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  The doors slid open onto the shadows of the twenty-sixth floor. The receptionist’s desk stood empty and the waiting area was dark. Claire stepped out and turned along the plush carpet toward her father’s suite of offices.

  Even with the sharp bite of spring air outside to lure him to the family’s cabin and the promise of fishing on Truman Lake, she knew her father would keep late hours until the weekend. She’d purposely waited until after her school dinner to pay him this surprise visit, allowing the office plenty of time to clear out so that they were less likely to get interrupted.

  With a fortified sense of purpose, Claire walked past her stepbrother Gabriel’s empty office and its dark interior. She strode past the senior vice-president’s office and saw that Peter Landers had gone as well. Her stepsister Gina’s office was dark. The corporate attorney’s office, dark.

  A chilling sense of unease tried to work its way beneath her resolve. She’d never cared much for dark places. She was already at a disadvantage, knowing she couldn’t hear anything or anyone sneaking up on her. Not being able to see an approaching danger, either, could make her doubly paranoid if she allowed her fear to take hold.

  As a young girl, trying to adjust to the cochlear implants inside her head, those bumps in the night that startled other children had been real terrors for her as distorted electronic sounds she hadn’t learned to identify shrieked into her ears. It didn’t help that the last actual sounds she’d heard had been her own screams of pain and loss as she battled the tropical fever virus that took 97% of her hearing and killed her mother.

  Claire breathed easier as she rounded the corner and a soft glow of light greeted her with reassuring warmth. Beyond a private waiting area, she spotted the boardroom and her father’s offices, all lit up. His faithful executive assistant, Valerie Justice, must still be working late as well, judging by the brightness flooding through her open doorway. Valerie wouldn’t mind giving father and daughter some time alone. For twenty-odd years, she’d been nothing but discreet when it came to taking care of not just the family business, but the family itself.

  Here, too, the carpeting gave way to the polished mahogany flooring her father had imported from Venezuela. The decor changed as well, as solid walls gave way to alternating black steel and clear glass panels, giving her glimpses of the interior of each room. A black leather seating group sat in the middle of a central waiting area, adorned by tropical plants, exotic animal prints and a custom-built aquarium nearly twelve feet long that divided the sofa, chairs and coffee table from the circle of private rooms.

  Claire repeated the words inside her head, squelching the urge to sign them as well. Dad. I’ve been offered a wonderful chance to—

  A bone-deep thud shook the floor beneath her feet and Claire halted in her tracks. She felt another vibration through the soles of her Manolo Blahniks and saw the water in the aquarium ripple against the side of the tank.

  “What the…?”

  Missouri hadn’t had a big earthquake since the late 1800s, and there wasn’t enough wind outside to make the steel-and-limestone building sway.

  She glanced over her shoulder at the tunnel of darkness that filled the hallway behind her. Had a cleaning crew come in? Knocked over a bucket? Slammed a door? Was the security guard making his rounds early?

  Had one of those unknown terrors just gone bump in the night?

  Claire opened her mouth and turned to call out to her father. But she snapped it shut just as quickly and retreated into the shadows as a tall, black-haired stranger stepped into view beyond the open doorway to her father’s office. The man’s black suit and tie made him appear as little more than a silhouette against the cream-colored walls inside.

  But there was no mistaking the gun he held in his black-gloved hands, or the methodic precision with which he unscrewed the long, tubular silencer from its steel tip and slipped both items into the holster beneath his jacket.

  Oh, my God.

  He’d shot someone!

  Claire swung her gaze over to Valerie’s office and back to her father’s. The assistant hadn’t run out to check on the noises. But with a silencer, maybe Valerie hadn’t heard the shots.

  Technically, Claire hadn’t heard anything, either. The vibrations she’d felt could have been the concussions of the gun. Or a body hitting the floor. Or the bashing in of someone’s head. Someone being shoved against the wall. A fight—

  Stop it!

