Chapter 3 - Twenty-Five Dollars an Hour
The power returned forty-three seconds later.
Vincent counted every one.
When the lights came back, Marco and four security men were already moving through the second floor.
No intruder was found.
The broken glass downstairs came from a rear French door.
No fingerprints.
No footprints.
No missing property.
Whoever had entered the mansion hadn’t come to steal.
They had come to send a message.
Tessa sat in a chair near Vincent’s bed while Marco examined her phone.
Lauren stood by the window.
Vincent watched both women.
One wore a five-carat diamond.
The other earned twenty-five dollars an hour.
At that moment, he knew which one he trusted more.
“Number is disposable,” Marco said.
“Trace it anyway.”
“I will.”
Vincent turned to Tessa.
“You’re not going home.”
Her head snapped up.
“That wasn’t a request.”
“I have a sister waiting for me.”
“She can come here.”
“No.”
Vincent stared.
Tessa stared back.
Marco looked between them and wisely said nothing.
“My sister doesn’t know who you are,” Tessa said.
“That’s probably healthy.”
“She thinks I work for a wealthy businessman recovering from an accident.”
“Technically accurate.”
“I want to keep it that way.”
Vincent leaned back.
“Someone photographed you.”
“I noticed.”
“They know where you work.”
“Yes.”
“They probably know where you live.”
Tessa went quiet.
That landed.
Vincent softened his voice.
“Bring your sister here tonight.”
Tessa looked toward Lauren.
Lauren looked away.
Finally Tessa nodded.
“Only tonight.”
“Fine.”
It would not be only tonight.
Vincent knew it.
Tessa probably knew it too.
Her sister arrived an hour later.
Emily Morgan was nineteen, studying nursing at community college, and recovering from a heart condition that had generated the medical bills Tessa worked constantly to pay.
Vincent learned all of that in ten minutes.
Emily learned almost nothing about him.
Tessa intended to keep it that way.
Vincent had a guest suite prepared at the opposite end of the floor.
Then he summoned Marco.
“Find the payment.”
“The fifty thousand?”
“Every bank, every transfer, every camera.”
“What about Lauren?”
Vincent glanced toward the hallway.
“She stays here.”
“You think she’ll run?”
“I think she’s afraid.”
“Of you?”
“No.”
That was the problem.
Lauren had known Vincent for seven years.
She had seen him angry.
She had seen him order men removed from businesses they thought they owned.
She had once watched him break a champagne flute in his bare hand and then calmly finish dinner.
Lauren was not afraid of Vincent.
She was afraid of whoever had received that fifty thousand dollars.
By midnight, Marco had something.
He entered carrying a tablet.
“Cashier’s check.”
“To whom?”
“Private security company. Halcyon Strategic Consulting.”
“Never heard of them.”
“Because they barely exist.”
Marco placed the tablet in Vincent’s hands.
“The company was incorporated eight months before your shooting. No real office. No employees listed publicly.”
“Owner?”
“A holding company.”
“Owner of that?”
“Another holding company.”
Vincent sighed.
“Stop making me ask.”
Marco enlarged a document.
“Final beneficial owner appears to be a man named Peter Vale.”
Vincent stared.
“Vale.”
“You know him?”
“No.”
“Lauren does.”
Marco swiped the screen.
A photograph appeared.
Lauren stood outside a restaurant beside a silver-haired man in his fifties.
The photograph was two years old.
Vincent looked closer.
“Who is he?”
“Former federal investigator. Private intelligence now.”
“Why was Lauren meeting him?”
“Good question.”
Vincent called Lauren.
She entered ten minutes later wearing pajamas and a robe.
When Vincent showed her the photograph, she sat down.
“You found Peter.”
“You say that like I was supposed to.”
Lauren looked exhausted.
“He contacted me two years ago.”
“Why?”
“He said someone close to you was stealing.”
“Who?”
“He wouldn’t tell me.”
Vincent’s jaw tightened.
“And you believed him?”
“He showed me records.”
“What records?”
“Payments. Properties. Accounts.”
“Whose?”
“He said he needed time.”
Vincent leaned toward her.
“So you secretly paid a stranger fifty thousand dollars to investigate me?”
“To investigate the people around you.”
“You could have told me.”
