Chapter 3 - THE WOMAN THEY HAD ALREADY FOUND
The alarm lasted eight seconds.
That was enough time for every man in Dominic Romano’s house to become armed.
Clare stood beside Tommy’s bed while Dr. Price moved toward the door.
Dominic stopped him.
“Stay here.”
“What is happening?”
“We don’t know yet.”
Nico pressed two fingers to the earpiece hidden beneath his hair.
“East gate.”
Dominic turned.
“How many?”
“False alarm. Vehicle hit the outer sensor and kept moving.”
Clare stared at them.
“Someone hit your security gate?”
“Outer perimeter,” Nico corrected.
“That doesn’t make it more normal.”
Dominic ignored the comment.
“Plate?”
“Stolen.”
“Camera?”
“Driver kept his face down.”
Clare folded her arms.
“So somebody steals my employment file and twenty minutes later a suspicious car approaches your property.”
Nobody answered.
“That seems bad.”
Nico looked almost impressed.
“She’s quick.”
Dominic gave him a warning glance.
Clare pointed toward Tommy.
“He stays monitored.”
Price nodded.
“I’m not leaving him.”
“Good.”
She picked up her wet grocery bag.
Dominic frowned.
“What are you doing?”
“Going home.”
“No.”
It came out too quickly.
Too naturally.
Clare stopped.
“Excuse me?”
“You can’t go home.”
“You don't get to decide that.”
“Someone stole your address.”
“My address has been on every piece of junk mail I’ve received for nine years.”
“You’re missing the point.”
“No, Mr. Romano. You’re missing the point. Three hours ago, I had a job. Then I got fired. Then you kidnapped me with luxury vehicles—”
“I did not kidnap you.”
“Five cars surrounded me.”
“You got in voluntarily.”
“After your brother almost died against my shoulder.”
“Still voluntary.”
Clare stared at him.
Nico whispered, “This is going well.”
Dominic turned.
“Nico.”
“I’m leaving.”
He disappeared.
Clare looked back at Dominic.
“Send somebody to my apartment if you’re worried.”
“I already did.”
That shut her up.
“You what?”
“Two men are checking it.”
“You sent armed strangers into my building?”
“They’re not going inside unless necessary.”
“You don’t even know which apartment is mine.”
“Third floor. Unit 3C.”
Clare felt a chill that had nothing to do with her damp clothes.
Dominic saw her expression.
“We found you in seventeen minutes. Whoever took that file can do the same.”
That was the first thing he said that frightened her more than angered her.
Dr. Price stepped between them.
“Clare, stay tonight.”
She looked at him.
“You still haven’t told me why you knew my name.”
Price glanced at Dominic.
Dominic said nothing.
That seemed to be permission.
Price sighed.
“Anthony Bell called me two days before he was brought into Lakeview.”
“The accountant?”
“Yes.”
“He was afraid.”
“Of what?”
“He wouldn’t say.”
Price lowered his voice.
“He told me there was a nurse at Lakeview he trusted. A nurse who had once reported missing medication from the trauma floor even though administration tried to bury it.”
Clare felt her stomach tighten.
That had happened eighteen months earlier.
Morphine discrepancies.
Missing sealed supplies.
Incorrect inventory.
Clare had reported everything.
The internal investigation had supposedly found a paperwork error.
She had never believed it.
“How did Bell know about that?”
“He knew a lot about Lakeview.”
Dominic leaned against the counter.
“Anthony managed books for companies that did business with the hospital.”
“What companies?”
“Mine. Others.”
Clare looked at him sharply.
“Your companies supply Lakeview?”
“Freight. Medical transport. Construction.”
“And?”
Dominic’s expression didn’t change.
“And things I’m less proud of.”
At least he didn’t pretend.
Clare respected that more than she wanted to.
Price continued.
“Bell said if anything happened to him, there were only two people in Chicago he believed wouldn’t let him die for political convenience.”
“Who?”
“Me.”
Clare waited.
“And you.”
She almost laughed.
“I had never met him.”
“He had researched you.”
“That is deeply unsettling.”
“Anthony was deeply unsettled.”
Dominic looked toward his unconscious brother.
“Now he’s missing.”
Clare’s gaze snapped toward him.
“What?”
“Bell disappeared from Lakeview yesterday morning.”
“He was still recovering.”
“He was transferred.”
“Where?”
“No record.”
Clare stared.
Hospitals created records for everything.
Bandages.
Meals.
Blankets.
Transport.
A patient did not simply vanish.
“Who authorized the transfer?”
Dominic’s expression hardened.
“Dr. Weber.”
The name landed like a stone.
Clare remembered Weber standing across Trauma Four.
Stop compressions.
That had been his order.
Not because there was no chance.
Clare had known there was a chance.
She had ignored him.
Anthony Bell survived.
Clare lost her job.
