Chapter 4 - THE FRIEND WHO STOOD BESIDE HIS HOSPITAL BED
Daniel finally laughed.
It was easy.
Controlled.
The same laugh he used when negotiations became tense.
“You’re in a strange mood.”
Grant rested both hands on his desk.
“So I’ve been told.”
Daniel’s attention moved toward Hannah.
Grant could hear it without seeing.
Clothing shifted.
The leather ring clicked again.
“What’s she doing here?”
Hannah answered before Grant could.
“Mr. Mercer asked for coffee.”
“At ten thirty?”
“He drinks coffee at ten thirty.”
Grant nearly smiled.
Daniel stepped closer.
“Go check on your daughter.”
The words sounded polite.
They were not.
Grant’s voice dropped.
“She stays.”
Daniel turned back to him.
“All right.”
He tossed a folder onto the desk.
“Pier 9 numbers.”
Grant did not touch it.
“Read them.”
“I thought Hannah was your reader now.”
That was the second mistake.
Grant had never told Daniel Hannah had begun reading anything to him.
Grant waited three seconds.
“Why would you think that?”
Silence.
Then Daniel shrugged.
“She’s always around.”
“No, she isn’t.”
Daniel’s breathing changed.
Barely.
But Grant had lived five years listening to what sighted men ignored.
Heartbeat.
Shoes.
Breath.
The involuntary pause before a lie.
Daniel Cross was afraid.
Grant turned his chair slightly.
“Read me the numbers.”
Daniel did.
Grant listened to every figure.
He knew the Pier 9 operation better than Daniel assumed.
When Daniel claimed fuel costs had increased eighteen percent, Grant knew they had increased nine.
When Daniel said two containers were held by customs, Grant knew they had cleared three days earlier.
He said nothing.
By the end, Daniel had lied seven times.
“Anything else?” Grant asked.
“No.”
“Then get out.”
Daniel walked toward the door.
At the threshold, he stopped.
“Grant?”
“Yes?”
“Be careful who you trust.”
Grant’s expression did not change.
“I always am.”
The door closed.
Hannah waited until the footsteps disappeared.
“He knows.”
“He suspects.”
“That’s worse.”
Grant stood.
“Hannah.”
“Yes?”
“Take Lucy to the guest house tonight.”
“No.”
Grant turned sharply.
“No?”
“If someone is watching us, suddenly moving Lucy tells them we’re afraid.”
He hated that she was right again.
“I can put twenty men around you.”
“And announce that I matter.”
“You do.”
The words came out before Grant could stop them.
Silence.
Hannah looked at him.
Grant could not see her expression, but he could hear the softness that entered her breathing.
He immediately changed the subject.
“We need the bottle.”
“I might already have enough.”
Hannah opened her hand.
A tiny cotton pad sat inside a sealed plastic bag.
Grant frowned.
“What is that?”
“When Dr. Hale treated you yesterday, one drop missed your eye and landed near your temple.”
Grant remembered her wiping his face afterward.
“You collected it?”
“I was trained in clinics, remember?”
“You wiped drug residue off my face and saved it?”
“Yes.”
Grant almost laughed.
“Remind me never to underestimate housekeepers.”
“You already did.”
That one landed.
By sunrise, Dr. Park had sent the sample to a toxicology lab used by her clinic.
Results would take several hours.
Grant spent the morning setting a trap.
He called Daniel and deliberately said he planned to meet an accountant named Benjamin Shaw at an abandoned warehouse near Pier 11 at midnight.
Benjamin Shaw did not exist.
The warehouse belonged to Grant.
Security cameras covered every entrance.
Only Daniel knew about the meeting.
At eleven forty-seven that night, three armed men entered the warehouse.
Grant watched nothing.
He sat inside a secure room three miles away while Hannah described the live camera feed.
“Three men,” she said.
“Faces?”
“Covered.”
“Weapons?”
“Yes.”
“One near the south door?”
“Yes.”
“Second by the loading dock?”
“Yes.”
Grant had designed the warehouse fifteen years earlier.
He knew exactly where they would stand.
“Third?”
“Going toward the office.”
Grant picked up his phone.
“Call Russo.”
Hannah stared at him.
“The rival family?”
“Yes.”
“You want a mafia family involved?”
“They aren’t Russo’s men.”
“How do you know?”
