Chapter 1 - The Call That Should Never Have Reached Her
The stranger on the phone didn't ask Clare Bennett to call the police. He asked her not to let a man die.
"Who is this?" he demanded.
"I found this phone outside my job," Clare said, rain spilling off her coat onto the sidewalk.
"Where are you?"
"Bellamy Books Cafe. Lexington Avenue."
She heard a door slam, an engine rev, and a young man's breath catch. Then he said, "Don't let him die," and the call disconnected.
Clare stared at the black phone. It was almost midnight. She had just finished a fourteen-hour shift, and her sneakers had been wet since nine. The sensible thing was to give the phone to the nearest police precinct and go home. Instead, she answered two more calls that went dead as soon as she spoke. Names flashed on the illuminated screen: Luca, Romano, Driver. The lock screen bore a silver crest. An address in an emergency-contact message pointed to Moretti Holdings in Midtown.
She knew the tower. Everyone in Manhattan knew its mirrored forty-eight stories. Her coworker Jenna once joked that its occupants probably paid people to breathe for them. Clare had seventy-three dollars until payday and an application for a book-conservation scholarship sitting unfinished on her kitchen table. She was not accustomed to visiting billionaires after dark.
But the stranger's voice stayed with her. Don't let him die.
Twenty minutes later she paid a taxi with money earmarked for groceries and climbed out in front of Moretti Holdings. Two black SUVs waited at the curb. A broad-shouldered guard spotted the phone before she could approach the revolving doors.
"Where did you get that?"
"Under a bench outside my bookstore. I just want to return it."
"Who touched it?"
"Me. That's why I'm here."
He held out his hand. Clare hesitated, remembering the calls, but a third car pulled up behind him. The guards straightened. Someone opened its rear door, and a tall man in a rain-darkened charcoal overcoat emerged. A thin cut marked his eyebrow. He crossed the sidewalk with the peculiar calm of someone who had learned to conceal pain in front of an audience.
"Mr. Moretti," the guard said.
Adrien Moretti looked at the phone, then at Clare. His eyes were gray, alert, and very tired.
"You answered it."
"It wouldn't stop ringing."
"What did the caller say?"
The guard glanced at him. "Sir, we should get inside."
Clare bristled. "He asked where I was. Then he told me not to let someone die. I don't know who he meant."
Something moved behind Adrien's expression, but he only extended his hand. Their fingers touched as she returned the device. He asked her name. She told him.
"Thank you, Clare."
She should have asked another question. She should have asked why a phone bearing a billionaire's crest had been abandoned outside a struggling bookstore. Instead, she went home, made toast over the kitchen sink, and slept badly.
At six-thirty the next morning, Clare unlocked Bellamy Books Cafe. The old shop smelled of cinnamon, damp paper, and the orange-peel polish Ruth Bellamy rubbed into the shelves. Ruth had owned it for thirty-one years and had taught Clare to repair a torn book rather than throw it away. Clare loved the place so fiercely that she had built a plan to turn it into an employee-owned business when Ruth retired. The numbers in her notebook did not yet agree with the dream. She had priced secondhand shelves, researched small-business loans, and counted the number of coffees they would have to sell before paying anybody a proper wage. She never told Ruth about the plan because Ruth had once called the shop her last surviving piece of a marriage. Clare could not bear to sound as though she were waiting for the older woman to surrender it. Even in her most ambitious moments, she imagined them working side by side.
Jenna arrived carrying a sack of day-old bagels. "You look like the end of a very bad novel."
"I found a phone. Returned it. Lost two hours of sleep."
"Thrilling. Did the phone belong to somebody handsome?"
"Somebody alarming."
Clare refused to elaborate. At nine-fifteen, the cafe's conversation softened, then stopped. Two dark SUVs stood outside. Security men entered first, scanning the room without touching anyone. Adrien Moretti followed in a charcoal suit. In daylight he looked more formidable and less invincible: the cut above his eye was visible beneath a careful attempt to conceal it.
Jenna whispered, "Please tell me you didn't steal that phone."
"I returned it."
Adrien approached the counter. "Clare."
"Mr. Moretti."
"Adrien."
"What are you doing here?"
"I came to thank you properly."
"You already thanked me."
"Not adequately."
He set down a plain paper bag, not an envelope of cash. Inside was a replacement for the battered umbrella he'd noticed her carrying in the rain. Clare looked from the umbrella to him.
"That's too much for a phone."
"Then consider it an apology for the questions my security staff asked."
"I still have questions of my own." She held his gaze. "Who was the man on the call?"
Adrien's fingers tightened on the paper bag. "Tell me exactly what you heard."
She repeated the words. He asked about noises in the background. Clare described an engine, a metal door, and a three-note chime like a subway announcement. His bodyguard, Ruben, stepped closer. Adrien raised a hand, stopping him.
"A building engineer named Ellis Ward was supposed to meet me last night," Adrien said quietly. "He went missing before he could. His son, Owen, has been trying to find him."
"Then why was your phone outside my bookstore?"
"I was there to meet Ellis. Someone grabbed my phone when the meeting went wrong. I got away." He touched the cut above his eye. "I didn't realize where it had ended up."
Clare felt a small, hard knot form behind her ribs. He had known the phone might be connected to danger when he accepted it, yet he had let her leave without a warning. "You could have told me that last night."
"You're right."
May you like
Before she could respond, Jenna appeared at the basement stairway, white-faced and holding a dripping paperback. A dark line of water crept across the floor behind her.
"Clare," she said, "the locked basement door is leaking. And I can hear someone knocking on the other side."