  Tears pricked Claire’s eyes. The breath stopped in her chest. But she forced herself to think rationally, to be aware of the danger at hand. Clutching at the pearls around her neck, she fought to dispel the image of her father, dead in his chair.

  Nonchalantly standing there in her father’s office, the man in black stared down at his handiwork with cold, dark eyes. “I’ll come back for the body.”

  Claire could read the promise on his lips clear across the waiting room. Body? Someone was dead. The man in black had just killed…

  “Daddy?” she whispered the unthinkable thought, squeezing her fist so tightly that her necklace snapped.

  A sharp gasp was the only curse she allowed herself as the clasp broke and pearls fell into her hand. She twisted to keep her elbow close to her body to catch the falling strand in the crook of her arm. Tiny knots kept most of the beads together in one string, but she contorted herself to catch two, three…but a fourth hit the floor, bounced off the hard wood and rolled away into the darkness.

  To Claire’s ears, there was no sound.

  But in her mind, the bounce was deafening.

  She whipped her head up to the lighted doorway. How loud was a single pearl? How good was the man in black’s hearing?

  How dead would she be if she were caught?

  Concern for her father dimmed, and fear for herself blazed through her veins in full force.

  Claire dropped to her haunches and crawled toward the aquarium, her instincts warning her to duck behind its thick mahogany base. Or maybe it was the pounding of her racing heart that made her suddenly too light-headed to stand. Daddy! She cried the word inside her head, knowing he wasn’t there to help. She shoved the remains of the traitorous necklace inside her jacket pocket and tucked her legs beneath her, making herself as small as a child, hiding before the man turned and spotted her.

  If it wasn’t already too late.

  Claire blinked and the tears spilled over to run down her cheeks. But she held her breath and disappeared from view between the jungle-size plants and their low, sheltering branches. She counted the seconds off silently in her head until her lungs burned and forced her to inhale.

  With fresh oxygen came a fresh thought. He hadn’t found her. He hadn’t snatched her up by the hair or arm, or put a bullet through her head. She hadn’t felt his footsteps through the floor or smelled him walking past, either.

  Feeling safe for the moment, something new—something harder, tougher, angrier—slipped past her fear and grief, clearing her head.

  With a bold sense of purpose, Claire scooted to the end of the aquarium and peeked through the camouflage of leaves. From this angle she could see the man with the gun. Above the partition that blocked his lower body from view, she memorized the shape of his face, the cut of his hair and every acne-pocked scar on his deeply tanned cheeks.

  She swiped the tears from her cheeks and squinted harder, noting the movements of his long, thin lips. He was talking again. Having a conversation. Though the second person remained hidden from view behind a steel panel, she could interpret his pauses and nods.

  At this distance, she couldn’t hear the words. But then, Claire didn’t need to.

  “That’s number four on your list,” the man said.

  Four dead bodies? He’d killed others? Why? Inching closer, she pressed her shoulder into the aquarium’s base and eavesdropped with her eyes. Who was he?

  The man in black frowned. His eyes narrowed as he tilted his chin. “You don’t tell me when or where I do the job. When you hire me, all you have to kno
w is that the job will get done.” He smiled. It was a cold, evil thinning of his lips that twisted Claire’s stomach into knots. “Think of it as insurance for both of us. You know that the people in your way have been disposed of. And I know you won’t turn me in if someone figures out that you’re the one behind all this.”

  Another pause. Who was he talking to? Who would want her father dead? Where was Valerie? Claire read the argument on his lips.

  “Relax. I’m too good at my job for anyone to find me, much less find out who hired me.” He buttoned his suit coat over his gun. “The last two will be eliminated once I feel the timing is right. In the meantime, I’ll expect another deposit into my account for this one. By ten o’clock tomorrow morning. Or you’ll find your name on my list. No charge.”

  His partner must have said something that displeased the man in black. His thready smile became an ugly frown.

