Chapter 1 - The Warning Outside the Hotel
Scout rose with the suitcase, his red leash pulling tight between Lucy’s mittens.
Vincent immediately lowered the case.
The dog sat again.
Frank Delaney looked from the animal to his employer.
“Tell me we’re not canceling a forty-million-dollar meeting because somebody’s dog dislikes your luggage.”
“We already canceled it.”
Vincent looked at Lucy.
“Where’s your mother?”
“Inside. She’s helping Mrs. Pritchard deliver books for the hotel fundraiser.”
“Does she know you’re out here?”
“She can see me through the window.”
Lucy pointed toward the lobby.
A woman stood beside a cart of cardboard boxes, watching them through the glass. The moment Vincent looked her way, she abandoned the cart and came outside.
“Lucy?”
“I didn’t go anywhere, Mom.”
The woman stepped between her daughter and Frank.
She was young, perhaps thirty, with brown hair slipping from a loose braid and the exhausted alertness Vincent recognized in people who could not afford a mistake.
“I’m sorry if she bothered you.”
“She may have done me a favor,” Vincent said.
The woman finally looked directly at him.
Recognition changed her expression.
Her hand tightened around Lucy’s shoulder.
“We should go.”
Vincent remained where he was.
“You know who I am.”
“People in Chicago know who you are.”
He accepted that.
“What’s your name?”
“Mara Hayes.”
There it was again.
Hayes.
The name felt like a door he should remember opening.
“Your daughter noticed something unusual about my suitcase.”
Mara glanced at Scout.
“He did the cabinet thing again?”
Lucy nodded.
Vincent looked at Frank.
“Call Nadia.”
Frank hesitated, then stepped away.
Mara began guiding Lucy toward the entrance.
“Thank you for being patient with her.”
“Mrs. Hayes.”
She stopped.
“I’m having the case examined. If the dog recognizes something, it would help to know why.”
“I don’t know why. We found him outside our building during that storm.”
“Have you checked for an owner?”
“Yes. A shelter scanned him. They’re trying the number on his chip.”
Her defensiveness was immediate.
Vincent understood.
She expected him to accuse her of keeping something that did not belong to her.
Perhaps she expected worse.
“I wasn’t questioning your honesty.”
Mara said nothing.
Lucy looked up at her.
“Can we stay until they know he isn’t being bad?”
Vincent watched Mara consider the request.
“Only in the lobby,” she said. “And only until Mrs. Pritchard finishes.”
He nodded.
No one entered a private car.
No one followed him into an elevator.
They returned to the lobby, where an elderly librarian immediately wrapped an arm around Lucy and asked why everybody looked so serious.
Nadia Chen arrived twenty-five minutes later carrying a plain equipment bag.
She had handled Vincent’s technical security for eight years and had never once confused discretion with obedience.
When Frank explained the dog, she crouched several feet away.
“Interesting.”
“That’s your professional assessment?” Frank asked.
“It’s the polite version.”
She asked Lucy to keep Scout back while she examined the case in an unused conference room.
Mara remained beside her daughter throughout.
Vincent watched through the open doorway.
Nadia photographed the exterior, checked the seams, and asked exactly when the suitcase had last been outside his sight.
“It wasn’t.”
“Not even while you put on your coat?”
Vincent remembered leaving it beside the townhouse stairs.
His driver had carried it to the car.
Frank had waited in the hall.
A housekeeper had opened the front door.
Certainty began to look embarrassingly thin.
Nadia found the altered seam beneath a rubber corner guard.
She did not open the latch.
Instead, she carefully separated part of the lining.
A black object, smaller than a cigarette packet, emerged inside a clear evidence sleeve.
Frank leaned forward.
“What is it?”
“A concealed electronic collector. I need a controlled examination before I say more.”
“Explosive?”
“I see no indication of that. It appears intended to gather information.”
Vincent stared at the object.
Someone had wanted the meeting.
The contracts.
The tablet.
Something he would discuss behind closed doors.
Then Lucy spoke from the doorway.
“My daddy made that.”
Every adult turned.
She pointed at a tiny silver marking on the device’s casing.
A four-pointed star.
One point was shorter than the others.
“Not the box,” Lucy clarified. “That little picture.”
Mara went pale.
“Lucy.”
“It’s on my bird.”
Vincent looked at her mother.
“What bird?”
“A wooden toy,” Mara said too quickly.
Nadia lifted the sleeve toward the light.
Her face changed.
“I know this mark.”
Frank glanced at her.
“From where?”
Nadia did not answer him.
She was looking at Mara.
“Was your husband Daniel Hayes?”
Mara drew Lucy closer.
“Yes.”
The conference room seemed to contract around them.
Nadia lowered the device.
“I worked with him.”
“My husband died four years ago.”
“I know.”
Vincent heard something in Nadia’s voice he had never heard before.
Fear.
May you like
Then she said the words that changed everything.
“And if this is what I think it is, someone has just used his work again.”
