Chapter 1
Senator McClean’s residence, 2700 N. Lakeview Ave.
Eliza tasted blood. Hot. Salty. Iron-rich.
She smelled blood too. That thick, rusty aroma was unmistakable.
And when she blearily opened her eyes, all she saw was blood. A crimson sheet of it. As if someone had thrown a bucket into her face, coating her eyeballs in the stuff.
But whose blood?
Hers?
If so, she felt no lightheadedness. No wooziness. No pain.
Correction. Her cheek hurt and she could feel her heartbeat in her left temple. But it wasn’t the kind of agony one would associate with that much blood loss.
But maybe that was how it worked when one was mortally wounded. Maybe the brain had a way of disconnecting from the body in the final moments so the person could pass in peace.
She waited for the fear to rise, that inevitable apprehension of the great transition and the unknown that watched from beyond. But it never came. Waited for the tears to fall, to feel the deep regret for all the things she’d wanted to do but hadn’t yet. But they never fell. Waited for her heart to slow, for her thoughts to dim. But neither of those things happened either.
Thirty seconds became a minute. A minute turned into two. Finally, she was forced to admit that, despite the copious amounts of blood, she didn’t appear to be dying.
Which left her only one course of action. Take stock. Reevaluate. Try to make sense of the state of myself.
She started with her toes, gave them a little wiggle, and found they worked. Woohoo! Moved on to her fingers and was delighted to discover they, too, functioned the way they were meant to. Yippee!
Ankles? Check.
Wrists? Check, check.
That’s where her progress ended, unfortunately. When she tried to lift her legs, she couldn’t. Same for her arms. They were pinned solidly against her sides.
She was almost certain she was lying face down with something on top of her. Something extraordinarily heavy that kept her body restrained and her cheek smashed tight into…
What? The floor? The ground? The foundation of a building that’d caved in on her?
Where am I?
She couldn’t remember. Not where she was or why she was there. She couldn’t even recall when it was. Day or night? Monday or Friday? April or October?
A black hole had taken up residence in the center of her brain. A deep void that sucked in every thought before she could latch onto it. Which was far more terrifying than the taste and smell and sight of blood. Because not knowing the who or how or why of what’d happened meant she hadn’t the first clue how to save herself from the thing that held her immobile.
Or…maybe not completely immobile.
When she went to grab the locket she wore around her neck—a gesture so ingrained it was almost like breathing—her elbow bent. Just a little. But more than that, the weight pinning her shifted.
Or had it?
Had she imagined movement because that’s what she so desperately wanted?
She’d never been claustrophobic. In fact, one of her favorite things as a teen had been to drag her best friend and boarding school roommate into the closet late at night so they could laugh and whisper and tell girlish secrets without the floor monitor knocking on their door and yelling at them to get to sleep so they’d be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for class the next day.
Bright-eyed and bushy-tailedhad been Ms. Stapelton’s favorite phrase.
And when she was feeling particularly scared or overwhelmed by the danger her guys were in—that’s how she thought of the Knights, as her guys—sometimes she’d crawl into bed and pull her weighted blanket up to her chin. Something about being closed-in and weighed down kept her mind from flying apart.
But now? Oh now she understood why people loathed tight spaces. She seriously wanted whatever was on top of her to get the hell off!
No. On second thought, it wasn’t a want. It was a need.
Her bones ached from the pressure. Her lungs labored with the effort to draw breath. And her cheekbone felt like it might shatter if it stayed smashed against the hard surface beneath her for one more second. Not to mention, the terrible ache behind her left temple had grown into a throb so hard and steady, she was sure no medication could touch it.
Gritting her teeth, she tried moving her elbow again, angling it up from its straight position into something closer to ninety degrees.
It wasn’t easy. But she was able to slowly, inch by inch, slip her left hand up until it was even with her shoulder. The liquid of life oozed hot against her palm, but she refused to think about the foulness of it. The absolute horror of it.
She completed the same maneuver with her right hand. Again, it took effort. And by the time she’d succeeded in getting her palm even with her shoulder, the urge to breathe deep was overwhelming.
But one, she couldn’t.Not with her rib cage squeezed to the point of fracture. And two, breathing deeply would only pull the scent of blood farther into her lungs and… No thank you.
