Chương 3
Dominic continued issuing orders.
Nora stepped between him and the stairs.
“An actual ambulance.”
His men stopped moving.
Dominic stared at her. “Marcus tried to kill my daughter forty minutes after major surgery.”
“And now one of your employees may die because everyone in this house is waiting for you to decide whether his life is convenient.”
The muscles in his neck tightened above the black collar.
Nora could see the moment he wanted to tell her to move. Instead, he pointed to the nearest guard.
“Call county dispatch. Say it was an accidental discharge.”
“No,” Nora said.
Every face in the hallway changed.
Dominic turned slowly.
“No more lies around Lily,” she said. “Tell them an armed suspect escaped after an attempted murder. Tell them there’s an injured man. Tell them the suspect is Marcus Vane.”
“Calling the police brings questions.”
“He fired a weapon at a child.”
“He did not fire.”
“He aimed one. He confessed to an earlier attack. He escaped armed with help from inside your house.”
“And when the police ask why I detained him in my basement?”
“Tell them the truth.”
A humorless breath left Dominic. “You have no idea what that costs.”
Nora thought of Eva’s unopened message. “I know exactly what hiding things costs.”
They stood close enough that she could see the small silver threads in his dark eyes.
Behind them, Lily made a sound.
It was not loud. A frightened child did not need to be loud to rearrange the priorities of a room.
Dominic looked toward the door.
Then he handed his phone to the guard.
“Call county dispatch,” he said. “Tell them everything she said.”
Police arrived with the ambulance, then more police arrived because the name Rosetti traveled through emergency channels faster than blood.
The mansion’s private medical wing became a restricted scene. Uniformed deputies photographed the gouge the pistol had left in the marble. A detective named Carla Ruiz took the stainless-steel tray from beneath a chair and placed it in a paper evidence bag. Another officer retrieved the pistol after Dominic’s guards showed him where it had slid.
Nora surrendered the cracked phone, the rabbit, and the recorder.
She refused to surrender the bracelet.
Detective Ruiz did not insist, but she photographed the engraving.
“You understand the recording isn’t magic,” Ruiz said quietly while Dominic spoke to another detective near the window. “It helps. It doesn’t prove what alley he meant, who ‘she’ was, or whether he was threatening the child. His attorney will say it was edited or taken out of context.”
“It wasn’t.”
“I believe you. Belief isn’t the same as authentication.”
“What about the gun?”
“Registered through a corporate security company. We’ll process it. He wore gloves.”
Nora looked at Lily asleep beneath a fresh blanket.
“She can identify him.”
“She is five, medicated, recovering from a gunshot wound and abdominal surgery. Any competent defense attorney will challenge what she remembers and how she was questioned.”
“I didn’t question her.”
“Good. Keep not doing it.”
Ruiz’s voice softened without losing its firmness. “Let trained people speak with her when her doctors approve. Don’t repeat her words back to her. Don’t ask whether she’s sure. Don’t discuss theories where she can hear.”
Nora nodded.
Across the room, Dominic had stopped speaking. He had heard.
Detective Ruiz followed Nora’s gaze. “He’s going to have a harder time with that.”
“He has a hard time with anything he can’t control.”
“Most people do. He just owns more rooms.”
Ruiz asked Nora to walk through the attack again. Nora described the locking sound, Marcus’s position, Lily’s hand on the blanket, the weight of the tray. She repeated Marcus’s words exactly.
When she finished, Ruiz asked why Nora had been in the room.
“I came to check Lily’s dressing.”
“You’re a nurse?”
“I was.”
“License active?”
“No.”
Ruiz waited.
Nora disliked waiting people. They created empty spaces and let guilt fill them.
“I worked pediatric intensive care in Baltimore,” she said. “Eight years. I left after a medication error.”
“Yours?”
“No.”
“Then why did you leave?”
“Because I saw it and didn’t report it quickly enough.”
Ruiz wrote that down. “Why not?”
“The nurse was my friend. She had two children. She said she’d correct the chart. I believed what was easiest to believe.”
“Did the patient survive?”
“Yes.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Nora looked at her.
Ruiz did not apologize.
“The child survived,” Nora said. “With brain damage.”
Dominic had moved closer without her noticing. Something in his face altered, perhaps because he had not known this about her, perhaps because he had thought his wife’s friend came without damage of her own.
Ruiz closed her notebook. “How did you come to be caring for Lily?”
“Eva asked me.”
The answer was out before Nora could stop it.
Dominic’s attention sharpened.
“When?” Ruiz asked.
“Months ago.”
“You’ve been here months?”
“Four days.”
Ruiz waited again.
Nora looked toward Lily. “Eva asked me before she died. I didn’t come.”
Dominic’s voice was low. “You told me she hadn’t promised you anything.”
“She didn’t.”
“You said nothing about asking.”
“This is not the place.”
“This is exactly the place.”
Ruiz stepped between their lines of sight without appearing to. “Mr. Rosetti, I need you to speak with my partner downstairs.”
“I’m staying with my daughter.”
“Your daughter is asleep. My partner has questions about your security chief and the underground tunnel he used to escape lawful reporting.”
Dominic’s eyes remained on Nora. “You have a message from Eva.”
Nora said nothing.
“That is why you came four days ago. Not because you saw the report about Lily.”
“The report is how I learned she’d been shot.”
“But Eva told you something before.”
Ruiz looked from him to Nora. “Do you have information relevant to the child’s shooting or Eva Rosetti’s death?”
May you like
Nora’s throat tightened.
Eva’s death had been ruled the result of a rival attack six months earlier. Her car had been found beside an alley behind a private music foundation she supported. She had been shot twice. The driver had died at the scene. Lily, who had apparently hidden beneath the rear floorboard after being struck by a bullet fragment, had been found alive almost an hour later.
