Chapter Nine: The Person Behind the Picture

I don't sleep. I couldn't.

I try. I lie in the dark with my phone face-down on the nightstand and I tried breathing the way they teach you to in the stress management workshop the hospital makes all ER staff attend every two years. In for four, hold for four, out for four. It works on anxious patients. It's doing almost nothing for me tonight.

At one-fifteen I pick up the phone and look at the photograph again.

It's good quality for a long-distance shot. Whoever took it knew what they were doing, knew what angle to use, knew exactly when to press the button. Dominic's hand on my back. My face turned slightly toward his. We look, in this photograph, like two people who chose to be standing exactly where they're standing.

We look, I realize, completely convincing.

Which means this photograph could either protect us or destroy us depending entirely on who is holding it and what they want.

I screenshot it and save it separately. Then I look at the number again.

Chicago area code. No name. Nothing in the message except those four words and the image.

I type back: "Who is this?"

Three dots appear immediately. They were typing already.

Someone who knows more about your situation than you do. Meet me tomorrow. Noon. Wicker Park coffee shop on North Avenue. Come alone.

I stare at the screen.

Every instinct I have, sharpened by six years of emergency nursing and a childhood that taught me early that things that seem urgent are sometimes just manipulative, tells me to forward this to Dominic right now and let his team handle it.

I forward it to Dominic immediately. Clapping for myself mentally.

His response comes in under two minutes, which means he wasn't sleeping either.

"Don't go. I'll have the number traced." His text reads

I type back: "I'm going."

A pause. Longer than his usual response time.

"Then I'm going with you."

"You'll wait outside."

Another pause. "Fine."

I put the phone down and this time I actually sleep.

The coffee shop is the kind of place that's been in the neighborhood long enough to have regulars who have regulars. Mismatched chairs, a chalkboard menu, the particular smell of a place that has been grinding its own beans for fifteen years. I've been coming here since before Marco, since before nursing school almost. The owner knows my usual order.

I get there at eleven fifty-five.

I find a table near the window where I can see the door and also be seen from the street. I sit with my back to the wall, which is an ER habit, and I order my usual decaf because I'm not supposed to have caffeine and I'm choosing today of all days to follow the rules.

I look out the window. Dominic's car is parked half a block down. Far enough to be discreet but close enough that I know he's watching the entrance.

At two minutes past twelve, a woman walks in.

She's around my age, maybe a year or two older. Dark hair cut short, sharp eyes that find me across the room before I've fully registered her face. She's wearing jeans and a gray jacket and she moves through the coffee shop carefully, with the deliberate walk of someone who spent a long time training themselves not to draw attention.

She sits across from me without asking if the seat is taken.

"Ella Navarro," she says.

"You have me at a disadvantage," I say.

"Nora Reyes." She doesn't offer her hand. "I used to work for Sinclair Holdings."

I wrap both hands around my coffee cup. "Used to."

"Until eight months ago." She puts her phone on the table between us, screen up. "I was in their risk assessment division. Which is a very polished name for the people who make problems disappear before they become problems."

"And you're here because?"

"Because you're about to become a very large problem," she says, "and nobody on his team is telling you the truth about what that means."

I look at her. "What truth specifically?"

She glances toward the window. She can't see Dominic's car from this angle but something in her posture suggests she knows it's there. "He came alone?"

"He stayed in the car."

A flicker of something crosses her face. "He's more careful with you than I expected."

"Ms. Reyes. What truth."

She looks back at me. "Do you know why Dominic Sinclair has spent the last four years keeping his name out of every gossip column and society page in this city?"

"He values his privacy."

"He values his safety," she says. "And the safety of anyone connected to him. Because the community he belongs to, the one he's campaigning to lead, has people in it who don't play by any rules you'd recognize." She pauses. "Aldric Vane isn't just a business rival. He's dangerous. Specifically, he's dangerous to people Dominic is known to care about."

The word care lands oddly in this context. I let it go.

"What happened to you?" I ask. "Why did you leave?"

She's quiet for a moment. "I found out something I wasn't supposed to find out. About what Aldric did to someone close to Dominic. Four years ago."

My chest tightens. "Nadia Voss."

Her eyes sharpen. "You know about her."

"I found a mention. Nothing specific."

"It wasn't an accident," she says simply. "What happened to her. Aldric made sure of that, and Dominic has spent four years trying to prove it through channels that keep getting closed off. Which is why the Conclave leadership position matters so much. Whoever leads has the power to reopen those channels."

The coffee shop is warm. My hands around my cup are cold.

"Why are you telling me this?" I ask.

"Because you're carrying his child and you don't know what you've walked into." She meets my eyes. "And because Aldric knows about the pregnancy now. Not from the blog. He knew before the blog. He has someone inside the clinic, Ms. Navarro. He's known since the beginning."

I set my cup down carefully.

"That photograph you sent me," I say. "Last night."

"I took it," she says. "But I wasn't the only one there with a camera."

She turns her phone over. Shows me a second image on the screen.

Same location, same night, same angle almost.

Different photographer.

Standing twenty feet from where Nora had been, half behind a parked car, face turned just enough away that I can't make out features clearly.

But I can see what they're holding.

Not a phone.

A proper camera. Long lens. Professional.

Aldric Vane's people were there last night. And they were closer than Nora. Closer than Dominic's security. Close enough that if they'd wanted to do something other than take a photograph, they could have. I felt a chill through me.

I stand up. "I have to make a call."

"There's one more thing," Nora says.

I stop.

"The clinic error," she says quietly. "I don't think it was an error."

The coffee shop noise keeps going around us. Someone laughs at the counter. The door opens and a cold gust comes through.

I sit back down very slowly.

"Explain that," I say.