Panting like a dog instead, she willed the added oxygen to fuel her efforts. Then she pushed with all her might until her biceps burned, her shoulders strained, and the back of her head pressed hard against the thing pinning her down.
Her cheek inched away from the solid surface. Her neck and chest gained space too. But before she could scoot her knees up to aid in her endeavors, her muscles gave out on her and she lost all headway.
Her cheek smacked back into the pool of blood, sending pain radiating across her entire face. Blood filled her ear with a sickening squelching sound, filled her nose with its retched metallic scent.
The scream that tore from her throat then was one of frustration as much as it was one of pain or horror. It was forceful enough to flay her vocal cords raw and make her ears ring.
She was surprised to hear the sound echo out into a void.
A void?
She’d assumed she was walled in. Caved in. But her cry drifted off into the air before quickly dying out.
If she wasn’t surrounded by whatever was holding her down, then if she could just get out from under the thing, she’d be free.
Free!
Desperation kicked in.
She wasn’t sure where it’d been before. When one woke up covered in blood, missing all memory, and pinned beneath something rib-crushingly heavy, desperation was surely the first response.
Of course, wherever her desperation had been before didn’t matter. Because it was with her now. Consumedher now. Flooded her bloodstream with that sweet, metabolic fuel known as adrenaline.
This time her cry was one of determination when she planted her hands on the flat surface and heaved upward. Her feet, which weren’t as encumbered as the rest of her, scrabbled for purchase.
Come on! Come on! She silently screamed as she felt her hands begin to slip again.
Why didn’t she use the gym in the outbuilding behind BKI? It was fully equipped with everything a person needed to get shredded—as Britt liked to call it. If she’d spent some of her downtown bench-pressing weights instead of baking cakes, maybe she’d be able to?—
Her thoughts screeched to a stop when the weight atop her shifted. Slowly at first. Then all at once.
Whatever had been holding her down rolled to the side with a soft-sounding shush followed by a thud and?—
She was free!
Free to rake in a deep breath.
Free to push into a seated position so she could use the backs of her hands to rub her eyes.
It didn’t help. The blood just smeared. She reached down and lifted the edge of her…dress? She was wearing a dress? Why? Her usual uniform consisted of freshly pressed slacks and a prim button-down shirt.
Well, whatever,she thought, impatient now. Impatient to clear her vision and see what it was she’d gotten herself into. Impatient to figure out how to get herself out.
Her eyeballs stung from the vigorous scrubbing she gave them, but eventually her vision cleared enough for her to lift her head and look around.
The scene that met her fuzzy, searching gaze was…
Carnage.
That was the only word for it.
There were bodies. Blood. Death.
My guys! her anguished brain screamed.
But no sooner had the words echoed in her pounding skull than she knew her mistake.
The corpses strewn about didn’t belong to the men she’d grown to know and love like family. This wasn’t the floor of Black Knights Inc.
Relief rushed through her with enough strength to make her dizzy as she blinked at the awful scene. Blinked again. Blinked a third time because she couldn’t fathom it. Couldn’t wrap her head around the truth of the bloodbath even though she wasn’t unfamiliar with the sight.
As the link between the Black Knights and the leader of the free world, she was often tasked with putting together mission reports that included images of gore and destruction. But it was one thing to see bloodshed shining out at her from a digital display. And another thing entirely to witness its reality.
With a macabre sort of fascination, she watched the pool of blood beneath a body ooze ever larger, heard the gruesome quiet that accompanied the end of life, smelled the stomach-turning scents of piss and shit. As if death wasn’t demeaning enough, it had to go and make things worse by loosening the bladders and bowels of the people it’d come to claim.
“My god,” she breathed, one shaky hand lifting to the locket around her neck. The feel of the cool metal acted as a catalyst, a cold, hard shock to her system. And, suddenly, it all came screaming back.
The cocktail party hosted by Charlie’s father at his impressive Lincoln Park mansion. The milling around of a dozen smartly dressed people on the large flagstones covering the back patio. The soft sounds of jazz piped through the outdoor speakers.
The moment Charlie pulled her aside to propose. The sweaty chef who walked onto the patio carrying an evil-looking machine gun instead of a tray of tasty treats. The look of horror and determination on Charlie’s face right before he’d launched himself at her.
