Chapter 2 - The Woman Who Called at Midnight
The first scream came from the back of the ballroom.
Then panic broke the room apart.
Guests lunged toward the exits. Chairs overturned. Glasses shattered. A senator shoved an elderly woman aside while two security guards fought to hold the main doors closed.
“Stop moving!” Vivian shouted.
No one listened.
The mechanical voice inside the Falcon began counting.
“Ten.”
Roman Navarro remained where he was.
He watched Vivian instead of the statue.
“Nine.”
Caleb reached beneath his jacket.
“Don’t use your radio,” Vivian warned. “The device is receiving wireless signals. Any transmission may accelerate it.”
Caleb ripped the earpiece from his ear.
“Eight.”
Gregory Hale abandoned the microphone and stumbled toward the edge of the stage.
Vivian heard his right shoe strike wood.
“Gregory, don’t!”
He jumped.
The stage shook.
“Seven.”
The ticking accelerated again.
Gregory crashed into the crowd and disappeared between fleeing guests.
Vivian dropped to her knees beside the Falcon.
Roman moved one foot forward.
“I said stay where you are.”
“I am not leaving you beside it.”
“You are the target. Your distance from the receiver may be the only thing keeping it from completing the circuit.”
“Six.”
Roman stopped.
Caleb scanned the room. “How do we disarm it?”
Vivian placed her palm flat on the stage.
Vibration traveled through the wood and into her bones. She separated each sound—the stampede of shoes, the chandelier trembling above them, the click of doors, the Falcon’s internal gears.
Three systems.
A timer.
A proximity receiver.
A balance switch.
“If we lift it, it detonates,” she said. “If the base tilts, it detonates. If Roman moves closer, it detonates.”
“Five.”
Caleb cursed beneath his breath.
The waiter Vivian had collided with was still nearby. He had crawled beneath a table instead of joining the crowd.
Vivian heard his terrified breathing.
“You,” she called.
The waiter did not answer.
“The young man beneath the table. What is your name?”
“E-Eli.”
“Eli, there is an electrical panel behind the stage curtain. Can you see it?”
A pause.
“Yes.”
“Is there a red emergency lever?”
“Yes.”
Roman understood first.
“You want him to cut power.”
“The receiver has an internal battery,” Vivian said. “But the stage lights are interfering with its signal. If the power goes out, it may lose the precise lock on you.”
“Or it may detonate immediately,” Caleb said.
“Four.”
Vivian pressed her ear closer to the stage.
The mechanism produced a faint double pulse every time the lights overhead shifted.
She made the calculation.
There was no safe choice.
Only a less fatal one.
“Eli,” she said. “Pull the lever when I tell you.”
The waiter began to sob.
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can.”
“I’m scared.”
“So am I.”
The room around them seemed to disappear.
Vivian’s voice softened.
“You apologized when someone else tripped me. That tells me you are the kind of person who accepts blame before anyone asks you to. Tonight, I need you to do something different. I need you to believe you can save people.”
“Three.”
Roman stared at her.
No one spoke to frightened people that way in his world.
They threatened them.
Bought them.
Broke them.
Vivian made them remember who they were.
“Eli,” she said. “Now.”
The emergency lever slammed down.
The ballroom went black.
Women screamed.
The orchestra vanished into silence.
For one terrible second, the only sound was the Falcon’s timer.
“Two.”
Then the receiver whined, searching blindly for Roman’s signal.
Vivian heard the frequency drift.
“Roman, remove everything electronic from your body.”
He pulled out his phone and threw it across the room.
Caleb tore a transmitter from Roman’s belt.
The Falcon’s tone shifted again.
Still searching.
Still close.
“Your watch,” Vivian said.
Roman removed it.
The timer paused.
Vivian heard another faint electronic pulse.
Not from Roman’s clothing.
From inside him.
“Do you have a medical implant?”
Roman’s silence answered her.
“A cardiac monitor,” Caleb said. “After the shooting three years ago.”
The device inside the Falcon had been programmed to recognize its signal.
“One.”
Vivian moved before Roman could stop her.
She grabbed the heavy microphone stand and brought its metal base down against the stage floor beside the Falcon.
The impact created a violent burst of vibration.
The balance switch reacted.
The statue’s receiver confused the vibration with movement from its target.
Its internal motor rotated toward the false source.
The mechanical voice repeated, “Target confirmed.”
Roman understood what Vivian had done.
She had redirected the weapon toward herself.
He crossed the distance in three strides.
“Roman, no!”
He seized Vivian around the waist and pulled her away as Caleb kicked the microphone stand toward the far side of the stage.
The Falcon detonated.
The explosion was not large enough to destroy the hotel.
It was never intended to be.
The blast was narrow and directional, designed to drive metal fragments toward one specific target.
The stage erupted.
