Chapter 1 - THE NAME HE SHOULD NEVER HAVE KNOWN
The first thing I noticed was that Dante Moretti was still holding my wrist.
The second was that one of the men pointing a gun at me had blood on his cuff. His own, I hoped. The rain had turned the mountain into a wall of black mud, and my fingers were shaking so violently that I couldn't tell whether the wetness on my palms came from the storm or my wounds.
"How did you know my brakes were going to fail?" Dante asked again.
I stared at him. "How do you know my name?"
The question changed something in his eyes. Around us, men shifted their footing on the slope. Far below, the wreck of Dante's car hit another ledge, and a distant metallic crash carried up through the rain.
"She has a name tag," a guard muttered.
"I took my apron off before I ran," I said.
Dante looked down at my plain black sweater. No badge. No embroidery. Nothing that identified me as anyone but a drenched stranger foolish enough to chase a man down a mountain.
"Guns down," he ordered.
Nobody hesitated. That frightened me more than the weapons had. Men who obeyed that quickly had learned the cost of disobedience.
His security chief, a broad-shouldered man with gray at his temples, crouched beside us. "Boss, your shoulder is dislocated. We need to move. State police will be here after the guardrail alert."
"Then they'll find a damaged road and an empty car," Dante said. "Rafe, get her up there."
"I can walk," I snapped.
I tried to prove it. My ankle folded beneath me.
Dante caught my elbow before I struck the rocks. The motion made him wince, and I suddenly remembered that he'd just been pulled out of a car destined for a ravine. He looked dangerous even half-conscious, but dangerous men could bleed, too.
"You can argue with me when we're both off this mountain," he said.
I hated that he was right.
Two guards helped us climb. At the road, an SUV door stood open, its warm interior light glaring like an invitation I didn't trust. I stopped.
"I'm not getting into a strange car with armed men."
Rafe blinked as though nobody had ever said that to him.
Dante came up beside me, one arm supported against his chest. "You followed a stranger into a storm and risked your life to pull him out of a wreck. Now you're developing caution?"
"Better late than never."
A corner of his mouth moved. It wasn't quite a smile.
"Call the police from your phone," he said. "Tell them what you heard. I'll give you a safe address. Then you decide if you want to ride with us or wait here."
It was the first choice anyone had offered me that night. I held his gaze for a moment, looking for the trick. Finding none, I dialed emergency services and reported the crash, the restaurant conversation, and the location. I did not leave out Vanessa Moretti's name.
Only then did I climb inside.
Rafe wrapped my hands in clean gauze while the driver negotiated the wet mountain road. Dante sat opposite me. The light showed a cut near his eyebrow and an ugly swelling at his collarbone. He watched me with an intensity that made the air feel smaller.
"Vanessa said the brakes were cut," I told him. "She was sitting in Bellini's private booth with a man. I didn't see his face. He said they'd fail on the mountain road. She said she'd be a widow by midnight."
Dante closed his eyes for a second.
"You believe me?" I asked.
"I believe my brake pedal went to the floor three turns before the ridge."
"That doesn't explain how you knew my name."
Rafe glanced at him in the rearview mirror.
"Cara Fields," Dante said slowly. "Twenty-seven. Employee at Bellini's for five years. You live above a laundromat on Prescott Street. You send part of your paycheck to a woman named Leah Fields."
A wave of cold swept through me that had nothing to do with my clothes.
"You've been watching me?"
"Your name was on a file that reached my office eleven days ago."
"What kind of file?"
He hesitated. For the first time, I saw something close to regret on his face.
"A list of people someone inside my organization wanted removed from their jobs. Your name was circled."
I swallowed. "Removed how?"
"That," he said, "is what I've been trying to find out."
Rafe turned away, but not before I caught his expression. He knew more than either of them wanted to say.
We reached a low stone house hidden in a stand of pines. The entrance was lit, and an older woman in scrubs met us with a medical case. She introduced herself as Dr. Miriam Cole. Unlike the guards, she looked at me first, not at Dante.
"You're the one who went down the cliff? Let's look at those hands."
Inside, a fire burned in an enormous fireplace. Expensive rugs covered the floors. I felt absurd sitting on one while someone cleaned gravel out of my skin.