Charlie!
Her head whipped around to find her worst fear realized.
He had been the thing pinning her to the ground. It’d been his big, strong body that’d shielded her from the gunman’s murderous melee. Now he lay on his side, his baby-blue tie stained crimson with blood. His handsome face…gone.
Just…gone.
In its place was gristle and meat and?—
Her gorge rose, but she swallowed it down as she scrambled over and pressed her fingers to the side of his neck despite knowing her efforts were futile. No one could live after losing that much blood. After losing that much of their face.
When no telltale thud rose up to meet her searching fingertips, she could no longer hold back the contents of her stomach.
She managed to crawl a few feet away before she retched convulsively onto the large, gray flagstones. Her vomit smelled of champagne and stomach bile. The instant the awful combination hit her nostrils, her gag reflex went full send.
She puked again.
And again.
Heaved until her throat ached and her stomach cramped.
Only when there was nothing left to bring up did she sit back on her heels, exhausted. Choking on her tears. Unable to catch her breath because her rib cage had become a vice around her lungs.
Oh, Charlie…
She couldn’t comprehend that one second he’d been slipping a ring onto her finger and the next he’d been killed.
Murdered!
“Killed”implied it could’ve been an accident. Or a force of nature. Like, he’d crossed the street at the wrong time and been hit by a speeding taxicab, or he’d fallen off the sailboat he kept moored at Belmont Harbor and drowned in Lake Michigan.
But no. This was planned. This was intentional. This was…a massacre.
Charles Xavier McClean was dead. Dead!
How was it possible? How could something so awful happen to someone so good? Someone who had so much life left to live? Someone who’d wanted to share that life with her and?—
Her thoughts crashed to a stop as a hard sob burst from her throat. For long minutes, all she could do was cry. Pull her legs to her chest and cry. Bury her face in her knees and cry.
Cry for the man who’d come to mean so much to her.
Cry for the sacrifice he’d made in saving her.
Cry for not being able to love him like he’d loved her.
Cry, cry, cry.
Charles McClean is dead.
Charles McClean is dead,she silently recited as she rocked against the flagstones. She didn’t want Charlie’s death to be like her mother’s. She didn’t want to relive the trauma of turning to tell him something only to remember too late he was gone—like she had a hundred times after her mother had been put in the ground. She didn’t want to relive the agony of waking up in the morning having forgotten about her loss and then have reality slap her in the face and make her want to crawl back under the covers.
It was better to drill the truth into her brain now. To nail her new reality into her gray matter with a steel spike until there was no question of it.
Charles McClean is dead.
They’re all dead.
Crawling back to Charlie’s side, she was careful not to look at the gruesome mess that had once been his beautiful face. Pulling his large, well-manicured hand into her lap, she noted it seemed to be the only part of him that’d been spared the gunman’s wrath. The rest of him was riddled with holes. The cream lining of his sport coat poked through the darker material like macabre flowers stained red with his blood.
She tried counting the rounds he’d taken and gave up when she passed a dozen.
“Charlie…” Her voice was hoarse with tears, harsh with pain.
He’d deserved so much better than this. Better than her and?—
Her mind began running through all the if-onlys.
If only instead of freezing and blinking in confusion when she’d first seen the weapon, she’d grabbed his hand and pulled him around the side of the house, maybe they would have been able to outrun the gunman.
If only she’d had the wherewithal to snatch the canister of Mace from her clutch before Charlie tackled her perhaps she could have blinded the shooter and saved Charlie, saved the others.
If only she’d listened to her gut and declined the offer to attend tonight’s gathering, perhaps Charlie would have stayed home too and maybe he’d still be alive.
If only…
They were the saddest two words in the English language.
She had no idea how much time passed as she sat beside Charlie’s cooling body wishing she’d changed just one thing. Just one, teeny, tiny thing that might have made all the difference. But it was long enough for the blood staining her hands to turn ice cold. Long enough for her to squeeze out her last tear, leaving her as dry as the desert and as numb as a severed limb.
In the quiet that followed, her focus expanded.
She became aware of the warm summer wind whispering through the trees beyond the patio, making their leaves shiver and sigh. She noted how upbeat jazz still hummed lowly from the outdoor speakers—sounding macabre given the circumstances. And farther, beyond the large stone wall surrounding the senator’s property, her ears picked up on the everyday sounds of the city. The hum of traffic. The beep of a horn. The hiss of a bus coming to a lumbering stop at a light.
