Chapter 2 - THE QUESTION HE COULDN'T ANSWER
Damian Romano read the photograph on Harper's phone without touching the screen.
He had been standing behind his desk when she entered. Now he remained perfectly still, hands braced against the polished wood, as though movement might make the truth arriving between them more difficult to contain.
"Where did you get that?" he asked.
"An anonymous number. Five minutes ago."
"Who else has seen it?"
"Gabriel and Mrs. Alvarez know there was a warning. Nobody else has seen this photograph." She swallowed. "I want you to look at the time."
In the corner of the image, the digital stamp read May 14, 11:26 p.m. Claire's car appeared beneath an overpass, her face visible through the open window, a parking receipt trapped beneath the windshield wiper. The police had told Harper that Claire died at 10:48 that night. Harper remembered because it was the hour she had called her sister and reached voicemail.
"The police report says she was already dead," Harper said. "If this is real, someone lied."
Damian lifted his eyes to hers. His silence lasted so long she could hear the wall clock move.
"You knew my sister," she said.
"I knew her name."
"That's not the same answer."
"No." He came around the desk, stopped several feet away, and spoke without his usual cultivated certainty. "Claire Ellison worked as a compliance analyst for Harrington Freight. Four years ago she raised concerns about shipments moving through a warehouse my companies leased."
Harper felt the small hairs rise on her arms. "You owned the warehouse?"
"A minority stake at the time."
"How much of a minority?"
"Twenty-eight percent."
"Enough to collect the money."
He did not defend himself. "Yes."
Harper looked down at her sister's photograph. Claire had been thirty-one, loved crossword puzzles, hated lilies, and called every Sunday to ask whether Harper was eating real meals. For months after the accident, Harper kept the last voicemail because it contained Claire asking whether she wanted to get breakfast. Nothing prophetic. Nothing dramatic. Just a sister assuming there would be more mornings.
"She came to you with a problem," Harper said.
"She sent a report to my legal office. It was classified as a routine vendor dispute."
"Did you read it?"
"Not until two days after her funeral."
"Why?"
"Because I was careless. Because I had delegated responsibility for a warehouse and decided that meant I had delegated the consequences too."
She wanted to reject his answer for being too easy. Anger worked better against a lie. An admission left her with the exhausting task of deciding what it meant.
"What was in the report?"
"Anomalies in refrigerated cargo manifests. Trucks entered full and departed empty. Employees were paid under invented names. She believed dangerous materials were being moved outside permitted routes."
"Dangerous materials?"
"Industrial solvents. Some shipments were legal. Some weren't."
Harper took a step back. "And you knew all of this four years ago?"
"I learned enough afterward to sever the Harrington subcontract. I should have gone to the authorities with what I had."
"But you didn't."
"No."
The room felt too warm. Harper moved toward the window, where the long lawn faded into pale afternoon light. She could see gardeners tending a hedge with the meticulous concentration required to make living things obey straight lines.
"Why did you hire me?" she asked.
"I didn't. Victor handled the interviews."
"Did you know who I was?"
"Not until Gabriel checked your file after the shooting."
Harper studied his face, trying to find the place where a practiced liar might hide. Four years with Aaron had trained her to scrutinize hesitation. She disliked that she could not tell whether Damian was withholding something or simply allowing her to decide how angry to be.
"I don't know if I believe you," she said.
"You shouldn't believe me merely because I'm asking."
The response irritated her almost as much as his earlier honesty. "You keep doing that."
"Doing what?"
"Making it hard to have the argument I prepared on the walk here."
His mouth tightened. "I'm not trying to win an argument."
"Then what do you want?"
"To find out who was willing to kill you. And why."
"I want to know what happened to Claire. Those aren't necessarily the same investigation."
"They may be." Damian glanced at her phone. "May I make a copy of the image for Gabriel?"
She hesitated, then sent it herself, keeping the original untouched. He watched without comment. That, too, felt different from what she expected of him.
Gabriel arrived twenty minutes later with an enlarged printout and a list of questions. The photograph's metadata had been removed. The license plate on a delivery van behind Claire's car appeared altered. But the original photograph contained a reflection in the driver's side window: a huge yellow clock mounted above a loading dock.
