Standing at the altar in front of four hundred guests, Jonathan Duncan squeezed my fingers until the wedding rings bit into my flesh and leaned in to whisper that from that second forward I belonged to him and I’d better learn my place fast—so I smiled right back and told him he’d asked for a wife, and now he was about to meet my witness.

Jonathan was moved to a different safe house that night.

Cole assigned four officers to guard him around the clock.

He said it was for Jonathan’s protection.

I knew it was also to make sure he didn’t run.

Or talk to Rosalind.

The next morning, the DA called.

He’d listened to the recording.

He’d agreed to the deal.

Seven years.

Full testimony against Rosalind.

Everything.

I should have felt relieved.

Instead, I felt sick.

I was sitting at the kitchen table, going through the list of witnesses Jonathan had given us, when my phone rang.

It was Cole.

His voice was tight, urgent.

“Get to the hospital,” he said. “Now. Jonathan’s been shot.”

The world tilted.

I grabbed my keys and ran for the door.

Clara was right behind me.

We drove to the hospital as fast as we could, running two red lights, my hands white on the steering wheel.

“What happened?” I said, when we ran into the ER waiting room.

Cole was standing by the vending machine, his face grim.

“Hitman,” he said. “Got past the two officers guarding the front door of the safe house. Dressed as a delivery driver. Shot Jonathan twice in the chest as he was coming down the stairs. The officers got the guy before he could leave. He’s in custody. He’s already confessed. Said Rosalind paid him two hundred thousand dollars to kill Jonathan before he could testify.”

“Is he alive?” Clara said.

Cole nodded.

“Barely,” he said. “He’s in surgery now. The doctors say it’s fifty-fifty. If he makes it through the next six hours, he’ll probably pull through. If not...”

He didn’t finish.

I didn’t need him to.

If Jonathan died, the deal died with him.

The safe with the gun and the video died with him.

And Rosalind walked.

I sat down in one of the hard plastic chairs.

I put my head in my hands.

I’d spent a year hating Jonathan.

Wishing he was dead.

And now I was sitting in a hospital waiting room, praying he’d live.

The irony was not lost on me.

Six hours later, the surgeon came out.

He looked tired.

“He made it,” he said. “He lost a lot of blood. And one of the bullets nicked his lung, so he’ll be in the ICU for a few days. But he’s going to be okay.”

I let out a breath.

It felt like the first breath I’d taken in six hours.

“Can we see him?” I said.

“Ten minutes,” the surgeon said. “Only two people. And he’s still pretty out of it from the pain meds.”

I looked at Clara.

She nodded.

“Go,” she said. “I’ll wait here.”

I followed the nurse down the hallway to the ICU.

Jonathan was in the last room at the end.

He was hooked up to a dozen machines, beeping and whirring. His face was pale, almost the same color as the sheets. A tube was down his throat, another in his arm.

One of the officers was standing by the door, his hand on his gun.

I walked into the room.

I pulled a chair up next to the bed.

Jonathan’s eyes fluttered open when he heard me.

He looked at me.

He tried to say something, but the tube made it impossible.

“I know,” I said. “Rosalind tried to kill you. Your own mother. I’d say that’s a new low, even for her.”

A faint, bitter smile touched his lips.

He lifted his hand, slowly, like it weighed a hundred pounds.

He pointed to the whiteboard on the wall by the bed.

There was a marker on the tray next to him.

I handed it to him.

He wrote slowly, his hand shaking.

The safe is in the old cabin.

The one they kept Clara in.

Combination 12-24-36.

My birthday.

Rosalind never changed it.

She thought it was sentimental.

I stared at the words.

The cabin.

Of course.

It was the last place anyone would look.

Too obvious.

Too tied to the past.

Jonathan wrote one more line.

Don’t trust anyone.

Not even the cops.

Rosalind has friends everywhere.

Then his hand fell back to the bed.

His eyes closed.

The machines kept beeping, steady and strong.

I stood up.

I folded the paper towel I’d written the combination on and slipped it into my pocket.

I walked out of the room.

Clara was still waiting in the hallway.

“Did he say anything?” she said.

I nodded.

“He told us where the safe is,” I said. “The cabin. The one he kept you in.”

Clara’s face went pale.

She closed her eyes for a second.

When she opened them, they were hard.

“Let’s go,” she said.

The cabin was three hours outside the city, up in the mountains, down a rutted dirt road that hadn’t been maintained in years.

It was dark when we got there.

Cole drove, with two unmarked cars behind us.

The cabin was small, made of rough logs, with a tin roof and a porch that sagged in the middle.

It looked exactly like the photos Jonathan had shown me when he’d told me Clara was dead.

Like a place people went to disappear.

Cole and two of the officers went in first, their guns drawn.

They came out a minute later.

“Clear,” Cole said.

I walked in.

The smell hit me first.

Mold.

Dust.

And something else.

Old fear.

It was one big room, with a stone fireplace on one wall, a rusted stove in the corner, a cot pushed up against the far wall. Chains were bolted to the floor next to the cot, rusted now, but still strong enough to hold a person.

Clara stopped in the middle of the room.

She was staring at the chains.

Her hands were shaking.

“I spent ten years there,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “Most of it chained to that wall. Jonathan would come once a month. Sometimes more. He’d sit in that chair by the fire and tell me how well the company was doing. How no one missed me. How I was never getting out.”

I put my arm around her.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

She shook her head.

“Not your fault,” she said. She took a deep breath, pulling herself together. “The safe. Jonathan said it’s here.”

We looked everywhere.

Under the floorboards.

Behind the fireplace.

In the ceiling.

Nothing.

Then I saw it.

A loose stone in the back of the fireplace, a little different from the others.

I knelt down.

I pulled it out.

Behind it was a small metal safe, built into the stone.

I reached into my pocket.

I pulled out the paper towel.

12-24-36.

I turned the dial.

First right to 12.

Then left to 24.

Then right to 36.

I pulled the handle.

It clicked.

The door swung open.

Inside was a gun.

A stack of video tapes.

A stack of signed confessions from the men Rosalind had paid off over the years.

And a single manila folder.

I pulled it out.

On the front, in Rosalind’s neat handwriting, was my dad’s name.

Tom Carter.

I opened it.

Inside was the original audit report my dad had done, proving Rosalind had stolen two million dollars from the construction project.

And a handwritten note.

From Rosalind.

If this is found, kill him.

Make it look like suicide.

My hands were shaking so bad I almost dropped the folder.

This was it.

The final piece.

Proof that Rosalind had murdered my dad.

Proof that would put her away for the rest of her life.

“Elena,” Cole said, from the doorway.

I looked up.

He was holding his phone.

His face was white.

“Rosalind cut off her ankle monitor,” he said. “She’s gone. The police found her car abandoned at the bus station. Her passport is missing. And the fifty million she moved? It’s gone too. Transferred to three different accounts in the last hour. We can’t trace it.”

I stood up.

I slipped the folder into my bag.

I looked at Clara.

She was already reaching for her coat.

“Where would she go?” I said.

Clara didn’t hesitate.

“The private airfield on the west side of the city,” she said. “Rosalind has a jet parked there. She’s had it for years. She uses it to fly to the Caymans. If she’s running, that’s where she’ll be.”

Cole was already on the phone, calling for backup, calling the FAA, calling everyone he could think of.

But I knew it was too late.

Rosalind was always one step ahead.