A siren.
She sat up, waiting with bated breath for the authorities to arrive. But the high-low clamor didn’t grow louder as it came closer. It grew fainter as the cop car drove off into the distance.
No one’s coming to help, she realized.
No one had heard the awful rat-a-tat-tat of the weapon. The crashing of chairs and tables. The screams.
Oh, the screams… They were the last thing she remembered before Charlie jumped on top of her, sending her temple smacking into the flagstones so that she knew no more. Those horrible, awful, nightmarish screams.
Despite the warmth of the night, goose bumps peppered her skin as she gathered her courage in preparation for what must be done. She needed to get off her ass and find a phone. She needed to call in the authorities. But first, she needed to make sure the gunman was?—
Oh my god! The gunman!
Why was she just now thinking of him?
Her heart had been in her throat since she’d regained consciousness. Now it swelled with terror, choking her, making her breaths wheezy as she quickly glanced around, allowing her gaze to skim over the gruesomeness of mass death in search of the perpetrator of it all.
Was he hiding somewhere waiting to finish off any survivors?
No. The man’s body was splayed on the flagstones near the back door. The moment her gaze landed on him, she cried out in relief.
His chef’s coat made him easily recognizable. But where once the garment had been white and pristine, now the front was splattered with blood, looking like the macabre canvas of a modern artist.
He still held the weapon in his hand. Although, it was no longer clenched in a tight fist. Now, it lay loose inside his grip. And it was impossible to know for sure, but it looked like he’d shot himself under the chin after he’d taken out everyone else.
Why? her mind cried. Why would anyone gun down a patio full of innocent people?
Unless…
Had it been politically motivated? Senator John McClean certainly hadn’t been the sit back, raise his hand when it came time to vote, and collect his paycheck type of politician. Quite the contrary. John had been the loud, firebranding, anti-establishment kind.
A self-made billionaire, John had stepped down as CEO of the green energy company he’d built from the ground up only to take his talents to D.C. There he’d set about shaking things up and making enemies of the comfortable fat cats who paid mouth service to their constituents during election cycles only to turn around and vote against the interests of the people they’d sworn to represent once they were actually in office.
John had been a frequent flyer on the national news circuits, oftentimes lambasting his fellow senators for their apathy, hypocrisy, and outright treachery.
To say he’d been disliked by most of his peers was an understatement.
Did someone finally have enough? she wondered. Did they decide he was too much of a liability?
If so, why hadn’t they just killed him? Why had they killed everyone else?
It was a question she couldn’t answer. And honestly, she was too exhausted, too sad, too horrified by it all to try.
People got paid to find the answers to the question of why. It was time she called them in.
Pressing a kiss to the back of Charlie’s hand, she silently thanked him and apologized to him in a single breath. Then she carefully placed his palm on the ground beside his body.
The mind was a strange place in times of trauma. It glossed over some details and focused on others. Like that Charlie’s left shoelace was untied. Like that his socks were pink and printed with red and green watermelon slices—he’d had a thing for fun socks.
Like that she was already thinking of him in the past tense.
“Oh, Charlie,” she whispered his name one final time and then slowly pushed to a stand.
The instant she was upright, her head spun and her stomach heaved. The throbbing behind her left eye radiated up and over the back of her head. And the ground beneath her feet felt like it went as soft and as soggy as a good tiramisu.
She grabbed the back of a nearby chair to steady herself. Only once she was assured she wasn’t going to pass out did she tentatively press probing fingers to her head.
What she found had her wincing.
A knot the size of a golf ball bulged above her temple. When she gently palpated it, the pain nearly had her knees buckling.
Apparently, her temple had taken the worst of the fall when Charlie tackled her. That—her fingers moved to her cheek and she hissed—and her face.
“Hellfire and damnation.” Fisher’s favorite curse rolled off her tongue before she could stop it.
Fisher… She simultaneously wanted to scrub all thoughts of him from her head and call him to come get her.
Even though he’d always been a pain in her ass—more so recently—he was also as steady as they came. He’d phone in the authorities and then whisk her away to safety. He’d make all the decisions so she wouldn’t have to.
