Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN HE WASN'T SUPPOSED TO REMEMBER
At 6:14 the following morning, Julian Voss discovered that the woman he'd kissed had disappeared.
This would ordinarily have been an unremarkable development.
People disappeared from his world constantly.
Some fled debts. Some changed loyalties. Some discovered that proximity to Julian Voss was considerably more expensive than they had anticipated.
But this woman was different.
He had kissed her to survive four seconds in a room where someone was trying to kill him.
Then he'd walked away.
He hadn't asked her name.
He hadn't apologized.
And now, sitting behind his desk with a bandage across his left forearm, he found himself remembering the sound of her breath catching against his mouth.
It irritated him.
Not because he regretted touching her.
Because he remembered how frightened she'd been.
And how carelessly he'd dismissed it.
"Tomas."
His security chief appeared in the doorway.
"Boss."
"The woman from last night."
Tomas went still.
"What woman?"
Julian lifted his eyes.
"Don't insult me."
A pause.
"The temporary server?"
"Yes."
"She's gone."
"I gathered that."
Tomas looked toward the window.
"That's a good thing."
Julian put down his pen.
"Explain."
"Someone fired six shots inside a private auction. Two guards were wounded. The entire operation is compromised. That girl doesn't need to be involved."
Julian considered him.
"What was her name?"
"I don't know."
"You put her in a car."
"To get her away."
"Without asking where she lived?"
"I dropped her somewhere safe."
Julian's expression darkened.
"Somewhere safe?"
Tomas said nothing.
"That's not an address, Tomas."
The older man exhaled.
"She said she was a nurse."
Julian looked up sharply.
"A nurse?"
"That's what she claimed."
For reasons Julian couldn't explain, the answer unsettled him more than anything else.
He remembered her moving toward the gunshot rather than away from it.
The instinctive urgency in her voice when she tried to return to the room.
She hadn't been pretending.
"Find out who hired her."
Tomas hesitated.
"Julian—"
"Not to bring her here. Not to frighten her. I want to know whether someone deliberately placed her in that room."
Tomas nodded.
But after he left, Julian opened the security photographs from the auction.
There she was.
Standing beside the service entrance.
Dark hair pinned loosely.
A borrowed black dress.
A tray balanced on one hand.
Her expression was tired, wary, and entirely unimpressed by the men around her.
Julian enlarged the photograph.
Then noticed something.
Behind her stood Felix Mercer.
The auction organizer.
He was watching her.
Not the bidders.
Not the painting.
Her.
And Felix was smiling.
Across Brooklyn, Cora Whitaker stood beneath the fluorescent lights of Saint Bridget's Medical Center, trying to decide whether she'd imagined the entire previous night.
Her twelve-hour nursing shift had begun at seven.
She had slept for ninety minutes.
Her feet hurt.
Her lips still felt strange.
And her father had left seven unanswered messages.
At eight thirty, she finally called him.
"Dad?"
"Cora, sweetheart."
Arthur Whitaker sounded relieved.
"Where were you last night?"
"Working."
"At the hospital?"
Cora hesitated.
"An extra job."
Silence.
Then her father asked, "For Felix?"
Her stomach tightened.
"Yes."
Arthur said something she couldn't hear.
"Dad?"
"You need to stay away from him."
Cora almost laughed.
"That's interesting, considering he's the person you owe eighty-six thousand dollars."
"Sweetheart, please."
"Why did he send me to that auction?"
Arthur went quiet.
For several seconds, Cora heard only his breathing.
Then he whispered, "There was a painting."
She stopped walking.
"What painting?"
"A harbor at sunset. A woman in a yellow coat standing on a pier."
Cora remembered it immediately.
The painting that had been on the auction platform when the gunfire started.
"What about it?"
Arthur's voice broke.
"Your mother painted it."
Cora gripped her phone.
Her mother, Elena Whitaker, had died when Cora was fifteen.
She had worked as an art conservator.
Cora remembered paint on her fingertips and turpentine in the garage.
But she'd never known her mother had painted anything valuable enough to appear at a private auction.
"Dad, what aren't you telling me?"
Arthur began crying.
"I'm sorry, sweetheart."
"For what?"
A long pause.
Then he whispered, "The debt isn't mine."
Cora felt the hospital corridor tilt beneath her.
"Whose is it?"
Her father's answer came so quietly she almost missed it.
"Your mother's."
May you like
Before she could ask another question, the call disconnected.
And at the other end of Brooklyn, somebody knocked on Arthur Whitaker's front door.