  “I’m worth every penny you’re paying me. I never miss.” When he leaned toward his unseen partner in crime, Claire backed away, as if the cold-blooded threat in his eyes was intended for her. “If I say I’ll kill someone, they’ll be dead. And I won’t leave a trace.”

  Claire’s breath rushed out in a gasp deep enough to stir the leaves of the ficus beside her. Quickly, she slapped her hand over her mouth. Had she made a noise? Had he heard her?

  Though he didn’t react as if he suspected he was being watched, when he turned to exit her father’s office, Claire curled into a tiny ball and prayed to God that the aquarium, plants and shadows would keep her hidden from view as he walked past.

  The man in black strolled by, his heavy size shaking the floor beneath her knees with every step. She bowed her golden hair out of sight so that she felt, rather than saw, the second person—lighter in weight—hurry behind the hired killer at a faster pace.

  Claire held her breath, closed her eyes and prayed. She couldn’t make out the sounds of the elevator at this distance. So she hid there, hunching beside the aquarium, letting terror and grief hold her still long after the vibrations of the footsteps through the floorboards had faded. She waited until her thighs and knees began to cramp. Waited until she sensed that she had been alone for several minutes.

  Then she slowly pushed to her feet. Her purse dropped into her shaky grasp as she stared down the long hallway into the darkness. Before fear made her foolish, before grief sent her into shock, Claire turned. On numb feet, she stumbled toward her father’s office, praying for some sort of miracle every step of the way.

  “Daddy?”

  The steel door frame was as cold beneath her fingertips as the blood flowing through her veins.

  Her father’s chair was empty. She stepped inside and summoned her courage to walk around Cain Winthrop’s immaculate desk and take a peek. Claire gripped the edge of the mahogany top, nearly collapsing with relief.

  Then shock and compassion pushed aside the traitorous emotion. She wiped away her tears and knelt down as she fully absorbed the awful truth. There was a body on the floor, with two neat bullet holes piercing the heart and forehead.

  Her father wasn’t dead.

  But Valerie Justice was.

  “BUT, DAD, I’m telling you—I saw Valerie murdered!” Claire thrust her right index finger beneath her left palm, furiously signing the word for murder as she spoke. “That man shot her in your office. He had a gun. A silencer. I saw him.”

  “Slow down, sweetheart. You’re slurring your words. I thought you said you saw a murder.”

  Still breathless from fear, the fastest drive of her life across the city and her run up the front steps of her family’s Mission Hills home, Claire’s frustrated sigh left her light-headed. She shrugged free of Cain Winthrop’s placating grip on her shoulders and signed an emphatic statement. “I did.”

  “I thought you were meeting Rob Hastings for drinks tonight. After that school thing you went to.”

  Meeting the platonic friend her father had handpicked to become something more than a friend had completely slipped her mind. But, despite the stab of guilt she felt, even standing up a good friend didn’t seem important now. She drew her palm across her forehead and closed her hand into a fist, signing the message, “I forgot.”

  “You forgot?” He scratched the top of his snowy white hair and shook his head. “Rob’s a nice boy. I know he’ll do big things with the company. It’s not like you to go off on some wild goose chase when—”

  “I went to see you!” Claire tamped down on her impatience and turned away. Sure, her father could communicate with her about manners and dating, but he refused to listen to her account of what she’d seen in his office.

  After crouching behind the aquarium for several overwhelming minutes that had dragged on forever, then venturing forth to discover Valerie’s body, Claire had decided to leave the Winthrop Building, risk a speeding ticket and drive home in record time. A regular phone was useless to her, and a cell only good if she could use text messaging. Somehow, she doubted reporting a murder to the police in a cutesy memo would get the immediate response she needed. In fact, she suspected they’d see it as some sort of prank.

  She’d needed her TDD phone—Telecommunication Device for the Deaf. One she could speak into or type a message on that would be translated into a computerized voice at the other end of the line. A phone that would print out questions and conversation on a screen she could respond to.