“Stop it,” she scolded herself. “You have this handled. You just need to find a phone and?—”
A low, pain-filled moan sounded from somewhere nearby. Her head jerked up so fast she nearly fell over from the dizziness.
“Hello?” she called out, keeping both hands planted on the back of the chair lest she find herself face-first on the ground. Again.
“Help!” The cry was so faint, she wasn’t sure she’d heard it. Then it came again. “Help us!”
“Where are you?” She pushed away from the chair so she could turn in a half circle, ignoring the pounding ache behind her eye and once more scanning the bodies in search of life.
She found none.
“Here!” On the opposite side of the patio, a blood-soaked hand appeared above the edge of an overturned table. It was small, feminine, and sporting an emerald the size of a baseball field.
“I see you!” she called. “I’m coming!”
Easier said than done, she silently added, disheartened at the distance to the table. In the space between lay dead people. And the thought of navigating her way through the sea of gore had her stomach threatening another revolt.
Thank goodness I have nothing left to bring up.
After raking in a deep breath—trying her best to ignore the smell of spilled champagne, blood, and…other things—she gingerly picked her way through the butchery.
She was halfway across the patio when her foot landed on an outstretched hand. She felt the soft give of flesh beneath her heel. Heard the crunch of bone.
“Oh god!” She glanced down and then immediately wished she hadn’t.
The dark-eyed wife of a young congressman lay lifeless on the ground. A round had slammed into her left eye, taking the eyeball with it on its exit through the back of her skull. Gray matter lay in glistening, wet chunks around the woman’s splayed brown hair. And the cream cocktail dress she’d been wearing, the one Eliza had so admired for its pretty lines and sweet, crocheted flowers, was ruined beyond recognition.
Except for one bloom.
One crisp, cream flower along the scooped neckline had managed to escape the carnage. But even as Eliza watched, it too began to fall victim to the gore.
Blood seeped from the surrounding material, slowly soaking into the delicate threads. It turned what was once innocent and pure-looking into something foul and corrupt.
The young congressman’s wife—Eliza couldn’t recall her name—had had a laugh so big and contagious that when Eliza had heard it from across the patio, she hadn’t been able to stop herself from chuckling in response.
So much vitality,she thought sadly. So much light and life. And now it’s all gone.
A snippet from an Emily Dickenson poem whispered through her head. “Because I could not stop for Death, he kindly stopped for me.”
Obviously she spent too much time around Fisher when poetry sprung to mind at a time like this.
Fisher…
Why did she keep thinking of him? And why did every instinct in her body urge her to find a phone and call him?
Of course, the answer was simple.
When a person was suffering from shock and trauma, they automatically sought the comforting presence of loved ones.
And she loved Fisher Wakefield.
Despite his womanizing ways. Despite his irreverent sense of humor that so often rubbed her the wrong way. And despite the fact he’d never feel for her half of what she felt for him…
She loved him.
From the top of his curly, handsome head to the bottoms of his size thirteen feet.
Which was why she hadn’t wanted to come tonight. She’d suspected Charlie was going to propose and she hadn’t wanted to?—
“Help!” The weak cry brought her back to the moment.
“I’m coming!” she called, continuing her journey across the patio.
She managed to reach the overturned table without stepping on any more body parts. But she’d waded thoughplenty of bodily fluids.
Don’t think about that.
“I’m here,” she whispered as she peeked over the edge of the table and took hope in what she saw.
An older woman with hair the color of bottled honey sat on the ground cradling a man’s head in her lap.
“Senator Chastain,” Eliza whispered.
The woman glanced up and gasped in alarm. It was then Eliza realized what a sight she must be, smeared with Charlie’s blood.
Charlie…
Charles McClean is dead.
The words no longer sounded foreign. And there was a deep, abiding sadness in that.
“Are you hit?” Eliza asked the senator.
She’d met Bethany Chastain twice before. Once at the president’s inaugural ball. And once while she’d been in Washington visiting her father. She’d been introduced to the woman’s husband too. But for the life of her, she couldn’t recall the man’s name.
She blamed the bump on her head for the breach in her decorum. It felt like her brain had been scrambled.
“No.” The senator’s expression was vacant and tight with shock. “Bill, jumped on top of me and pulled the table down to shield us. But I think he’s...” The senator trailed off, shaking her head helplessly.
