Chapter 4

Thalia had her hand on the car door when a shadow moved between the parked cars behind her.

She turned too late. A palm slammed onto the roof beside her head, so hard the glass rattled, and the man's body closed the distance until her back touched the door.

"Ms. Renner." Cigarette smoke and cheap aftershave. "Busy day. Calling clients. Begging for contracts."

"I don't know who you are."

"You know who I work for." He pulled the keys from her fingers as if they were his. "Your father is dragging it out. Drayle wants to know why it's delayed."

Her pulse hammered in her throat. She thought of the office, of Gerald's face when he'd said "gone," and understood something that turned her stomach. Drayle's men were hunting papers that no longer existed, and she was the only one here who knew it.

"He'll give you what you want," she said. "Just give us time."

"Time." He smiled. "Drayle has had thirty years of it."

He leaned closer, his voice dropping.

"Tell your father the company is only the first thing to go. The papers or the people. He gets to choose."

He let her keys fall to the ground and walked away without looking back.

Thalia didn't move until his footsteps had faded. Then her knees gave way, and she caught herself on the car door before she hit the ground.

The keys lay on the asphalt where he had dropped them. She bent for them, and her fingers wouldn't close. Second try. Third.

In the car she hit the central locking and sat with both hands on the wheel, breathing as if she'd run a mile. Four red marks showed on her wrist where his fingers had been.

*The papers or the people.*

She called Gerald. It rang and rang, then the voicemail picked up. She called again. Voicemail.

Thalia hung up and called once more. Her father's recorded voice, calm and careful, asked her to leave a message. She didn't.

The man had said *the people*. Gerald lived alone in a house that Drayle's men could find in five minutes.

She reached for the phone to call him again and saw movement in the mirror. A dark sedan, three spaces behind her, the engine running, the headlights already fixed on her.

She hadn't heard it pull in. It hadn't been there before.

Her hands went cold. She dialed the police instead.

"A man just threatened me in a parking lot on Halden Street. He's gone, but now a car is watching me. A dark sedan, three spaces behind me."

"Stay on the line, ma'am. A patrol car is nearby."

Thalia kept her eyes on the mirror. The sedan hadn't moved. It didn't have to.

Two minutes later a patrol car turned into the lot, lights off. Relief hit her so hard her eyes burned.

The officer didn't come to her window. He pulled up beside the sedan and rolled down his window. The driver said something. The officer laughed.

Then both of them looked over at her.

The patrol car backed up and drove away.

"Ma'am?" The dispatcher's voice crackled in her ear. "The patrol reports no disturbance at that location."

Thalia ended the call. Her phone vibrated in her palm.

*Dad.*

*Don't come home.*

She typed *why*. Before she could send it, the next message arrived.

*Please. Not tonight.*

Then a third.

*They're already here.*

Behind her, the sedan's engine started.

Thalia stared at the road ahead. Her home was gone. Her father was gone. The police belonged to someone else.

*He takes from their daughters first.*

Then the rest of it hit her, all at once, like a slap with the flat of a hand on the steering wheel.

Alexander Kade had marched into that office, and Drayle's men had left without a word.

Only one man in the city could do that.

She started the engine and pulled out of the lot. The headlights followed her to the first turn.

Everyone in the city knew where Alexander Kade kept his name. Kade Holdings, the glass tower on Marlowe Street, lit all night above the skyline. Gerald had cursed at it for years from the driver's seat, and Thalia would never have thought she'd one day drive toward it.

The sedan stayed two cars behind her.

She ran a light on yellow. The sedan ran it too. She turned into a one-way alley and came out the other end with her heart beating in her throat, and the headlights were still in her mirror, unhurried.

They weren't trying to catch her. They wanted her to know they could.

*Herding*, she thought. *They're herding me.*

Marlowe Street opened up before her, the tower rising white and cold. Two men in dark coats stood at the entrance, doing nothing and watching everything.

The sedan slowed behind her.

Thalia pulled up at the curb and stalled the engine. In the mirror the sedan crept past the tower's entrance steps without stopping. It didn't even turn its head. Its taillights slid down the street and vanished at the corner.

Whoever sat in that car knew exactly whose door this was.

She stayed seated a moment, hands on the wheel, hating that it had come to this.

Then she got out.

One of the men stepped into her path. "Ma'am. The building is closed."

"Tell Don Kade that Thalia Renner is here."

He didn't move. "He'll ask what it's about."

Thalia looked up at the tower and then back at him.

"Tell him Thalia Renner is here."

"I heard you the first time, ma'am."

"Then say it again. Into that." She nodded at the radio on his shoulder.

He didn't touch it. "Nobody sees him without an appointment."

"Then I'm making one. Now."

The second guard shifted his weight, one hand drifting to his coat. Thalia didn't step back. Somewhere farther down the street an engine idled, quiet and patient. She didn't turn around. If she turned around, she would lose her nerve.

"You can drive me off this street," she said. "I'll be back in an hour. And when he asks why his men turned me away, you can explain it to him."

Nobody spoke. The first guard's jaw tightened.

Then she heard it. A low mechanical hum.

The iron gates behind them began to open. Nobody had spoken into a radio. Nobody had given a signal. Thalia looked up and spotted a small black lens above the gate, with a pulsing red light beside it.

He had been watching. She had no idea for how long.

The guards stepped aside as if she were no longer their problem.

"Drive in," the first one said, quietly, almost a warning.

She got back into the car with hands gone cold. The gates closed behind her with a sound like a vault.

The drive wound uphill past lamps that stood too far apart. Men stood at doors and didn't move. Every window looked at her.

The front doors opened before she reached the steps. A man she had never seen said, "This way," and walked on without checking whether she followed.

Corridors. Doors. Her heels too loud on stone.

He stopped in front of a study and opened it for her, then left her there alone.

One lamp burned. Alexander stood at the far window, his back to her.

"I gave you nine days," he said. "You're early."

"I've changed my mind."

He turned.

His gaze moved over her face, then down to her wrist, to four red marks already darkening on the skin. Everything in the room froze.

"Who," Alexander asked very quietly, "put their hands on you?"