  Schooling her patience, Claire turned to face the familiar blue eyes. Urgent and scared hadn’t gotten through to him. She’d try cool and rational. “Dad. Listen…”

  She’d given up the whole Daddy thing as soon as she realized he wasn’t taking her story any more seriously than the new guard at the front desk of the Winthrop Building had. And since she hadn’t wanted to take the chance of running into the man in black or his unknown accomplice, searching the darkened hallways for a more familiar—more sympathetic—face to help her didn’t seem like much of an option, either.

  I’ll come back for the body. Claire hadn’t waited to witness that, too, or to become one of the well-erased traces he’d bragged about to his unknown comrade.

  She articulated her words as succinctly as possible, carefully monitoring her volume and pauses through the speech processors behind her ears. “I know what I saw. I will never forget that man’s face. I won’t forget Valerie’s, either. There was hardly any blood on her face or blouse. But her hair was caked with it in the back. It was pooling on the plastic mat beneath your desk.”

  “Please, dear. That’s such a gruesome picture.”

  “Yes…it was.” She took a step closer, curled her fingers around his sturdy forearm and begged him to listen. “I came here first to use the TDD phone—and because I knew you’d want to be there when the police arrive.”

  Cain Winthrop’s indulgent expression sobered. “You’re calling the police?”

  “Yes.” Hadn’t she just signed it out and spoken the words? She’d been panicking in two languages and he still didn’t grasp the urgency of the situation.

  Shaking her head, Claire left her father and hurried into the study. She ignored the walls of books she loved and sat behind the walnut writing desk that had once been her mother’s. Claire typed in the request for the police department’s information line and waited for the computer to locate the number and automatically dial it.

  The words scrolled across the screen as the operator picked up. “KCPD information hotline. How may—”

  Her father pressed a button on the phone and disconnected the call. Claire shot to her feet. “Dad!”

  “Don’t call the police.”

  She read his lips in disbelief. “We have to. Valerie is dead in your office.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “Dad—”

  “What’s all the commotion in here?”

  Claire heard the buzz of a new voice in her ears and groaned. She turned a silent plea to her father as the striking, fifty-year-old woman with frosted brunette hair joined them. If it had been difficult to
get her father to believe her, it would be impossible to get any help from her stepmother.

  “It’s nothing, Deirdre.” Cain explained away the argument between father and daughter. “Claire went up to the office this evening to surprise me, and I wasn’t there. It’s all a little confusing.”

  “I’m not confused. My ears might not work, but I have 20/20 vision. I live by what my eyes tell me. I know what I saw.”

  Deirdre signed the question, “I thought you were on a date with Rob Hastings.”

  Claire rolled her eyes and turned away. Maybe she should call Rob for help since everyone was so interested in him. “I’m calling the police.”

  “The police?”

  Ignoring the metallic drone of Deirdre’s shocked voice, Claire reached for the receiver. But her father blocked her path. “Sweetie, I’m only trying to protect you from embarrassing yourself.” He gently pried the phone from her fingers and set it back in its cradle. “Valerie is on vacation in the Bahamas with that gentleman friend she met on her last cruise.”

  She watched his lips say the impossible. “No, she’s not. She’s—”

  “I gave her a hug before she took off this afternoon. The temp who’s replacing her for a couple of weeks was there when I called for my messages at six.”

  “But…” Claire’s lungs deflated, along with her conviction. She sank onto the desk chair’s brocade cushion. How could that be? She hadn’t hallucinated since that fever she’d had as a child. She’d seen that man. Seen that gun.

  She’d seen that dead body.

  Her father’s executive assistant could have been killed by mistake—a tragic case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The man in black and his accomplice might have come looking for her father, but found Valerie puttering about his office instead. The man she hadn’t seen might have been Valerie’s “gentleman friend.” Maybe he’d taken her there on purpose to get rid of her in some kind of twisted love triangle thing. Or maybe Valerie had lied to her father and never really left the building. Maybe she was part of some conspiracy, some plot to take advantage of her father’s wealth and worldwide trade connections, but her partners had betrayed her.