Part 2: Marcy stepped in front of Lena, trembling but brave. “Sir, this is a medical facility. You need to leave.”

The man reached into his jacket. Lena’s breath stopped. But he pulled out a phone instead of a gun and showed Marcy something on the screen.

Whatever Marcy saw made her step back.

Lena did not wait to understand. Fear made the choice for her. She grabbed her bag, shoved past the rolling stool, and ran through the second door at the back of the room.

An alarm shrieked as she burst into a service hallway. She could hear footsteps behind her, fast and controlled. Not frantic. Not lost. Whoever these men were, they knew exactly where they were going.

Lena hit the stairwell, one hand clamped over her stomach, though there was nothing to protect yet except the idea of three lives she had only known about for sixty seconds. She took the stairs too quickly and nearly fell on the final landing. Her shoulder slammed into the exit bar, and she stumbled into the underground parking lot behind the clinic.

Cold air hit her face.

She ran between cars, fumbling for her phone, praying her hands would stop shaking long enough to dial 911. Before she could unlock the screen, a black SUV skidded across the exit ramp and blocked her path.

Lena turned, but two men appeared from behind a concrete pillar.

“No!” she screamed.

One grabbed her around the waist. She kicked, twisted, and bit the side of his hand hard enough to taste blood. He cursed but did not hit her. That frightened her more than violence would have. These men were not acting on rage. They were following orders.

“Careful,” the man from the exam room snapped. “Mr. Cross said nobody hurts her.”

Mr. Cross.

The name meant nothing to Lena, yet it landed in the air with weight.

They put her in the SUV, not gently enough to be kind but carefully enough to prove she was not being treated like an ordinary hostage. The doors locked. The city moved outside the tinted windows as if the world had not just split open.

Lena’s chest heaved. “Where are you taking me?”

The man beside her pressed a cloth against his bleeding hand and looked almost apologetic. “Somewhere safe.”

“Safe?” Lena laughed once, broken and breathless. “You just dragged me out of a clinic during a shooting.”

“That shooting wasn’t ours.”

The words silenced her.

He looked forward. “Someone else came for you first.”

The drive took them north out of Baltimore, through neighborhoods Lena knew, then past suburbs she had only delivered catering to, then onto private roads lined with stone walls and winter-bare trees. Lena kept expecting police lights. None came. The SUV passed through a guarded iron gate and climbed a long driveway toward a house that looked less like a home than a courthouse built for a king.

It was all slate roof, pale stone, tall windows, and quiet money. Not new money showing off. Old money hiding knives behind manners.

The men escorted her through carved double doors into a marble foyer where fresh flowers stood in a vase taller than Lena’s kitchen table. Her boots squeaked on the polished floor. Her diner coat suddenly felt filthy. She hated that she noticed.

A man stood at the far end of the foyer, looking out through a window at the brown winter lawn.

Even from behind, she knew him.

Six weeks ago, at her coworker Brooke’s wedding in Philadelphia, he had stood under a string of lights with a glass of bourbon in his hand and sadness in his eyes. He had told her his name was Nick. He had listened when she talked about her mother. He had danced with her slowly while everyone else got drunk and loud. He had kissed her like he had been lonely for years.

By morning, he was gone.
Now he turned.

The stranger from the wedding was not named Nick.
He was Nicholas Cross, though everyone who feared him called him Cross and everyone who loved him was either dead or smart enough to keep quiet about it.

He was taller than Lena remembered, dressed in a black suit with no tie, dark hair combed back, jaw shadowed with exhaustion. His eyes were the same, though. Gray-blue, watchful, too intense. The kind of eyes that made you feel seen and studied at once.
“Lena,” he said.

The sound of her name in his voice nearly broke something inside her. Not because she trusted him. Because part of her had wanted to, once.
“You,” she said. Then anger rushed in and saved her from fear. “You sent men to attack a clinic?”

Nicholas’s expression hardened. “No. I sent men to get you out before the men attacking the clinic found you.”
“Why would anyone be looking for me?”

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