CHAPTER 3
CELESTE
I sleep for forty-three minutes.
I know because the television is playing the same advertisement when I wake, and the mug beside me is still warm enough to hold.
My father’s apartment remains dark except for the lamp near the sofa and the blue light moving across the wall.
I came here instead of going home because my own rooms contain too many things waiting for a future that still includes him.
A bottle of wine he planned to open on Sunday.
A book he left on my kitchen counter. A voicemail I had not returned because I assumed there would be time.
His apartment is worse, but at least the pain here makes sense.
At six fifteen, I shower, pin my hair, and dress in a charcoal suit. The jacket is cut closely enough to look deliberate and loose enough to conceal that I have not eaten since half a sandwich before the funeral.
I find the green pencil inside my coat pocket.
For several seconds, I cannot remember putting it there.
Then I see my father sitting at the end of a conference table, tapping the eraser against a projection he disliked. He used to leave the pencil everywhere—inside contracts, beneath his keyboard, balanced across his coffee cup. I began carrying replacements because he refused to.
There are twelve in his desk drawer.
I take only the one I already have.
By eight, I am beneath the Armand headquarters, walking through the executive garage toward the private elevator. My heels strike the concrete in a rhythm that feels louder than it should.
The garage smells of damp stone, fuel, and the cold rain carried in by tires.
Half the overhead lights remain dimmed for energy savings.
My father approved that policy after criticizing the previous utility bill with the personal offense of a man who believed electricity was being wasted specifically to annoy him.
The memory almost makes me smile.
Almost.
My phone vibrates.
A message from an unknown number.
Do not enter the building alone.
I stop beside a row of parked sedans.
Another message appears.
Your security team is two minutes behind you. Wait where you are.
Kellan.
He must believe issuing instructions anonymously makes them more persuasive.
I type a response.
No.
The typing indicator appears, vanishes, and returns.
Celeste.
The use of my first name from a man I met yesterday feels unearned.
I pocket the phone.
The elevator is thirty yards ahead. A black van stands near the service ramp to my right, parked in a space reserved for deliveries after ten. The engine is running.
Nothing about that is automatically wrong.
The sensation along my shoulders does not care.
I slow without stopping.
The rear doors of the van are closed. The windshield reflects the garage lights, hiding the driver. There is no company logo on the side.
I glance toward the security booth.
Empty.
The attendant normally begins at seven.
I reach into my bag and close my fingers around the small metal access fob connected to the loading-control system. It is not a weapon. It can lower barriers, stop service elevators, and lock individual vehicle lanes.
My father insisted that every senior operations executive learn the manual controls after a software failure trapped twenty trucks inside Pier 12.
Victor called the training unnecessary.
I attended twice.
A man steps from behind the van.
He wears a dark rain jacket and a baseball cap pulled low. His hands are empty. His shoulders are not.
“Ms. Armand.”
I keep walking toward the elevator. “The loading entrance is upstairs.”
“I’m here to drive you.”
“No.”
“Mr. Halden sent me.”
Victor knows I do not use drivers unless a public event requires one.
The man moves closer.
Behind me, a car door opens.
I turn enough to see a second man walking from between two pillars.
The first reaches for my elbow.
I move before he touches me. The loading barrier drops when I press the fob. Steel slams across the lane between the van and the exit, sealing the vehicle inside the garage.
Both men look toward it.
That buys me one second.
I run.
My heel slips on wet concrete. I catch myself against a pillar, shove one shoe off, then the other. Pain cuts across the back of my ankle, but my feet find traction.
The elevator is too far.
I angle toward the control box mounted beside the service lane.
“Stop,” the first man shouts.
He sounds angry now. The helpful driver has disappeared.
I reach the panel and hit the emergency containment switch.
A second barrier descends behind the man approaching from the pillars. He tries to cross before it closes. The steel arm strikes his shoulder and drives him to one knee.
The barrier only slows him.
The first man catches the back of my jacket.
Fabric bites into my throat. I twist, leaving one sleeve half off my arm, and drive the heel of my hand toward his face.
He turns. The strike glances off his cheek.
His other hand closes around my wrist.
“Don’t make this difficult.”
The sentence is so ordinary that fear becomes briefly absurd. As though I am refusing a delivery time.
He pulls me toward the van. I hit the release on my bag. It falls, spilling papers and my father’s folder across the floor.
