Chapter 2 - An Offer With an Unlocked Door
Claire did not scream.
She walked back into the warehouse and handed Detective Reyes her phone.
That was the first decision she made that night which did not feel like stepping off a roof.
Reyes studied the photograph.
“When was this taken?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who else lives there?”
“No one.”
The detective immediately called another officer.
Adrian stood several feet away, close enough to see Claire’s face but not the screen.
“What happened?”
Claire let Reyes answer.
Someone had photographed her apartment door. Someone had found her number. Someone wanted her frightened enough to disappear, or frightened enough to become careless.
Adrian’s jaw tightened.
“My security team can—”
“Preserve any relevant footage and cooperate with my officers,” Reyes interrupted. “That would help.”
He looked at her.
Then nodded.
Claire appreciated that more than she expected.
An hour later, police confirmed that nobody was inside her apartment. The hallway camera had been covered with black tape.
Her landlord insisted the building was usually very safe.
Claire had heard that sentence before.
Usually was a word people used when they wanted the exception to become somebody else’s problem.
Reyes explained temporary options. A hotel. A friend’s home. An address that would not immediately appear in a routine search.
Claire almost laughed at the suggestion of a friend with a spare room.
At thirty-one, she had acquaintances, coworkers, and a retired professor who still sent her newspaper articles with grammatical errors circled.
Her closest friend, Tessa, lived in a studio apartment with two children.
Adrian waited until Reyes finished.
“There’s a guesthouse on my property,” he said. “Separate entrance. Your own key. You can have someone inspect it first.”
Claire folded her arms.
“I’m not moving into a stranger’s house because he owns a better lock.”
“Fair.”
“And I’m not accepting a job because someone threatened me.”
“I haven’t offered you one.”
“You were about to.”
His mouth moved slightly.
Not quite a smile.
“Yes.”
Reyes looked between them.
“Any arrangement is her decision. I’ll keep the address restricted in the report where possible, but nobody should promise complete secrecy.”
Claire liked her immediately.
“What job?” she asked Adrian.
“Language consultant. Proper contract. Independent legal review. Salary based on the work.”
“Not gratitude?”
“No.”
“Not silence?”
His expression hardened.
“Absolutely not.”
She studied him.
The rumors about Adrian Vale had followed her through restaurants for years. Warehouses. Trucking companies. Men who stopped speaking when his name entered a conversation.
“Are your businesses legal?”
“Some of the people who built them weren’t.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“No,” he said. “It wasn’t.”
He took a breath.
“I’ve spent six years separating the companies from my father’s associates. Today was supposed to finalize an international freight partnership. If you consider working with me, your lawyer can review the businesses you’d be serving.”
It was not a reassuring answer.
It was, however, an answer that admitted reassurance had to be earned.
Claire chose a hotel recommended by Reyes.
Adrian paid through the attorney who handled his company’s emergency expenses, with written confirmation that she owed nothing in return.
She kept the receipt anyway.
At eleven that night, Professor Samuel Mercer answered her call.
“You sound exhausted,” he said.
“I had an unusual shift.”
“How unusual?”
“I may have prevented an international incident.”
A pause.
“Did you finally correct someone’s menu translation?”
She laughed then.
Unexpectedly, helplessly.
When she finished explaining, Samuel said nothing for several seconds.
Then his voice changed.
“Claire. Did anyone there mention Eleanor Harrow?”
She sat upright.
“No. Why?”
“Because you said the message came from someone with those initials.”
“You know her?”
“I knew the foundation she directs.”
Something in his tone made Claire’s hotel room feel suddenly smaller.
“Samuel?”
“Before you accept anything,” he said, “we need to discuss what happened to your scholarship.”
Claire stared at the blank television.
The scholarship she had lost at twenty.
The opportunity that had disappeared without explanation.
“What does that have to do with today?”
May you like
Samuel exhaled.
“I’m afraid,” he said, “it may have everything to do with it.”
