Chapter 7 - Someone Knew Her Address
Elise couldn't see the shooter.
She could see the red dot trembling over Caleb's chest.
“Don't,” she whispered.
Caleb's hand stopped.
Jonah stood somewhere behind the shelving.
The darkness smelled of dust and old paper.
“Drop the photographs,” the voice ordered.
Elise let the envelope fall.
“Kick it forward.”
She did.
A flashlight switched on.
A man stepped from behind the shelves wearing a maintenance jacket.
Elise recognized him immediately.
The fake flower deliveryman.
He looked older than Victor.
Which meant he wasn't Victor.
“Who are you?” Caleb asked.
The man smiled.
“Someone who remembers your father.”
Caleb's voice remained calm.
“Name.”
“Marcus Flint.”
Jonah's voice came from darkness.
“You're dead.”
Marcus laughed.
“People keep saying that.”
Elise remembered the blue fiber.
The renovation crew.
Marcus must have worked for Harrow Construction.
Caleb said, “You sabotaged my chair.”
“Yes.”
“The floor?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Orders.”
“Victor?”
Marcus's smile faded.
“You still think Victor is the villain in every story.”
“Isn't he?”
“Sometimes.”
Marcus bent to retrieve the photographs.
That was when Elise noticed the fire alarm above him.
She knew hotels.
She knew exactly how loud those alarms were.
She also knew where the manual test button sat.
Two feet from her hand.
She pressed it.
The archive exploded with sound.
Marcus flinched.
The laser disappeared from Caleb.
Jonah fired.
Marcus dropped.
Caleb shouted, “Elise!”
She ducked.
Another gunshot.
Then silence.
Emergency lights flickered on.
Marcus lay wounded on the floor.
Alive.
Jonah kicked his weapon away.
Caleb looked at Elise.
“You couldn't just wait?”
“No.”
“You intentionally triggered an alarm during a gunpoint standoff.”
“Yes.”
“That was reckless.”
“It worked.”
His jaw tightened.
“You are impossible.”
“So I've been told.”
They recovered the photographs.
More importantly, they recovered Marcus.
Under questioning, he refused to identify who hired him.
But he said one thing that terrified Elise.
“Ask the girl why her rent doubled.”
She stared.
“My landlord raised it.”
Marcus smiled through bloodied teeth.
“Did he?”
Caleb ordered Jonah to investigate.
By morning they had an answer.
The property had been purchased indirectly three months earlier.
By Delmore Holdings.
Victor—or somebody connected to the old Rowan empire—had intentionally pushed Elise toward eviction.
Then a fake staffing company had offered exactly enough money to lure her into Rowan House.
Caleb stared at the financial report.
“She was selected.”
Jonah nodded.
“Months ago.”
“Why?”
“We still don't know.”
Elise stood by the window.
She felt violated in a way the threat with the knife hadn't achieved.
Her financial desperation had not been bad luck.
It had been engineered.
Somebody had studied her.
Manipulated her rent.
Placed a job in front of her.
Turned her into a chess piece.
“I want to go home.”
Caleb turned.
“No.”
She looked at him.
“Don't.”
“What?”
“Don't make that word your answer to everything.”
“Your apartment is controlled by the people targeting you.”
“I know.”
“Then why?”
“I need to see it.”
“For what?”
“To remember it's mine.”
He stared.
She continued.
“You don't understand.”
“I understand more than you think.”
“No. You have houses everywhere. Cars. Guards. People who rebuild rooms after bullets tear through them.”
Her voice shook.
“I have one apartment with a broken kitchen cabinet and a radiator that screams every winter. I fought for it.”
Caleb said nothing.
“Someone used it against me. I need to stand there and know they didn't take everything.”
His expression softened.
“All right.”
Jonah objected.
Caleb overruled him.
They went in armored vehicles.
Elise's apartment building looked even smaller beside Caleb's convoy.
He refused to remain downstairs.
The elevator was too narrow for his chair.
“There are stairs,” Elise said awkwardly.
He looked at them.
The building had no accessible entrance.
Her face heated.
“I'm sorry.”
“Why?”
“I didn't think.”
“You didn't design the building.”
Still, she hated it.
Caleb was forced to use a portable stair-climbing chair security carried.
He accepted the indignity without complaint.
That taught Elise something.
He wasn't embarrassed by needing help.
He was furious when people assumed help made him weak.
Inside her apartment, everything looked normal.
Until she saw the kitchen table.
A photograph sat in the center.
Her mother.
Elise picked it up.
It had been stored in a box beneath her bed.
Someone had entered.
On the back, written in black marker:
SHE SHOULD HAVE TOLD YOU.
Elise stopped breathing.
Caleb saw it.
“What?”
She handed him the photograph.
His face changed.
“What was your mother's name?”
“Rachel Parker.”
“Where did she work?”
“Everywhere. Hotels. Restaurants.”
“Bellgrave Imperial?”
Elise froze.
“For a few months.”
“When?”
She calculated.
“About twelve years ago.”
Caleb looked at Jonah.
“Check.”
Jonah did.
Ten minutes later he returned.
His expression told them before he spoke.
“Rachel Parker worked housekeeping at the Imperial twelve years ago.”
Elise sat.
Exactly when Victor, Daniel Vale and Caleb's father had been meeting there.
“No.”
Caleb remained silent.
Jonah continued.
“She was assigned to executive floors.”
“Room 1704?”
“We don't know.”
Elise remembered her mother becoming frightened near the end of that job.
Changing phone numbers.
Closing curtains.
Telling Elise never to answer strange calls.
At the time Elise had been nineteen and too busy trying to survive nursing her mother's illness to understand.
“What happened after she left?” Caleb asked.
“She got sick.”
“What kind?”
“Cancer.”
“When did she die?”
“Eight years ago.”
Caleb's face softened.
“I'm sorry.”
Elise stared at the photograph.
“She used to say something.”
“What?”
“If something looks too perfect, check what somebody covered up.”
Caleb's gaze sharpened.
“That sounds familiar.”
Elise looked at him.
“That's why I notice rooms.”
Her mother had taught her.
Not hotels.
Her mother.
Caleb picked up the photograph.
“The message says she should have told you.”
Elise's pulse increased.
“Told me what?”
They searched the apartment.
Nothing obvious.
Then Elise remembered a music box her mother had given her.
It sat in the closet.
Cheap.
Wooden.
Broken for years.
She opened it.
The mechanism didn't play.
Caleb watched.
Elise turned it over.
One screw was different.
She removed it.
The bottom panel lifted.
Inside was a folded piece of yellowed paper.
Her mother's handwriting.
Elise couldn't breathe.
She opened it.
Elise, if anyone ever asks about the Rowan family, do not trust the story you hear first. I saw something I was never supposed to see. Thomas knows the rest.
Below that was a name.
Evelyn Rowan.
Caleb stared.
“My mother.”
Elise looked at him.
“Your mother knew mine?”
Caleb's face had gone pale.
“My mother died twenty years ago.”
Elise stared at the note.
“How could my mother know her?”
Caleb took the paper carefully.
“My mother didn't die in Bellgrave.”
“Where?”
“New York.”
Elise looked back at her mother's photograph.
Rachel Parker had lived in New York before Elise was born.
A terrible possibility emerged.
Their connection began long before the hotel.
Long before the car bomb.
Long before Elise ever became Caleb Rowan's housekeeper.
Someone hadn't chosen her because she was convenient.
They had chosen her because of her mother.
May you like
And whatever Rachel Parker had known was powerful enough that twelve years later, people were still willing to kill for it.
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