Chapter 2 - The Door That Should Have Stayed Locked

The lock clicked a second time.

I slipped the photograph into the leather envelope just as Gabriel stepped into the anniversary suite. He had a key card in one hand. The other hung motionless at his side, the hand that had struck me before two hundred people.

For thirteen years I had known the sound of his footsteps. Tonight I couldn't bear it.

“Rachel.” His voice was low. “Why did you lock me out?”

“Because I was afraid of you.”

He stopped. The simple answer seemed to reach him more deeply than a shouted accusation. Behind him stood two guards. I saw their eyes move toward the envelope beneath my arm.

“Send them away,” I said.

Gabriel hesitated, then closed the door in their faces. “I came to apologize.”

“Did you come to apologize before or after you gave Victoria my necklace?”

His jaw tightened. “There's something about Victoria you don't understand.”

“Then explain it.”

He glanced at the clock. 11:36. “Not here.”

He reached for my wrist. I moved back, and his expression changed. The bruise forming on my cheek had become an accusation neither of us could deny.

“I won't touch you,” he said. “I swear.”

I almost told him about Evelyn, about the warehouse photograph and the letter. Then I remembered my father's warning: do not tell Gabriel what you've discovered about Victoria. The message on my phone was more frightening still. If Gabriel entered the room, neither of us would survive the night.

“Why is Marcus Vale in the city?” I asked instead.

Gabriel's gaze sharpened. “Where did you hear that name?”

“You've spent years calling him your enemy. Is that true?”

“It's complicated.”

“That's what people say when the truth is worse.”

He looked toward the fireplace. I followed his glance and saw, with a cold shock, that the wedding portrait hung crookedly. Gabriel noticed it too.

“Who has been in this room?” he asked.

“Me. Your wife. Remember?”

His phone vibrated. He read the screen, and all the blood seemed to leave his face. “Stay here.”

“What happened?”

“Somebody disabled the elevators to this floor.”

From the corridor came the distant crash of something heavy falling. Gabriel went to the door, listened, then turned toward me. “There's a service stairwell behind the bedroom. Go there. Now.”

I held up my phone. “An unknown number told me to leave before midnight.”

He stared at the message. For one terrible second, I saw recognition. Then he said, “Don't answer it.”

There was a sharp knock. “Mr. Moretti, security,” a man's voice called.

Gabriel didn't open the door. “Give me your badge number.”

Silence. Then the handle moved.

Gabriel pulled me behind the stone wall dividing the suite. Glass shattered in the outer sitting room. I heard a suppressed crack and the splintering of wood. He didn't reach for me again. He pointed to the bedroom and waited while I moved.

I found the narrow service door exactly where he said it would be. It opened onto a concrete landing smelling of detergent. When I turned, Gabriel stood halfway across the bedroom, shielding the corridor with his body.

“Are you coming?” I whispered.

“I have to keep them away long enough for you to get downstairs.”

“I'm not leaving you to die.”

He looked at my bruised face. “After what I did downstairs, I have no right to ask you for anything. But I am asking you to live.”

I ran. I hated that it felt like obeying him.

Two flights below, someone caught my sleeve. I nearly screamed until a familiar silver-haired woman stepped from the shadows. Evelyn Shaw had changed out of her housekeeping jacket. A small cut marked her temple.

“Where's Gabriel?” she asked.

“Upstairs. Someone's trying to kill him.”

“I know.” She led me through a linen storage room and into a freight loading bay. An ordinary gray sedan waited by the ramp. The driver was a middle-aged woman who introduced herself only as Nora.

“Who sent you?” I demanded.

“Your father,” Evelyn said. “Eight years ago, he arranged for me to contact you if a particular account ever moved. It moved this afternoon.”

My head spun. “The account in his letter?”

“Not the bank papers. Another account, controlled by a trust. We can talk in the car.”

I stared back at the hotel, its upper floors bright and serene as though nothing could go wrong inside them. “I can't disappear without knowing if Gabriel survived.”

Evelyn's eyes softened, but her answer did not. “If you stay, Daniel's work dies with you.”

I entered the car clutching the envelope. We drove past the hotel's lit entrance at 11:58. A black SUV pulled up behind us, then slowed. Nora took the next turn without accelerating, and the SUV continued straight.

The city looked exactly as it had before the anniversary. That seemed impossible.

I finally opened my father's letter beneath the dim dome light. Beneath the sentence about the husband I was never meant to marry, a faint indent crossed the paper. I held it near the window and tilted it. Someone had written over the sheet while the letter lay beneath another page.

The impression contained a date and two words: November 18. Mariner Trust.

“What's Mariner Trust?” I asked.

Evelyn's face tightened. “The reason your father got on that road to Nevada.”

Nora's phone rang from the dashboard. She listened to a single sentence, then handed it to Evelyn.

A man's voice said, faint but clear enough for me to hear, “The hotel suite is secure. Mr. Moretti is alive.”

I began to cry before I could stop myself.

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Then the voice continued. “But someone using Mrs. Moretti's credentials accessed the Mariner vault ten minutes ago.”

My tears stopped. My credentials were in the handbag on my lap. Whoever had opened that vault had expected me to be dead—or blamed for what happened next.