Chapter 10 - THE HUSBAND WHO WAS SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD
According to every public record I had ever seen, Daniel Cross died seven years ago.
Apparently dead people had become a recurring problem in my life.
Rebecca explained.
Daniel had married Vanessa when they were both twenty-two.
Their marriage lasted five years.
Then he supposedly died in a boating accident.
No body was recovered.
Vanessa collected the insurance.
And everyone moved on.
Except Daniel was alive.
He had changed identities.
Joined a federal financial crimes unit.
And spent years building a case against his own wife.
“So he was really an investigator?” I asked.
Adrian nodded.
“Yes.”
“Then why did he cancel my transfer?”
“We don’t know.”
Ethan looked at the phone.
“Maybe Vanessa found him.”
That possibility felt worse.
Vincent was taken away before midnight.
But Vanessa remained free.
And my carefully constructed life had collapsed.
My office was gone.
My apartment was unsafe.
My brother had just discovered his mother was alive.
And Adrian Vale had kissed me in front of half of Chicago’s criminal aristocracy.
I found him in the library.
“You could have warned me.”
He looked up.
“About what?”
“The kiss.”
“Would you have agreed?”
“No.”
“Then warning you would have ruined the plan.”
I threw a cushion at him.
He caught it.
“You’re impossible.”
“You kissed me back.”
“I was surprised.”
“For seventeen seconds?”
I stared.
“You counted?”
“I memorize everything.”
“That’s my line.”
For the first time that night, Adrian laughed.
It transformed his face.
Then the humor disappeared.
“Claire.”
“What?”
“The kiss wasn’t entirely strategy.”
My pulse betrayed me.
“That seems inconvenient.”
“Extremely.”
He stepped closer.
I should have moved.
I didn’t.
Then his phone rang.
Sofia.
Daniel Cross had been found.
Alive.
He was hiding in a motel near Gary, Indiana.
And he had something Vanessa desperately wanted.
We reached the motel at three in the morning.
Daniel looked exhausted and injured, but alive.
The first thing he did was hand me a hard drive.
“I canceled your transfer.”
“I noticed.”
“Because your destination server had been compromised.”
“By Vanessa?”
“No.”
He looked at Adrian.
“By someone worse.”
Adrian frowned.
“Who?”
Daniel closed the motel curtain.
“Vanessa isn’t running the network.”
Silence.
“She never was.”
My skin prickled.
“Then who is?”
Daniel placed a photograph on the table.
A distinguished silver-haired man stood beside a younger Vanessa Crowe.
I recognized him from old company portraits.
Charles Crowe.
Vanessa’s father.
The man who had supposedly died twelve years earlier.
Daniel looked at us.
May you like
“Charles is alive.”
“And he’s coming back to Chicago tomorrow.”
