Chapter 6: Someone Inside

Elias looked at the photo for a long time.

Then he turned it face down on the desk.

"Nico," he said into his phone. "Everyone who had a key card this week. Garage. Now."

Twenty minutes later, a line of men stood on the concrete under the building.

Elias's drivers. His door guards. The two who swept the halls at night.

Elias wheeled me down himself and parked my chair at the end of the line.

"Someone stood over my wife while she slept," he said. "Someone took a picture. Then someone opened my safe."

Nobody moved.

"I'm going to find out who. The only question is how many of you get hurt before I do."

The garage was so quiet I could hear the ventilation fans.

Elias started at one end of the line.

He looked each man in the face.

He asked each one where he'd been.

Each one answered.

I wasn't watching their faces.

I was breathing.

Three years in a dressing room with Simone, and I knew her perfume like my own name.

Jasmine and burnt sugar. Two hundred dollars an ounce.

She bought it with the allowance my mother's estate paid for my food.

The smell was coming from the man fourth from the end.

Young. Dark curls. Wedding band.

I touched Elias's sleeve as he passed.

I typed and held the phone so only he could see.

Fourth from the end. He smells like Simone.

Elias didn't look at the man right away.

He finished the line first.

Then he walked back and stopped in front of him.

"You."

"Boss."

Elias leaned in, close to the man's collar, and breathed in.

The guard's eyes went to the exit.

He didn't make it two steps.

Nico caught him by the jacket and slammed him face down on the hood of a car.

Elias took the guard's right hand and spread it flat on the metal.

"This is the hand that held the camera?"

"Boss, please. Please, I've got a kid."

"So did Catherine Ashcroft," Elias said.

He brought the butt of his pistol down once.

The crack echoed off the concrete pillars.

The guard screamed.

Ten men stood and watched, and not one of them looked away.

"Who paid you?"

"Damian!" the guard was sobbing. "Damian paid me. Fifty grand. He wanted the covenant. He said if she's asleep, get proof I could get to her."