Chương 2
The helicopter’s light passed again, no longer directly at the glass.
Sloane set her champagne down on the nearest table.
It was the first intelligent thing anyone did.
“Damien,” she said quietly, “open the door.”
He ignored her.
He was looking at Evelyn now with an intensity that would once have made her question herself. She knew that look. He used to apply it in restaurants when she contradicted a story he was telling. At charity dinners when she corrected a number. In bed, once, after she asked why a woman from his office had called at two in the morning and immediately hung up when Evelyn answered.
It was not anger.
It was a demand for reality to return to the version he preferred.
“Your father decommissioned those,” he said.
“He decommissioned the tracking program.”
“You said they were destroyed.”
“I said I made him destroy mine.”
Damien glanced at the green pulse.
She had told him that almost four years earlier, during the period when they still confused confession with intimacy.
The old Cross security system had tracked family members continuously through jewelry and watches. Adrian Cross had installed it after Evelyn’s mother was followed home by a disturbed former employee. He had called it protection. Evelyn, twenty-two and furious at discovering her father could pull up a map of where she had spent an entire weekend, had called it surveillance.
The argument lasted months.
Eventually Adrian conceded. The tracking devices were removed. The program was shut down. The family crest, once used to conceal the transmitters, disappeared from anything Evelyn wore.
What she had never told Damien was that she later agreed to keep one manually activated emergency device.
No passive tracking.
No map unless she pressed it.
No signal unless she chose.
Her father had hated the compromise.
Which was why Evelyn trusted it.
Damien had known enough to think the old system dead.
Not enough to know how Evelyn had rewritten its rules.
A hard chime sounded from the entry hall.
All three of them turned.
The building intercom lit on the wall.
Sloane took a step toward it.
Damien caught her wrist.
Not violently.
Not yet.
She looked down at his hand.
That seemed to disturb her more than anything else had.
“Let go,” she said.
“Sloane.”
“Let go of me.”
He did.
The intercom chimed again.
Then Damien’s phone vibrated on the bar.
Once.
Twice.
Then continuously.
He looked at the screen.
Evelyn could not see the name from where she stood, but his reaction told her enough.
His lawyer, perhaps.
The building.
Someone downstairs.
His control was collapsing into practical problems.
That frightened him more than the helicopter.
Sloane walked to the intercom.
Damien moved after her.
Evelyn’s voice stopped him.
“Don’t.”
He turned.
She had picked up her phone.
The screen was cracked at one corner, but it still worked.
Her thumb hovered over the emergency call button.
The movement was small.
Damien noticed it.
So did Sloane.
The penthouse became very quiet.
Sloane pressed the intercom.
“Yes?”
A man’s voice came through.
“Ms. Mercer, this is building security. We need you to open the residence door.”
Sloane looked over her shoulder.
Damien shook his head once.
“No,” he said.
The voice from the wall continued.
“We have an emergency distress activation registered to a person currently inside this residence. NYPD has been notified.”
Sloane closed her eyes for less than a second.
When she opened them, she pressed the unlock control.
Damien stared at her.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“What you should have done two minutes ago.”
“You don’t know what happened.”
“I was standing here.”
The elevator corridor door opened outside.
Damien crossed the room toward her, lowering his voice.
“Then you know she came in here threatening me.”
Evelyn almost laughed.
Not because it was funny.
Because the speed of it was familiar.
Damien had always been fast when he needed to edit a memory.
Sloane stared at him.
“She threatened to call an attorney.”
“She threatened the company.”
“She said she wouldn’t sign.”
“She was trying to destroy a financing.”
“She said her signature was forged.”
Damien’s jaw tightened.
The conversation stopped there.
Sloane heard what she had just said.
Evelyn saw it happen.
A tiny stillness.
A mistake entering the room and refusing to leave.
Then the penthouse door opened.
Two uniformed building security officers came in first, hands visible, voices calm.
A woman in a dark suit followed them. Marisol Grant, the head of Cross family security, was fifty-one, compact, and almost offensively unimpressed by wealth. She had worked for Adrian for twelve years and had been the person who helped Evelyn dismantle the old tracking program.
Marisol saw Evelyn’s neck.
Her expression changed.
Not dramatically.
A tightening around the eyes.
“Evelyn.”
“I’m okay.”
Marisol looked at the blood on her lip.
“No, you aren’t.”
“I’m standing.”
“That is not the same thing.”
Damien started forward.
“This is my residence.”
Marisol did not look at him.
“Then stay where security can see you.”
“You have no authority here.”
“No,” she said. “They do.”
She nodded toward the building officers.
One of them addressed Damien.
“Sir, we’re going to need everyone to remain separated until police arrive.”
Damien laughed once.
It came out wrong.
“You’re kidding.”
“No, sir.”
The helicopter passed beyond the windows and the room darkened again.
Evelyn looked for her father.
He was not there.
Of course he was not.
Helicopters did not land on residential towers because a rich man wanted them to. Adrian would have to go to a heliport, get into a car, fight Manhattan traffic, and arrive like everyone else.
The ordinary logistics calmed her more than the searchlights had.
Damien seemed to understand the same thing.
Some of the color returned to his face.
“So this,” he said, looking at Evelyn, “is what you wanted.”
She did not answer.
“You came here planning this.”
Sloane made a small sound of disbelief.
May you like
Damien turned on her.
“She missed a check-in. She had a distress beacon around her neck. Her father was already in the air.”