“Russo’s people hold pistols low. These men are holding them chest high. Daniel trains his security teams that way.”
Hannah looked back at the screen.
“That is an insane amount of information to get from posture.”
“Welcome to my life.”
Grant made one call.
Within ten minutes, two unmarked federal vehicles were heading toward the warehouse.
Hannah looked at him.
“You called federal agents?”
“I called a detective who owes me a favor.”
“You’re cooperating with law enforcement?”
“I’m protecting my house.”
“That sounds almost respectable.”
“Don’t spread it around.”
Before Hannah could answer, a sound came from the hallway.
A small click.
Grant froze.
“Hannah?”
She went pale.
“That was Lucy’s door.”
Both moved.
Grant reached the hall first.
He knew the floor by memory.
Twelve steps.
Turn.
Seven more.
Lucy’s bedroom door stood open.
Grant heard Hannah’s strangled breath.
“Lucy?”
No answer.
“Lucy!”
Hannah rushed inside.
The bed was empty.
Grant’s blood became ice.
Security men flooded the corridor within seconds.
“Lock the estate,” Grant ordered. “Nobody leaves.”
Hannah found Lucy’s stuffed rabbit on the carpet.
Then a paper.
“Grant.”
Her voice trembled.
“What?”
“There’s a note.”
“Read it.”
Hannah swallowed.
“Stop looking into the past.”
Grant went completely still.
Then something clicked beneath the bed.
Hannah dropped to her knees.
“Lucy?”
A tiny voice answered from underneath.
“Mommy?”
Hannah nearly collapsed.
She pulled Lucy into her arms.
The child was shaking.
Grant crouched beside them.
“What happened?”
“A man came.”
Hannah clutched her tighter.
“What man, baby?”
“He said come with him.”
Grant’s voice became terrifyingly soft.
“And?”
“I hid.”
“Where?”
“Under the bed.”
Grant reached toward her until his hand found her hair.
“Good girl.”
Lucy sniffed.
“He was looking in the bathroom.”
“You stayed quiet?”
“Yes.”
Grant felt rage moving through him with surgical precision.
Someone had entered his mansion.
Someone had walked into a three-year-old child’s bedroom.
Five years earlier, rage would have ended with bodies.
Now another thought came first.
Protect them.
He stood.
“Who had access to this floor?”
His chief of security answered from the doorway.
“Seven people.”
“Cut every electronic pass. Nobody moves without my permission.”
Hannah picked up the note.
“There’s something on the back.”
“What?”
“A date.”
Her voice changed.
“December fourteenth, five years ago.”
Grant stopped breathing.
The explosion had happened December seventeenth.
Three days later.
“What else?”
“An address.”
Grant knew it immediately.
“Caroline’s old apartment.”
Hannah looked at him.
“Why would somebody send us there?”
Grant thought of his dead wife.
Before they married, Caroline had owned a small apartment in Brooklyn Heights.
After moving into the Mercer estate, she refused to sell it.
Everybody needs one place that belongs only to them, she used to say.
Grant had never understood.
After her death, he could not bear to enter it.
Daniel had arranged for the property to be closed.
“No one has been inside for five years,” Grant said.
“How do you know?”
“Daniel told me.”
Hannah stared at him.
Grant understood the question she did not ask.
How many things did Daniel tell you that you never verified?
Too many.
Twenty minutes later, Grant’s phone rang.
Dr. Park.
He answered immediately.
Her voice was tense.
“The lab results came back.”
Grant put the call on speaker.
“What’s in the drops?”
“A compounded mixture containing a strong long-acting cycloplegic drug and other agents I cannot justify from your records. Repeated use could profoundly blur vision and worsen light sensitivity in someone with your injuries.”
Grant’s fingers curled.
“Could it keep me convinced I was completely blind?”
“With severe underlying damage and no rehabilitation? Yes. Especially if you believed there was nothing to recover.”
Hannah closed her eyes.
Grant asked the question that mattered.
“If I stop?”
Dr. Park hesitated.
“We find out how much was taken from you.”
Grant ended the call.
Then he faced the darkness.
For the first time, it no longer felt permanent.
It felt occupied.
As though men he trusted had been hiding inside it.
Grant picked up his cane.
“Get the car.”
Hannah looked at Lucy.
“Where are we going?”
Grant’s expression turned cold.
May you like
“To see what my dead wife was trying to tell me.”
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