Chapter 1 - THE PINK SUITCASE
The little pink suitcase appeared before the child did.
Its plastic wheels clattered across the polished hardwood outside Damon Reyes’s conference room, uneven and frantic, the sound so out of place inside the quiet Arizona estate that one by one, six dangerous men stopped talking.
Then the double doors opened.
Ruby Castillo, three years old and barely tall enough to reach the brass handles, stumbled through with both hands wrapped around the suitcase’s telescoping grip. Her dark curls were crooked from running. One shoe was half untied. A stuffed rabbit’s ear stuck through the zipper where she had apparently forced it closed herself.
Nobody laughed.
Not when they saw her face.
Ruby normally entered Damon’s meetings as if she owned stock in every company represented at the table. She would wave at the men, steal an almond cookie from the sideboard, ask Damon whether grown-ups ever got tired of talking, and then disappear before her mother discovered where she had gone.
Today, she was trembling.
She dragged the suitcase all the way to the head of the table, planted it beside Damon’s polished shoe, and looked up at the most feared man in half the Southwest.
“We have to leave.”
Every man at the table went still.
Damon’s hand slowly came away from the folder in front of him.
“What did you say, sweetheart?”
Ruby swallowed.
“We have to leave right now.”
The visiting businessman at the far end of the table shifted uncomfortably. Victor Lane, Damon’s oldest adviser, stared at the child as if she had walked in carrying a live grenade instead of pajamas and a stuffed rabbit.
But Damon looked at the suitcase.
It was packed.
Actually packed.
A yellow shirt protruded from one side. Ruby’s silver toothbrush was visible through a mesh pocket. Her favorite rabbit had been shoved inside badly enough that one ear remained trapped outside.
A three-year-old did not pack a suitcase for entertainment.
Damon pushed his chair back.
He crossed the space between them and crouched until he was at Ruby’s eye level.
“Where’s your mother?”
“In our room.”
“Is she hurt?”
Ruby shook her head quickly.
“Is she sick?”
Another shake.
“Then tell me why we have to leave.”
Ruby’s lower lip began trembling.
“Because the mean man is coming.”
Something cold moved through Damon’s chest.
Around the table, every casual expression disappeared.
“What mean man?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you see him?”
“No.”
“Did Mommy see him?”
Ruby’s eyes filled with tears.
“She was crying.”
Damon’s voice softened immediately.
“Okay. You’re doing very well. Tell me exactly what Mommy said.”
Ruby squeezed the handle of her suitcase until her tiny knuckles whitened.
“She said pack Bunny and my nightgown and tell Mr. Damon we have to go before the mean man comes.”
“Did she tell you anything else?”
Ruby nodded.
Damon waited.
The child leaned forward as though she were about to reveal a secret too terrible for the adults behind him to hear.
“He knows where I sleep.”
Damon stood so quickly his chair rolled backward into the wall.
“Marcus.”
The conference room door opened almost immediately.
Marcus Ellery had served as Damon’s security chief for fourteen years, long enough to recognize the difference between Damon being angry and Damon being afraid.
This was the second one.
“Lock the property down,” Damon said. “Nobody enters. Nobody leaves until I know what happened.”
Marcus’s eyes flicked toward Ruby.
“Selena?”
“West staff residence. Find her.”
“I’m going with you.”
“No. Send two people. Quietly. I don’t want Ruby seeing anyone panic.”
Marcus nodded and touched the radio at his collar.
Damon looked toward the men around the table.
“This meeting is over, but nobody leaves this room.”
One adviser started to rise.
“Damon—”
“Nobody.”
The single word put him back in his chair.
Damon lifted Ruby into his arms.
She immediately wrapped both arms around his neck.
For the first time since she had wandered into his life eight months earlier, the child was not curious about the men, the expensive room, the strange tension or the papers covering the table.
She buried her face against him.
Damon felt her heart hammering through her little cotton dress.
“Mr. Damon?”
“Yes?”
“Did I do it right?”
For some reason, that almost broke him.
“You did everything right.”
“Mommy said you would know what to do.”
Damon looked toward Marcus.
May you like
There were very few things in his life that could still frighten him.
That sentence did.