“No, Vincent. I couldn’t.”
“Why?”
“Because he said your organization was compromised.”
“By whom?”
Lauren’s eyes filled.
“He believed whoever it was had been beside you for years.”
Vincent went still.
“And three days after you paid him, I was shot.”
“Yes.”
“Where is Vale now?”
“I don’t know.”
“You never spoke again?”
Lauren shook her head.
“He disappeared the night you were shot.”
Vincent looked at Marco.
Marco was already typing.
Lauren continued.
“I thought he betrayed me. I thought maybe he used my money to arrange it.”
“So why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I was terrified you’d think exactly what you thought tonight.”
“That you paid for the bullet.”
“Yes.”
Vincent stared at her.
Something inside him loosened.
Not forgiveness.
Not yet.
But understanding.
“Why have you been avoiding me?”
Lauren looked toward his legs.
The silence hurt more than her answer could.
“I don’t know how to help you.”
“So you stopped trying.”
“That isn’t fair.”
“No?”
“I wake up every morning afraid you’ll never walk again. Then I hate myself because you’re the one in the chair, and somehow I’m making it about me.”
Vincent said nothing.
Lauren wiped her cheek.
“I loved the man who walked into rooms like he owned them.”
“And this man?”
She looked at him.
“I don’t know him yet.”
The honesty cut him.
But Vincent had asked for truth.
He couldn’t punish people when they finally gave it.
“Go sleep.”
Lauren left.
Marco remained.
Vincent stared through the windows.
“Find Peter Vale.”
“I’m already looking.”
The next morning, Tessa entered at seven.
She looked as though she had barely slept.
“You should rest.”
“So should you.”
She began preparing his medication.
Vincent watched her.
“Your sister okay?”
“She thinks your house is ridiculous.”
“She’s correct.”
“And she wants to know why one person needs eleven bathrooms.”
“I’ve wondered that myself.”
Tessa smiled.
For several minutes, the mystery disappeared.
She helped him transfer from bed to wheelchair.
His arm slipped.
Tessa caught his shoulder.
Vincent’s face came within inches of hers.
Neither moved.
Something changed.
Not romance.
Not yet.
Recognition.
Tessa looked at him as a man.
Vincent suddenly realized he had begun looking at her as a woman.
He pulled back.
“Sorry.”
“You don’t apologize often, do you?”
“Never.”
“I’ll document the occasion.”
She bent to adjust the footrest.
Then something dropped from the underside of the chair.
A tiny piece of folded paper.
Tessa picked it up.
“What’s that?”
Vincent opened it.
Three words were written inside.
CHECK THE CAMERA.
They looked at each other.
“What camera?” Tessa asked.
Vincent suddenly remembered.
The night of the shooting, his SUV had a dashboard camera.
Police said the storage unit had been damaged.
But Vincent had installed a second system himself after an attempted hijacking the previous year.
Almost nobody knew.
Almost.
“Marco!”
Ten minutes later, they were in Vincent’s private office.
Marco accessed an encrypted cloud account Vincent hadn’t opened in months.
There were hundreds of files.
Then they found September seventeenth.
11:42 p.m.
The video began.
Vincent appeared outside the restaurant.
Then a figure crossed near the SUV.
The face was hidden.
The camera caught the shooter only briefly.
Not enough.
Marco slowed the footage.
“There.”
A second person stood farther down the alley.
Watching.
The camera captured his profile for less than one second.
Marco froze the frame.
Vincent leaned closer.
His blood turned cold.
He knew the man.
He had trusted him for eleven years.
He had eaten at Vincent’s table.
He had visited Vincent in the hospital.
And that morning he had asked Vincent to sign away control of the harbor property.
Dominic Russo.
But Marco zoomed farther.
Dominic wasn’t alone.
Beside him stood Peter Vale.
And Vale was holding something toward Dominic.
A recorder.
Marco looked at Vincent.
“Maybe Vale wasn’t working for him.”
Vincent stared at the screen.
Then the video continued.
Dominic suddenly turned.
Vale ran.
Seconds later, the gunshot that shattered Vincent’s spine echoed through the recording.
But before the video ended, the microphone captured Dominic shouting four words.
Four words that changed everything.
May you like
“You shot the wrong man!”
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