Chapter 2

When I opened my eyes again, I was lying in an unmarked ambulance.

Someone had a hand on my shoulder, keeping me from thrashing.

"Don't move, Elena."

Mara, the underground clinic's doctor, pulled down her surgical mask. Her voice was barely above a whisper.

"What you swallowed wasn't poison. I had Lucía give you an emergency medication. It induces vomiting, drops your heart rate—makes it look like you won't pull through. But it won't kill you."

I stared at her.

Mara had been a Doctors Without Borders physician. Two years ago Soren had detained her, forcing her to operate on his wounded men.

She was also the one who'd set my bones, over and over, keeping me alive until today.

Gunfire crackled beyond the ambulance doors.

She worked an IV line into my arm and spoke rapidly:

"An explosion during the firefight collapsed the east side of the basement. Lucía found a female body close to your build—the face is unrecognizable. Your medal, your prisoner number, and that jacket are all on her now."

"The task force will evacuate you as an unidentified survivor. I have registered you as a key witness requiring isolated medical treatment. Your identity-verification results will bypass the general operations database and go straight to victim protection under seal. The body can only be preliminarily identified by clothing and personal effects—formal analysis will eventually flag the discrepancy."

"So you need to decide right now. Do you want to use that window to disappear?"

I gazed up at the white light swaying on the ambulance ceiling.

"Yes."

A single word that took every ounce of strength I had left.

Three months later, in a medical apartment arranged by the joint task force's victim protection unit, I watched the body-camera footage from the night of the raid.

The basement on the video was in ruins.

Several members of the joint task force kicked in the iron door.

The man in front barked:

"Where is Elena Whitmore?"

Lucía dropped to her knees in terror, pointing toward the body in the corner.

"She took pills... by the time the explosion hit, she'd already stopped breathing."

The officer followed her gesture, and the urgency on his face froze solid.

No one could have connected the disfigured woman before them with the Miss Whitmore who'd graced charity galas and equestrian magazines five years before.

He approached hesitantly and was about to check for a carotid pulse when a voice crackled through his earpiece:

"Soren and armed personnel spotted in the east tunnel."

"Suspects have server hard drives and port security blueprints. Do not let them leave the cordon."

The officer's head snapped around.

He looked down at the body on the floor, then over at the team's medic.

"Seal the scene. Notify forensics. Don't touch anything."

And he was gone, his men close behind.

The camera shook violently, sweeping through burning warehouses before finally entering the port management center.

My father stood before a massive electronic shipping chart, his dark suit impeccable, his temples threaded with gray.

My mother sat nearby, my old jewelry box cradled in her arms.

Adrian stood at the floor-to-ceiling windows.

He wore a tactical vest, blood on his shirtsleeves, his right hand resting on his sidearm the entire time.

Several of Soren's men sat handcuffed around the room.

"Where is Elena?"

Adrian's voice was so cold it barely sounded human.

No one answered.

He seized one of them by the collar and slammed the man's face into the tabletop.

"I'll ask one more time. Where is she?"

The man shook with pain.

"I don't know!"

"She was at the villa on the hill at first, then Soren handed her to his brother. After the shipment went bad, she was moved to the underground section—nobody knows which cell!"

Adrian's eyes reddened, degree by degree.

"Keep searching."

"Hit the docks, the clinic, every underground tunnel again."

"Tear this whole port apart if you have to, but bring her back."

My mother stared at the firelight beyond the windows, clutching the jewelry box, tears falling again.

"It's been two hours. Why haven't we heard anything about Elena?"

"Does she know what happened back then? Is that why she's hiding—refusing to see us?"

My father pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose and murmured:

"No."

"We had no other choice back then. Celeste had just come back to us—she was deeply unstable. She was threatening to kill herself. We couldn't watch our own daughter jump off that rooftop."

"Besides, I assigned Elena the best private security. Soren signed an agreement promising she'd be treated strictly as a negotiating envoy."

"Elena has always been the most sensible, the most tenderhearted."

"Once she knows we've been thinking of her all these five years, she'll understand why we did what we did."

"When we find her, we'll make it up to her. Twice over."

My mother seized on this like a drowning woman grasping a lifeline, nodding over and over.

"Yes."

"When she comes home, I'll never let her suffer again. Not even a little."

"She always loved that house on Nantucket, didn't she? I'll put the deed in her name."

"And the gowns the Paris atelier sent over—all hers."

"If she's still angry, I'll stay by her side every day."

"Whatever she wants, we'll give it to her. We can make her happy again."

As she said these things, a flicker of anticipation actually crossed my mother's face.

As though she could already see me sitting beside her in a new gown, calling her Mom the way I used to.

My father's expression softened too.

"The board documents are already prepared."

"When Elena returns to the States, I'll reinstate her interest in the family trust and transfer her ten percent of the group's non-voting shares."

"I want everyone to know she wasn't abandoned by this family—she's the hero who saved thirty-two employees."

Adrian reached into an inner pocket and produced an engagement ring, perfectly preserved.

"The wedding venue was never canceled."

"Once we find her, I'm taking her back to Boston."

"If she doesn't want to go back, we'll live in another city."

"If she hates me, I'll spend a year, ten years—the rest of my life making it right."

None of them knew that the person they were so desperate to make it up to was in another ambulance, already rolling out of the cordon.

And my real identity had already been entered into a provisional protected-witness file.