Roman turned his body around Vivian as shards tore through curtains, chairs, and the marble column behind them.
The impact threw them to the floor.
Silence followed.
Not true silence.
Vivian could hear alarms beginning in the distance, water pipes vibrating above them, debris settling, and Roman’s heartbeat beneath her cheek.
Steady.
Alive.
She pushed against his chest.
“Roman?”
“I’m here.”
His voice was strained.
“Are you hurt?”
“I have survived worse evenings.”
Vivian touched his shoulder, then his jaw, checking for blood.
Roman caught her wrist.
“I am not the one who just crawled toward a bomb.”
“Neither were you supposed to.”
Emergency lights flickered on.
Through the smoke, Caleb approached with his weapon drawn.
“The room is being secured. Hale is gone. So is Penelope Croft.”
Roman helped Vivian stand.
The crowd had fled. Broken tables and abandoned jewelry lay across the ballroom. Sprinklers began raining over the destroyed stage.
Eli emerged from behind the curtain, shaking but unharmed.
Vivian reached for him.
“You did well.”
The young waiter nodded, wiping tears from his face.
Roman watched her hand rest on Eli’s shoulder.
Then he looked at the twisted remains of the Imperial Falcon.
Someone had smuggled a weapon into a charity gala, hidden it inside a forged artifact, and programmed it to recognize the medical signal inside Roman’s chest.
That required money.
Access.
Patience.
And someone close enough to know a secret only four people in the Navarro organization knew.
Roman turned to Caleb.
“Seal the hotel. No one leaves.”
“The police are already coming.”
“Then they can wait outside.”
Vivian’s expression hardened.
“You cannot imprison innocent people.”
“I can until I know which one tried to kill me.”
“You already let the two most suspicious people escape.”
Caleb looked offended.
Roman almost smiled.
“Miss Mercer, you are either very brave or completely unaware of who you are insulting.”
“I know exactly who you are.”
Her answer removed the amusement from his face.
Roman studied her.
Earlier, she had reacted to his voice. Not with the fear he expected, but with recognition.
“You knew I was the target before the device announced it,” he said.
“I heard the receiver synchronize with your implant.”
“That is not what I meant.”
Water dripped from the ruined ceiling.
Sirens grew louder outside.
Roman stepped closer.
“Why did you recognize my voice?”
Vivian’s fingers tightened around her clutch.
“I didn’t.”
“You hesitated when I spoke.”
“I had a bomb counting down beside me.”
“I notice hesitation.”
“And I notice lies.”
Roman lowered his voice.
“So do I.”
For the first time that evening, Vivian looked unsettled.
Caleb’s phone vibrated. He glanced at the screen.
“Boss, we found Gregory’s driver unconscious in the underground garage. Hale took the car.”
Roman kept his attention on Vivian.
“You knew how to confuse a proximity receiver.”
“My father designed security systems.”
“Your biography says he was an antique dealer.”
“He was both.”
“And you understood immediately that the device was tracking a medical frequency.”
“I have good hearing.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the only one you are getting.”
Roman reached for her arm.
Vivian stepped back before he touched her.
“Do not grab me.”
The words were quiet, but something inside them stopped him.
Not fear.
Memory.
A door opened at the rear of the ballroom. Police voices echoed through the corridor.
Roman had seconds before the authorities took control of the scene.
He leaned closer to Vivian.
“Six months ago, someone called my private number at twelve seventeen in the morning. A woman told me not to start my car.”
Vivian said nothing.
“The car exploded thirty seconds later.”
The color left her face.
Roman continued.
“The number was untraceable. My people searched for months. We found nothing.”
Vivian turned toward the ballroom doors.
“I should speak with the police.”
Roman moved into her path.
“You saved my life tonight.”
“I saved everyone in the room.”
“But it was not the first time.”
Vivian’s breathing slowed.
Roman heard the answer before she spoke it.
“Move aside.”
“What did you hear in the garage six months ago?”
She remained silent.
Roman’s voice dropped to a whisper.
“You were there.”
Vivian finally lifted her face toward him.
“I heard someone attach a magnetic device beneath your car.”
Caleb stared at her.
Roman did not move.
“Why didn’t you come forward?”
“Because the man who planted it was wearing one of your security badges.”
A heavy silence fell between them.
Roman’s expression changed.
Not surprise.
Something colder.
“Which man?”
“I never saw his face.”
“You hear things other people miss. What did you hear?”
Vivian reached inside her clutch.
Caleb immediately raised his weapon.
Roman lifted one hand, stopping him.
Vivian removed a small digital recorder.
“I heard him make a phone call after he armed the device.”
She pressed a button.
Static filled the air.
Then a man’s voice emerged from the speaker.
“The Falcon will finish what the garage failed to do.”
Caleb’s face went pale.
May you like
Roman recognized the voice instantly.
It belonged to his younger brother.
