Chapter 2 - The Marriage Proposal I Refused Until My Sister Called From a Number That Did Not Exist
I left the office without accepting anything.
Lorenzo did not stop me. That frightened me more than another threat would have.
At home, my apartment door stood open by half an inch. I had locked it before my shift. I knew because I always checked twice.
The kitchen drawers lay on the floor. Someone had emptied Maya's shoebox of letters and left her prescription bottle beside the sink.
My phone rang from an unknown number.
"Clara," Maya whispered.
I sank onto the hallway carpet.
"Where are you?"
"Don't go to St. Agnes. They have my chart. They changed the dates."
A door banged somewhere behind her. She gasped.
"The man with the compass—"
The line went dead.
I called back. The number didn't exist.
I spent the next hour with a patrol officer who wrote 'possible burglary' and asked whether I had misplaced my key. When I showed him the photograph, his expression changed.
"Where did you get this?"
I watched his thumb cover the compass pin.
I told him nothing. When he went to make a call, I slipped out the fire exit.
At dawn I walked into Lorenzo's office again.
"No touching," I said. "No orders about my job. No lies about my sister. And I get a lawyer of my own."
"Agreed."
"You haven't heard the last condition."
I laid the photograph on his desk.
"If I discover you helped put Maya in that bed, I'll destroy you myself."
He looked at me for a long moment.
"That," he said, "is a condition I can respect."
Then his phone buzzed. A photograph appeared on the screen.
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It showed me leaving the police station ten minutes earlier.
Underneath was one sentence: THE WEDDING WON'T SAVE HER.
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