Chương 2
His gaze returned to her.
“What?”
“I saw it live. On the monitor. I recorded the replay from the security console.”
“Why were you in the security office?”
“Because I followed her.”
Celeste gave a short, disbelieving laugh.
“You followed me.”
Mara nodded.
“Why?” Daniel asked.
“Because she ordered two glasses from my station, then told me not to carry them. She took the tray herself. She never carries anything herself.”
The words came more sharply than Mara intended. Her mouth felt dry. She could taste iron where she had bitten the inside of her cheek.
Celeste looked toward the nearest cameras, toward the guests holding phones, toward the hotel employees who had stopped pretending not to listen.
“This is delusion,” she said. “She has invented a story from ordinary service.”
“No,” Mara said. “Ordinary service is asking for champagne. Ordinary service is not hiding a vial in your palm.”
Celeste’s nostrils flared.
It was the smallest break in her composure, but Daniel saw it.
So did Mara.
One of the hotel security officers stepped between them. He was young enough to look embarrassed by his own authority.
“Ma’am,” he said to Mara, “I need you to move away from Mr. Mercer.”
“Don’t touch her,” Daniel said.
The officer stopped.
Daniel did not raise his voice. He did not need to. Mercer House owned the hotel, the ballroom, most of the block, and the company that signed the officer’s paycheck.
The knowledge passed through the room with embarrassing efficiency.
Celeste saw that too.
“You are making a terrible mistake,” she told Daniel.
He looked at her for several seconds.
“I already made it.”
The tear at the edge of his eye finally moved. It traced a narrow line down one cheek. He did not wipe it away.
Sirens sounded beyond the arched doors.
Mara heard them as if from underwater. The chandeliers seemed too bright. The ballroom tilted again, and this time Daniel caught her by the elbow.
She flinched.
His hand loosened immediately.
“You’re bleeding.”
“I know.”
“What happened to you?”
“Grant Pell.”
Daniel’s face changed more at that name than it had at the sight of Celeste on the watch.
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
Celeste spoke before he could ask anything else.
“Grant is head of security. If he found her breaking into a restricted room, he would have removed her.”
“He hit me.”
“You fell.”
Mara stared at her.
Celeste’s smile returned, softer this time, almost sympathetic.
“You are exhausted,” she said. “You may not know what happened.”
Mara’s fear sharpened into something cleaner.
“I know exactly what happened.”
The first police officers entered through the ballroom doors. Behind them came paramedics carrying red bags and a folding stretcher. Guests moved aside reluctantly, unwilling to leave and unwilling to admit why.
A detective with dark hair tied low at her neck took one look at the broken glass and ordered everyone back. Her name, Mara learned later, was Nina Alvarez. At that moment she was simply the first person in the room who behaved as though wealth did not alter the laws of distance.
“Who touched the glass?” Alvarez asked.
“No one after it broke,” Mara said.
Celeste answered at the same time.
“She did.”
Alvarez looked between them.
“Names.”
Statements began in the ballroom, but they did not remain there for long. The paramedics sat Mara on a banquet chair near the wall and cleaned the blood from her face. The scrape was shallow, though the swelling beneath it had begun to darken. Her right wrist was bruised where Grant had tried to twist the phone from her hand.
She watched an evidence technician place markers beside the shards. Another officer photographed Daniel’s shoes. A third collected the damp napkins that a guest had nearly used before Mara shouted at him.
Celeste stood with her lawyer before anyone could ask where the lawyer had come from.
The man was narrow, silver-haired, and calm in the way of people who charged by the hour for remaining calm around disaster. He introduced himself as Martin Sayer and advised Celeste not to answer further questions until he understood the nature of the accusation.
“The nature is attempted murder,” Daniel said.
Sayer did not look at him.
“The nature,” Sayer replied, “is an allegation made by an injured temporary employee based on an unverified video.”
Mara lowered her eyes to the paramedic’s gloved hands. Temporary employee. The phrase had been chosen carefully. It reduced her from a person to a staffing problem.
Alvarez heard it too.
“Temporary employees can witness crimes,” she said.
Sayer gave a polite nod.
“Of course.”
Celeste’s gaze remained on Daniel.
He stood near the ruined champagne, arms at his sides, his face almost motionless. Only the muscles along his jaw betrayed him. Isaac had placed Daniel’s phone in an evidence bag after preserving the forwarded message. The smartwatch remained on his wrist until an officer asked him to remove it.
Daniel struggled with the clasp.
Mara watched his fingers fail twice.
Isaac stepped forward to help, then stopped when Daniel looked at him.
On the third attempt, Daniel freed the watch and handed it over.
Celeste closed her eyes for a moment.
It was not grief. Mara thought it looked more like calculation.
Alvarez crouched beside Mara.
“I need the phone you used to record the footage.”
Mara reached into the pocket of her black trousers.
The pocket was empty.
Her other hand went to the torn seam of her vest, then to the waistband where she sometimes tucked the phone while carrying trays.
Nothing.
“I had it.”
“When?”
“In the security room.”
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“Did you have it when you entered the ballroom?”
Mara tried to reconstruct the last minutes. Grant’s hand on her shoulder. The wall striking her temple. Her phone slipping, then still being in her palm when she escaped through the linen corridor. She remembered sending the video to Isaac while running. She remembered the blue progress bar. She remembered a message that said delivered.