“What exactly does Bell know?” she asked.
Dominic’s voice dropped.
“That’s what someone is willing to kill to find out.”
Before Clare could answer, Nico returned.
This time he wasn’t smiling.
“Her apartment.”
Clare’s chest tightened.
“What about it?”
Nico looked at Dominic before answering.
“The door was open.”
She moved toward him.
“My neighbor Mrs. Alvarez?”
“Fine. Everyone in the building is fine.”
“My apartment?”
Nico hesitated.
“Turned over.”
Clare went still.
Her apartment wasn’t worth robbing.
She owned a twelve-year-old television.
A secondhand couch.
Three plants she kept forgetting to water.
“They took anything?”
“Doesn’t look like it.”
“Then what were they looking for?”
Nico held something out.
A photograph.
Clare’s photograph.
Her nursing-school graduation picture.
She had kept it inside a cheap frame beside her mother’s photograph.
Across her face, somebody had drawn a black line.
On the back were five words.
Dominic took it before Clare could.
She grabbed it from him.
SHE SHOULD HAVE LET HIM DIE.
For several seconds, nobody spoke.
Clare stared at the sentence.
Not angry nurse.
Not liability.
Not unauthorized procedure.
Somebody had wanted Anthony Bell dead.
And because Clare had refused to let that happen, somebody wanted her afraid.
Her knees suddenly felt weak.
Dominic noticed.
He pulled out a chair.
“I don’t need to sit.”
“Sit anyway.”
“Don’t order me.”
“Then consider it a strongly worded suggestion.”
Clare sat.
Dominic crouched in front of her.
For the first time, the terrifying reputation disappeared entirely.
His voice was quiet.
“They will not reach you here.”
“You can’t promise that.”
“Yes.”
“No, you can’t.”
He held her gaze.
“You’re right.”
That surprised her.
Dominic Romano did not look like a man who admitted other people were right.
“So what can you promise?” she asked.
“That anyone coming for you has to come through me first.”
Clare should have found that reassuring.
Instead it made something uncomfortable tighten behind her ribs.
She looked away.
“I don’t want your war.”
“Neither did Tommy.”
The words changed the room.
Clare turned toward the glass.
Tommy was sleeping.
“What happened tonight?”
Dominic remained silent.
She looked back.
“You said gunshot wound. You never told me how.”
Dominic rose slowly.
“Tommy was meeting someone.”
“Who?”
“Anthony Bell.”
Clare stood again.
“You said Bell disappeared.”
“He contacted Tommy this afternoon.”
“Why?”
“To give him something.”
“What?”
“We don’t know. Tommy arrived. Someone opened fire.”
“Did Bell get shot?”
“He wasn’t there.”
Clare thought about that.
A meeting arranged by a missing accountant.
Tommy ambushed.
Her records stolen.
Her apartment searched.
Then she remembered something.
“When Bell came into Lakeview…”
Price looked at her.
“What?”
“He had something in his hand.”
Dominic stepped closer.
“What?”
“I didn’t think about it because everything was happening so fast.”
“Clare.”
“A key.”
“What kind?”
“Small. Brass. He was gripping it hard enough to cut his palm.”
Dominic’s eyes sharpened.
“Where did it go?”
“I don’t know.”
“You were treating him.”
“I was trying to restart his heart.”
“Think.”
Clare closed her eyes.
Trauma Four.
Alarms.
Weber shouting.
Bell on the bed.
His right hand clenched.
Clare cutting his shirt.
A respiratory therapist.
An orderly.
Then Bell had briefly regained consciousness.
He had grabbed Clare’s wrist.
She remembered because his fingers had been cold.
He had said something.
At the time, she thought it was nonsense.
Her eyes opened.
“Oh, my God.”
“What?”
“He said, ‘Blue locker.’”
Dominic froze.
Price stared.
Clare continued.
“I thought he was delirious.”
Dominic was already pulling out his phone.
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“Lakeview?”
“Maybe.”
“What else did he say?”
Clare searched the memory.
His face.
Oxygen mask.
The monitor.
Bell gripping her wrist.
Blue locker.
Then another word.
Not a word.
A number.
“317.”
Dominic stopped dialing.
“What?”
“He said three-seventeen.”
Nico appeared in the doorway.
His face had gone strangely pale.
Dominic noticed.
“What is it?”
Nico didn’t answer immediately.
“Nico.”
The scarred man looked at Clare.
Then Dominic.
“Boss…”
He swallowed.
“Locker 317 is at Union Station.”
Dominic frowned.
“How do you know?”
“Because Tommy texted me that number twenty minutes before he got shot.”
And suddenly everybody in the room understood the same thing.
Whatever Anthony Bell had hidden in that locker was important enough to get Tommy shot.
May you like
Important enough to destroy Clare’s career.
And possibly important enough to start a war.