Dr. Cole examined my ankle, declared it sprained, and suggested an emergency-department evaluation if the swelling worsened. Dante's shoulder required more attention. His teeth clenched while she immobilized his arm, but he made no sound.
I had seen men complain for twenty minutes because their steak came medium instead of medium rare. Watching this one endure pain without a word unsettled me more than I wanted to admit.
When the doctor finished, I borrowed a phone charger and called my aunt.
Leah picked up on the fourth ring. "Cara? Honey, it's almost one."
"I'm okay. I had an accident, but I'm okay."
"What kind of accident?"
I heard a cough, the wheeze that came when her apartment heater hadn't worked properly. Leah had helped raise me since I was thirteen. I knew exactly how much she would worry if I told her everything.
"I helped somebody after a crash. I'll explain soon. Keep your door locked tonight, please."
Her voice sharpened. "Does this have anything to do with your father?"
I sat up.
"Why would you ask that?"
She didn't answer immediately. In the background, a clock chimed once.
"Leah?"
"Because a man came by this afternoon," she whispered. "He asked whether you still had Jonah's blue toolbox."
My father had been dead for fourteen years.
At least, that was what everyone had told me.
"What man?"
"He wouldn't give a name. He was polite until I said I didn't know what he meant. Then he asked whether you still worked at Bellini's."
My mouth went dry. "Don't open the door for anybody. I'm sending someone to stay outside."
"Cara, what's happening?"
"I don't know yet."
It was the truest thing I'd said all night.
I hung up and found Dante standing in the doorway, his injured arm in a sling. His expression had gone rigid.
"What does your father have to do with this?" he asked.
"You tell me. You have the file."
"Your father was Jonah Fields?"
"He repaired industrial equipment. Fourteen years ago, a fire at Blackstone Terminal was said to have killed him, Luca Moretti, and three other workers. The police said he caused it. They were wrong."
Dante took one slow step toward me.
"Jonah Fields was accused of starting that fire," he said. "But the official report never said his body had been found."
I stared at him. "What?"
"Cara, my younger brother Luca died at Blackstone Terminal that night. I was twenty-four. I spent years believing your father murdered him."
Something tightened around my ribs.
"You think I'm responsible? I was thirteen."
"I don't." His voice softened. "I'm telling you why that name matters."
I wanted to get up and run, but the room had become too large and too small at once. I thought of all the times Leah had refused to discuss my father. The framed photograph on her mantle. His work boots she'd kept in a closet long after his death.
"Then why was my name circled?" I whispered.
I remembered the first week after the Blackstone fire. My teachers had stopped asking about homework. A counselor with soft hands called me brave every time I didn't cry. At the grocery store, a woman I'd never met told Leah she was sorry for the sort of man my father had turned out to be. I had wanted to throw a jar of pickles at her feet. Instead I'd apologized for standing in her way.
Fourteen years later, the thought made me angrier than the threat on my phone. My father had been judged in whispers, and I'd inherited the judgment without ever being told exactly what he'd done. It had seeped into every job interview and every conversation about family. People didn't have to say they blamed me. Their careful questions did it for them.
"If somebody has decided that being Jonah Fields's daughter makes me disposable," I said, "I want that person to hear me say I disagree."
Dante looked at my bandaged hands. "You shouldn't have been dragged into any of this."
"I was in it from the day they printed my father's name beside the word murderer. I just didn't know the full story."
Dante stared at the phone in my hand.
"Because somebody thinks Jonah left something with you."
Rafe entered before I could answer. His face told me that whatever news he carried was worse than our conversation.
"Boss, the traffic cameras caught Vanessa's car leaving the restaurant," he said. "She didn't go home. She went to your uncle Lucian's house."
Dante's jaw tightened.
Then my phone vibrated.
An unknown number had sent me a photograph. It showed my apartment door, taken from the hallway. Someone had drawn a small red X across the number.
Below it, written across the photograph in slanted black handwriting, were five words.
WE SHOULD HAVE BURIED YOU TOO.
I passed the screen to Dante, and for the first time since he climbed out of the wreck, I watched fear cross his face.
May you like
Not fear for himself.
Fear because he recognized the handwriting.
