Chapter 2

chapter

two

Just as Nia had veered from the elevator toward the stairs, she’d heard the elevator ding in the distance.

Had someone been going to Rob’s place?

The police? Had someone heard something and called them?

Would the cops realize Nia had been there, chase her down, and arrest her?

Or was it the killer returning to finish what he’d started?

She rushed down the steps, nearly tripping she moved so quickly. She caught herself on the railing before continuing downward.

Her limbs trembled uncontrollably.

Get a grip, Nia. No one should know you were there.

Except . . .

What if security cameras had captured her image? She’d gotten into this building somehow. Had people seen her come in with Rob ?

Another surge of panic washed through her.

What should she do?

She was a CEO, not a killer.

She continued down the steps, nearly falling several times.

Twelve flights later, she reached the first floor.

Nia knew better than to head to the lobby. Instead, she followed a maze of hallways until she reached the back entrance of the posh apartment building. If this place was like the building where she lived, the door would be locked only from the outside.

She pushed on it, and it opened. Relief swept through her.

As she stepped out into the early morning humidity, she sucked in a breath and tried to compose herself. She couldn’t appear disheveled. She had to keep her cool in order to not raise suspicion.

Once she was home in her own apartment, then she could fall apart. Then she could think this through more. Then she could figure out how to make the situation right.

But right now, all she wanted was to get away.

She forced herself to walk in an even stride across the dark sidewalk.

A street sign on the corner showed she was about four blocks away from her place and six blocks from the restaurant where she’d met Rob last night.

As she passed a trash can, she ditched Rob’s hat and sunglasses. She couldn’t afford to be caught with them. It was only smart to lose them . . . just in case.

She paused mid-step and glanced around. An eerie feeling crept over her skin. Raised the hair on her arms. Tightened her throat.

Someone was watching her, weren’t they?

Was it the person who’d killed Rob?

No one was on the street—no one she could see.

But someone could be hiding in the shadows.

Would they confront her? Finish her off?

Or had someone just been trying to frame her?

Nothing made sense.

The uncertainty muddled her thoughts.

Fear strangled her, tightening her throat until she could hardly breathe.

Maybe she was just being paranoid. But she didn’t think so.

She walked more quickly and kept looking over her shoulder.

She saw no one.

But she could feel those eyes on her.

Why couldn’t she remember what had happened?

Had she been drugged? Had someone hit her over the head?

She had no idea.

Lucanidae’s, the restaurant where she and Rob had eaten, had been full. Uncountable people had seen the two of them together.

Had people seen her say good night to Rob and go her separate way?

Or had they actually left together?

Familiar panic tried to swell in her again .

Finally, Nia spotted her high-rise ahead.

If she went in through the front door, the doorman would see her and be able to testify that she’d just gotten back.

Instead, she hurried around the building to the back entrance.

As she turned off the main street, she glanced around.

Coming back here was risky.

That person watching her . . . if he were to follow her here, she’d be a goner.

Her fingers trembled as she turned to the keypad on the door. She had her own code, but Addison, her neighbor, had once shared her code, remarking that it was also her birthday.

Nia whispered an apology before punching in Addison’s code. The door buzzed, and Nia nearly fell inside.

Once the door was closed, her lungs softened a bit.

Maybe she was safe—for a moment, at least.

Still, she didn’t want to risk taking the elevator. Instead, she climbed the six flights to her floor.

By the time she got there, her lungs burned. Her head pounded harder. Her panic was barely contained.

She darted to her apartment and tapped in the door code, thankful it didn’t require a key.

Just as she slipped inside, an elevator pinged.

Her heart pulsed out of control.

Could it be the killer?

The cops?

The thought of either one terrified her.

Maybe Gage should have called the police right away.

But as an operative with the Shadow Agency, he had skills and resources the police didn’t.

Trained in black ops, he knew how to fight. To use weapons. He knew about poisons and toxins.

That was why he wanted to gather his own clues. To do his own investigation.

He’d been trained to be a shadow, to disappear, to blend in.

So that was what he would do.

Soon enough, the police would discover his friend was dead. The local PD would launch their own investigation. That investigation might even lead right back to Gage. He hadn’t made his arrival a secret.

He’d handle that when it happened.

When the government had chosen him to be a super soldier, they’d invested a large amount of time and money into his training. It was more than training. There were experiments. Injections. Covert missions.

Scars. So many scars—some not visible to the human eye.

His friends liked to call themselves the Jason Bourne Club.

But Jason Bourne was fiction and members of his team were real. They’d been treated as a commodity, as people whose lives didn’t matter.

They might as well have been robots .

Now they all lived with the consequences of what amounted to brainwashing.

A fact that haunted each of them in different ways.

Right now, Gage needed to figure out who had been in Rob’s apartment tonight.

He pulled his computer from his bag—he’d also been trained in technology.

It only took Gage a few minutes to hack into the apartment’s security server and pull up the video feed from the front door of the lobby.

He scrolled back to six-thirty when he and Rob had last spoken. Then he began to fast-forward and watch people coming and going.

At eleven, he saw Rob step into the building.

A woman was with him. She had her arm around his waist, and Rob’s arm was slung over her shoulders. The two looked . . . cozy.

Gage tried to zoom in to get a better look at her face, but the image quality wasn’t high enough.

In the video, the doorman barely looked up to say hello to them. He’d been texting someone, and his eyes were glued to his phone.

That meant the man probably couldn’t identify the woman either.

Gage glanced at the earring in his palm.

He needed to find that woman . . . because, based on the evidence in front of him, she very well could have been the last person to see Rob alive.