CHAPTER 1 NORA #2
That small restraint should not have mattered. It did.
He entered like he belonged to danger and danger reported to him. His shoulders took up too much space. My cheap table and thrift-store couch felt exposed.
He saw everything.
The doorframe. The missing screw. The groceries on the floor. The orange by his boot. Thomas's box on the bed down the hall. My phone clutched too hard in my hand.
“Stay behind me,” he said.
“I was here first.”
“Nora.”
One word. Low. Flat. Too low to scare the neighbors, but firm in a way that made my body want to obey before my pride shoved back.
“I hate that tone,” I said.
“Useful tone.”
“I am going to put that on your tombstone.”
He glanced at me over his shoulder while moving toward the bedroom. “You planning to kill me with the bat or the commentary?”
“Depends how close you stand.”
That almost got a sound from him. Almost.
He checked the apartment properly. I hated that there was a difference. He did not rush. He moved through the rooms with the bat ignored and one hand inside his coat, where I knew a gun waited because men like Declan probably felt naked without one.
He stopped at Thomas's box.
“Don't touch that.”
His hand paused before it reached the lid. The fact that he listened made my throat feel tight again.
“My father's,” I said.
“I know.”
“You know because Isabella told Gabriel, or because one of your men wrote down the contents of my closet?”
His gaze came back to mine. “Because I carried that box from your sister's car after the hospital scare. You were crying too hard to see who took it upstairs.”
The bat lowered an inch.
I remembered that day in pieces. Isabella pale in the clinic bed. Gabriel looking like a man cut open without bleeding. Me on a hallway floor with my father's box against my knees.
A large hand had taken the box from me gently. I had forgotten that hand belonged to Declan. He looked away first. It was the only mercy I wanted from him right then.
“Show me the message,” he said.
My guard came back. “Why?”
“Because I need the number.”
“So you can make decisions without me?”
“So I can find the person who knows your father's name and put him in a room where he answers questions.”
The way he said it should have horrified me. It did horrify me. It also made the cold in my chest loosen for half a breath, and I hated him for that too.
I held out the phone without letting go. He looked at the screen from my hand. His face changed very little, but the room felt different, like a door had closed somewhere I could not see.
“Did you answer the call?”
“No.”
“Did you call anyone after?”
“I almost called Isabella.”
“Almost?”
“I changed my mind.”
His eyes sharpened. “Why?”
“Because I wanted one full minute before the Stone family turned my life into a group project.”
Declan looked at the broken lock, then the message, then me. “That minute is over.”
Anger flared. Good. Anger gave me edges.
“You do not get to announce that.”
“I just did.”
“And I am ignoring it.”
His shoulders shifted under the coat, tension gathering without movement. “Someone got into your apartment, moved your father's things, and sent you a message from a number we need to trace. This is not a privacy dispute.”
“My privacy became part of it when your car started sitting outside my building.”
“My car kept you from walking home alone.”
“Your car made me feel watched.”
“You were being watched either way.”
The words landed between us. I stared at him. Declan's mouth tightened, and for the first time since he walked in, he looked like he regretted a sentence after it left him.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
He took my phone from my hand before I decided whether to let him. His fingers brushed mine, warm and calloused, and my body reacted with a bright jolt that made no sense in a room where my lock hung broken and my father's name sat in a threat. I snatched my hand back.
His eyes dropped to the movement. He noticed. He noticed everything.
“Declan.”
He tapped the number into his own phone and sent it somewhere. “It means Gabriel had concerns after Hale's people tried to reach your sister through old channels.”
“Gabriel had concerns.”
“Yes.”
“And Isabella?”
“She knows you're being watched.”
Pain went through me before I could dress it as anger.
“Of course she does.”
“She asked for light coverage.”
“Light coverage.” I laughed once, too hard and not happy. “Do you all have a catalog? Light surveillance, medium surveillance, full kidnapping prevention with leather seats?”
His gaze stayed on me. “If this were full strength, you would have seen three men before the subway.”
“That is supposed to make me feel better?”
“It is supposed to be accurate.”
“You are terrible at comfort.”
“I wasn't trying to comfort you.”
“I noticed.”
My phone buzzed in his hand. He looked down. I saw the message before he turned the screen away.
The first lock was louder. My stomach dropped.
“What does that mean?” My voice sounded wrong. Thinner.
Declan did not answer immediately. He looked at the broken lock again, then at the old brass deadbolt beneath it.
The first lock. The one my landlord installed before I moved in.
The one that jammed in damp weather. The one I had replaced after Isabella moved into the Stone townhouse because I started hearing noises at night and telling myself grief had made me dramatic.
Declan moved to the door and crouched. The hallway light cut across his shoulders. He touched the damaged brass plate with two fingers, then the older strike mark below it. His hand was careful, controlled, too gentle for someone who looked like he could tear the whole frame loose if he wanted.
I stood behind him with the bat hanging useless in my hand.
“What are you looking at?”
“Tool marks.”
“You can tell that from looking?”
“I can tell because whoever opened this wanted you to see the new damage. The old mark is smaller.”
I swallowed. “Old mark?” He glanced up at me.
The look on his face did what the broken lock had not done. It made me afraid in a clean, immediate way that left nothing for sarcasm to hold.
“This wasn't the first time someone came through your door.”
The bat slipped against my palm. Declan rose slowly, still between me and the hallway. “Pack a bag.”
I shook my head. “Absolutely not.”
“Nora.”
“I am not leaving my apartment because you found a scratch.”
“It is not just a scratch.”
“Then explain it.”
“I will, from somewhere I can control the doors.”
“There it is.” My voice cracked, and I hated that too. “Control.”
His face hardened, but his voice stayed low. “Alive first. Angry after.”
“I am already angry.”
“Good. Pack angry.”
I wanted yesterday back, when the lock was ugly and whole and I could still pretend the black car was someone else's problem. My phone buzzed again in his hand. Declan read the message, and this time the change in him was not small.
The roughness drained from his face into something colder.
“What?” I asked.
He did not hand me the phone. I stepped closer. “Declan, what?”
His thumb locked the screen. “Get your father's box.” I reached for the phone, but he held it out of reach without looking away from the door.
“Give it to me.”
“No.”
My anger snapped. “You do not get to read threats sent to my phone and decide which ones I see.” He looked at me then.
Something in his expression made me stop with my hand still lifted between us. Fear, maybe, buried so deep it came out as command.
“I will show you in the car.”
“I am not going anywhere until you show me now.”
The hallway outside the apartment creaked.
Declan moved before I heard the second sound.
One second he was in front of me, the next his body had placed itself between me and the open door, one arm pushing me back without hurting me.
His gun appeared in his hand so smoothly that my breath caught late.
The apartment went silent. A shadow passed beneath the hallway light. Declan did not move. The man outside did not knock.
My heart beat so hard I could feel it in my teeth. Declan spoke without raising his voice.
“Walk to the bedroom. Get the box. Stay away from the windows.”
I wanted to argue. Then my phone lit in his other hand, bright enough for me to read the message across the dark gap between us.
Tell Nora the third lock was cute.
The bat almost fell. Declan's jaw flexed once.
“Now,” he said.
I went. By the time I came back with Thomas's box pressed to my chest, Declan had the door shut, the chain set, and his body angled toward the hallway like he could hold back the whole city if it tried to come through. He looked at the box in my arms, then at my face.
For the first time, he did not sound like a man giving an order. He sounded like a man telling the truth because I had earned it.
“Whoever came in was not here to steal.”
My fingers dug into the cardboard. Declan looked at the broken lock.
“He was here to make sure you knew he could come back.”