"Harrington Freight's old Pier Nine facility," Gabriel said. "It closed after a chemical exposure complaint."
"That was the summer after Claire died," Harper said.
Gabriel looked up. "You remember?"
"I remember everything that summer. Not by choice."
He laid down another page. The clock in the photograph showed 11:26. Gabriel had located a newspaper archive showing the clock had been taken down for repairs the following year.
"That doesn't prove the photograph wasn't manipulated," he said. "But it gives us something to check."
"What about the florist?" Damian asked.
"The delivery company never sent one. The real team was canceled from Victor's office at noon. Someone using their account sent the replacement."
Damian's face became very still. "Victor."
"Or someone with access to his credentials." Gabriel crossed his arms. "His schedule was also altered before the dinner. Harper was moved from the kitchen rotation to the dining room at five fifty-eight."
Harper stared at him. "I thought Mrs. Alvarez reassigned me."
"She didn't."
She remembered the laser inching toward her, the abrupt grip on her wrist, her own slap echoing across the dining room. Her breath shortened before she could stop it.
"Harper," Damian said. "You can sit if you want."
The gentleness infuriated her unexpectedly. "Please stop acting as though a chair will solve this."
He lowered his hands. "You're right."
She pressed her palms against the windowsill. She counted four breaths the way a counselor had taught her after Aaron. Her breathing steadied enough to speak.
"If Victor brought me here, and someone moved me to the dining room, then the shooting wasn't random."
"No," Gabriel said. "It wasn't."
A knock interrupted them. Victor stood outside the half-open study door with a stack of envelopes. He glanced from Gabriel to Harper, his expression just slightly too casual.
"Security protocols require the staff to remain in assigned areas," he said. "Miss Ellison is due downstairs."
Damian looked at his manager. "Who approved the substitute florist?"
Victor froze. Only for a fraction of a second, but all three of them saw it.
"I don't recall the name," he said. "My office handles hundreds of requests."
"Then send Gabriel the records."
"Certainly." Victor shifted the envelopes. "And Miss Harrington asked whether you'll join her for dinner."
"No."
"Shall I tell her why?"
"Tell her I declined."
Victor left with a tight nod. Gabriel followed after warning Harper that the conservatory entrance was now guarded. When the door closed, Damian spoke quietly.
"You don't have to remain employed here to help with this. I'll pay you the wages owed and provide an attorney who doesn't work for me."
"If I quit, Victor wins."
"If you stay only to defy him, he gets to choose your reasons."
She looked at him then, surprised by the precision of the thought. For a man who reportedly controlled half the city's illicit freight movement, Damian understood something about the way control distorted choices.
"I'll decide tonight," she said. "Not you, not Victor, and not whoever sent that photograph."
"All right."
"And don't ask me to trust you."
"I won't."
She reached the doorway before another question stopped her.
"Did Claire ever come here?"
Damian's expression changed. It was the smallest shift, like a curtain drawn across a window.
"Once," he said.
"When?"
"The morning before she died."
Harper's heart struck hard against her ribs. "And you were going to tell me that when?"
"When I had something better than an explanation that makes me look guilty."
"You don't get to protect yourself with my sister's silence."
Damian closed his eyes for an instant. "No. I don't."
She left him standing there and walked down the service stairs. Behind her, somewhere on the main floor, Celeste laughed at something a guest had said. Harper had never heard a sound she wanted more desperately to escape.
In the locker room, she opened Claire's last voicemail for the first time in nearly a year. Her sister's voice filled the small tiled space, cheerful and impatient.
"Hey, Harp. Breakfast Sunday? And do me a favor. If I forget, remind me to tell you about the blue folder. Nothing bad. Just work being weird. Love you."
Harper had heard the message a hundred times and always remembered the breakfast invitation. Only now did she hear the middle sentence.
The blue folder.
She opened her eyes and looked at her old canvas bag. Four years ago, after the funeral, she had saved a shoebox of Claire's belongings in her apartment closet. Inside was a faded blue folder she had never bothered to open, believing it held old insurance forms.
May you like
Her phone rang before she could move. An unknown caller breathed once, then said in a low male voice, "Don't go home, Harper. They already found the box."
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