent Moretti.
Beside it were three words.
NOT INVOLVED. POSSIBLE ALLY.
Vincent read the final name.
Carlo DeLuca.
His late wife’s uncle.
Something cold moved through him.
“What is this?”
“The last page my father mailed before he disappeared.”
Vincent looked up.
“You became my children’s nanny because of this?”
“Partly.”
“Partly?”
Hannah hesitated.
“Claire contacted me.”
The room became completely still.
Vincent didn’t blink.
“My wife died eight months ago.”
“I know.”
“When?”
“Ten months ago.”
Two months before Claire’s death.
Vincent rose so quickly his chair struck the wall.
“You knew my wife?”
“Not before she found me.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“No. I expect you to verify it.”
Hannah reached into her other pocket.
This time Vincent himself tensed.
She removed a small brass key.
“I’ve carried this for ten months.”
“What does it open?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who gave it to you?”
“Claire.”
Vincent stared at it.
Hannah’s voice softened.
“She came to my apartment alone. She knew about my father. She knew he had investigated Carlo DeLuca. She told me she had discovered something inside your organization and didn’t know who she could trust.”
Vincent’s stomach tightened.
“My wife would have told me.”
“She said she couldn’t.”
“Why?”
“Because she believed someone close to you was listening.”
Marco shifted near the door.
Vincent noticed that too.
Every instinct he possessed screamed betrayal.
But another memory surfaced.
Claire changing her phone password.
Claire asking whether the nursery cameras recorded audio.
Claire waking one night and quietly checking the windows.
He had thought grief was rewriting the past.
Maybe it wasn’t.
“What did she ask you to do?”
Hannah’s eyes filled with something Vincent had never seen in them before.
Guilt.
“She asked me to protect Emma and Noah if anything happened to her.”
Vincent stared.
“You waited eight months.”
“I didn’t know where the danger was coming from. Getting into this house too quickly would have exposed me.”
“So you pretended to be a nanny.”
“I am a nanny.”
Marco scoffed.
Hannah looked at him.
“I worked childcare jobs under my real identity for four years.”
“Convenient,” Marco said.
“No. Necessary.”
Vincent looked again at the paper.
Then at Carlo’s name.
Claire’s uncle had been at their wedding.
He had held Emma in the hospital.
He had carried Claire’s coffin.
Vincent suddenly felt sick.
“What happened to my wife?”
Hannah’s face changed.
“I don’t know.”
“Was the accident an accident?”
“I don’t know.”
He slammed his palm against the desk.
“Then what do you know?”
Hannah didn’t move.
“I know the men tonight weren’t here to kill your children.”
Vincent froze.
“How?”
“One of them said something before you arrived.”
“What?”
Hannah looked toward the ceiling, as if even now she feared microphones.
Then she leaned forward.
“He said, ‘Find what their mother hid.’”
Vincent’s blood went cold.
“What did Claire hide?”
“I don’t know.”
A small voice came from the study doorway.
“Daddy?”
Emma stood there barefoot.
Marco immediately opened the door wider.
Vincent crossed toward her.
“You should be upstairs.”
“I remembered something.”
“What?”
Emma looked at Hannah.
Then she reached beneath the collar of her pajamas and pulled out a thin silver chain.
A tiny key hung from it.
Vincent stared.
“Where did you get that?”
“Mommy.”
“When?”
“The night before she went to heaven.”
Vincent crouched.
His hands had begun shaking.
Emma whispered, “She told me not to show you until the lady who knew five-four-three-two-one came.”
Vincent slowly turned toward Hannah.
Hannah had gone completely pale.
Because Claire hadn’t merely hoped Hannah would someday reach the children.
May you like
She had known she would.
And whatever Claire Moretti had hidden, someone had just invaded the most protected house in New York to find it.