The green pencil rolls beneath the van.
“No.”
The word comes out of me before I understand which loss I am refusing.
The man tightens his grip.
I bring my knee up. He turns again, and I catch his thigh instead of his groin.
He swears.
The second man has freed himself from the barrier. He reaches inside his jacket.
A gun.
Every thought inside me stops competing.
The armed man raises his hand.
A dark shape crosses my vision.
The impact is quiet compared with what I expect. Kellan drives the man’s wrist into the concrete pillar, turns the gun away, and strikes once beneath the ribs. The weapon drops.
Kellan catches it before it reaches the floor.
The man holding me releases my wrist and reaches beneath his coat.
I stamp down on his foot and throw my weight away from him. My bare sole skids, but the movement gives Kellan space.
He crosses it in two steps.
The second attacker draws a knife.
Kellan does not.
He catches the man’s wrist, turns his body, and drives him face-first across the hood of a parked car. Metal dents beneath the impact. The knife clatters near my scattered documents.
The first attacker recovers and charges.
I see him before Kellan does.
Or before Kellan can turn.
The loading controls are still in my hand.
I press the switch for the wheel barrier beneath the van.
A steel plate rises from the concrete. The attacker’s shin strikes it. He falls forward hard enough that his palms slap the floor.
Kellan looks at me.
Only for an instant.
Then he moves.
By the time two security officers run into the garage, one attacker is unconscious beside the pillar and the other is facedown with Kellan’s knee between his shoulders.
The security men arrive shouting instructions no one needs.
Kellan takes the knife away, checks the attacker’s waistband, then looks toward me.
His attention moves over my face, throat, hands, and bare feet.
“What hurts?”
The question reaches me from too far away.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re bleeding.”
I look down.
The old scar across my left palm has opened. I must have caught it against the control panel. Blood runs along the base of my thumb and gathers at my wrist.
It does not hurt yet.
Kellan rises and crosses to me.
He has removed the attacker’s gun from the magazine and placed both pieces on the roof of the car. His steel watch is gone. I see it resting near the windshield, beside a dark smear I do not want to identify.
“Let me see your hand.”
“I said I’m fine.”
“And I heard you.”
He does not reach for me.
That makes refusing harder.
I hold out my hand.
His fingers close carefully beneath my wrist. His palms are rougher than I expected, warm against skin that has gone cold. He turns my hand toward the light without touching the cut itself.
“Surface wound,” he says. “You’ll need it cleaned.”
“Thank you for the diagnosis.”
“You’re welcome.”
I cannot tell whether he is serious.
One of the security officers approaches. “Mr. Rourke, the second vehicle got out before we closed the upper gate.”
Kellan releases my wrist.
“Which direction?”
“South ramp. Silver SUV.”
“Plate?”
“Obscured.”
Kellan’s face remains unchanged, but something in the garage contracts around him.
“Pull every camera from the last hour. No one deletes or transfers anything without my approval.”
The officer nods and leaves.
The conscious attacker groans beneath the other guard. His cap has fallen off. He is younger than I thought, perhaps thirty, with a shaved head and a red scrape down one cheek.
Kellan crouches near him.
“Who sent you?”
The man spits blood onto the concrete.
Kellan looks at the stain, then at him.
No threat. No raised voice.
The attacker turns his face away first.
“Get him downstairs,” Kellan tells the guard. “Alive.”
The emphasis is small enough that I almost miss it.
I retrieve my papers. My father’s folder has opened, scattering copies of the route reports beneath the van.
Kellan bends to help.
“Don’t.”
He stops. The word came out sharper than I intended.
I kneel and reach beneath the van for the green pencil. The concrete is wet and cold against my knees. My fingers touch the scratched plastic, and relief moves through me with such force that I have to remain there for an extra second.
It is a pencil.
A cheap object from an office supply cabinet.
My father is still dead.
I know this.
My body does not appear interested in the distinction.
When I rise, Kellan is holding my jacket by the unoccupied sleeve. The seam near the shoulder has torn, but the fabric is intact.
“You need shoes,” he says.
“I had some.”
He looks at the abandoned heels near the first pillar.
“They were poorly suited to an abduction.”
“I’ll include that in the product review.”
His gaze returns to me. This time, there is no almost-smile. Only a careful assessment of how close the morning came to ending differently.
“You dismissed the team last night.”
“I went six blocks.”