Bill! That’s right. Dr. William Chastain.
A professor for the Stritch School of Medicine at Loyola.
Eliza took in the deep, bloody furrow along one side of the professor’s head and felt her heart sink. Head wounds were notoriously nasty. And a head wound from a bullet?
She hadn’t known too many people who’d survived that.
“Is he…is he breathing?” Senator Chastain asked around a sob that sounded like it bubbled up from the back of her throat.
Eliza skirted the table to check the man’s pulse. She was surprised when a steady beat met her touch.
“He’s alive,” she assured the woman, feeling urgency kick in. “But he needs an ambulance. Do you have your phone on you?”
The senator shook her head. “No…I…” She lifted a trembling hand to her temple. “I left my purse on the receiving table by the front door.”
“And mine is…” Eliza stopped and cocked her head. Mistake. The move made it feel like her brain was sliding to one side of her skull.
Where was her phone?
Oh, right! She snapped imaginary fingers. In her clutch. And her clutch was…
Dread filled her as she stood and turned back to look at Charlie.
There. Under his leg.
“I’m going to get my cell phone, Senator.” She placed a comforting hand on the woman’s shoulder and grimaced at the bloody fingerprints it left behind.
“Why hasn’t someone called this in?” The woman shook her head in bewilderment. “Surely someone heard that gunfire.”
“This place is a fortress.” Eliza gestured to the massive brick and concrete fa?ade of the mansion. “It’s got this entire block to itself. And even if it didn’t, the firefight was likely drowned out by the city noise.”
“There was no fight about it.” The senator’s voice shook with rough emotion. “It was a massacre.”
“I know.” Eliza refrained from comforting the senator further because one bloody handprint on the woman’s shoulder was plenty.
Bethany Chastain shook her head, her bouffant of yellow hair—no doubt thanks to a talented stylist—still looking unbelievable tidy. “I can’t believe it. John was right. This proves it.”
Eliza frowned. “Right about what?”
The senator blinked up at her. “He didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what?” Apprehension had the hairs on the back of her neck standing at attention. What was the senator saying? What didn’t she know that she was supposed to?
Senator Chastain opened her mouth to speak, but her husband moaned then, his eyelids fluttering rapidly and the fingers on his left hand twitching spasmodically.
The senator’s cryptic words fell out of Eliza’s head as urgency gripped her. Time was running out for the professor. “Just give me a minute, Senator, and I’ll have help on the way.”
The return journey across the patio was even more horrific than the initial trip.
A nearby streetlamp cast its light across the garish scene so that the wounds pocking the bodies stood out in harsh relief. The blood glistening on the ground looked darker, wetter. And already there was the smell of decay.
Bile crashed and burned up the back of Eliza’s throat, igniting the length of her esophagus. Hot tears filled her eyes and left warm tracks down her cheeks. But she fought off the urge to go sit in a corner and scream at the senselessness of it all. At the unfairness of it all.
There was work to be done.
She was the only one who could do it.
Kneeling beside Charlie’s body, she avoided looking at the mess that’d been made of him. Instead, she focused on the corner of her clutch peeking out from under his leg.
Gripping it with her thumb and forefinger, she tried yanking it free. It didn’t budge. He was too heavy, and she couldn’t get a good grip.
Closing her eyes, she blew out a shuddering breath. The thought of moving him, of watching all his once vibrant brawn and bulk shift lifelessly, filled her with dread. But there was no other way.
“Sorry, Charlie,” she whispered, placing one hand on his hip and the other on his shoulder. After firmly planting her feet against the flagstones, she gave him a solid shove.
Just as she’d known would happen, his body flopped over, limbs loose as cooked noodles. The sound of his arm landing in a puddle of his own blood with a splat was something she’d relive in her nightmares.
But that was for Future Eliza to worry about. Current Eliza had more urgent things to accomplish.
She pulled her clutch into her lap. Her fingers were so sticky with blood that she struggled with the clasp. But eventually she was able to snap it open and pull her cell phone from the dark interior.
Autopilot had her pulling up her contacts list and her finger hovered over Fisher’s name. But she scolded herself for the ridiculous impulse and instead quickly keyed in 9-1-1.