Chapter 3 - A SECOND ATTEMPT
The man in the orderly’s uniform reached the stairwell before Marco tackled him.
He carried no weapon. In his pocket was a syringe filled with potassium chloride and a visitor badge printed under a false name.
By the time police removed him, he was already asking for a lawyer.
Damon ordered Keisha transferred to a secure surgical floor under an assumed identity. Detective Ward protested until the hospital administrator discovered that the fake badge had been created through an employee terminal.
Someone had access inside the hospital.
The investigation widened.
Damon returned to Aurelia with Ward and a crime-scene team. Broken crystal still covered the floor. The restaurant owner had kept every guest in a private lounge until police completed interviews.
No one remembered seeing Silas enter.
Kitchen cameras showed the doors opening, but not Silas passing through them. The hallway beyond contained three exits: an alley door, a freezer corridor, and a service elevator.
All three cameras had failed for exactly ninety seconds.
“That kind of failure requires access,” Ward said.
Damon looked toward the manager, a nervous man named Paul Renner.
Renner swore only his assistant and the security vendor knew the codes.
The security vendor was Vale Protective Services.
Marco’s company.
Ward noticed Damon’s silence.
“Your security chief installed the system?”
“Yes.”
“And his man captured the hospital attacker.”
“Yes.”
“That could make him loyal.”
“Or careful.”
Marco had been beside Damon for twelve years. He once took a knife meant for him. He knew where Damon slept, which vehicles he preferred, and when he met Claire for Sunday breakfast.
Trust built over twelve years did not disappear because of one camera failure.
But it could crack.
A forensic technician found a fiber caught in the kitchen-door hinge. It came from the same dark synthetic material used in Silas’s jacket. He had passed through the doors.
Then how had the cameras missed him?
Damon examined the black envelope found under his table. Ward had photographed it before returning it in an evidence sleeve.
The paper was handmade. A faint watermark appeared when held beneath a lamp: a crowned raven.
Damon recognized it.
His uncle Vincent once used that symbol on private correspondence. After Vincent’s death, Damon burned the remaining stationery.
At least, he thought he had.
Ward searched old organized-crime files and found the raven linked to a group called the Concord. The organization was rumored to settle disputes among East Coast crime families. No official member list existed.
Vincent had served them.
Damon had refused.
That refusal created enemies, but Vincent had been dead for seven years.
At the hospital, Keisha finally explained Marcus’s file.
Her brother had discovered monthly payments from Harbor Crown to shell companies controlled by the Concord. The payments began under Vincent and continued after Damon took control.
Damon had never authorized them.
“Marcus believed someone kept Vincent’s system alive,” Keisha said.
“Why not come to me?”
“He didn’t know whether you were involved.”
“Do you?”
Keisha studied him.
“I saw your face when I said table twelve. You were surprised. That means somebody changed your seat without telling the shooter.”
Damon understood.
The hit had two plans.
One person arranged the assassin around table twelve.
Another moved Damon to table nine.
Someone had tried to kill him.
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Someone else had quietly tried to save him.
And Keisha had stepped into the space between them.
