Chapter 12: Rule Two

By four that afternoon I knew Camille had lied.

Dorothea's attorney spread the proof across a conference table.

There was the clerk's note from Nevada and the lawyer's hold instruction to the court office.

There was the letter revoking the power of attorney, notarized on Saturday morning.

Declan's calendar showed the meeting with Garrison on a Wednesday, thirteen days back, and nothing before it.

"He found out when he says he did," said the attorney. "He has never filed a thing in his life that he didn't read twice."

I moved into his penthouse that night.

I took the room at the far end of the hall.

It was a white guest room with a bed too big for one woman and a window full of brewery lights.

Declan carried my two bags to the door and set them down without crossing the threshold.

"Rule two," he said.

"Rule two."

"Good night, Hallie."

He walked back down the corridor, and I shut the door.

I lay on top of the covers in my clothes with my shoulder aching and stared at the ceiling.

At one in the morning I gave up.

There was a line of light under the study door.

I pushed it open.

He was asleep in his desk chair, with his tie pulled down and his head tipped back.

A small gold ring lay loosely in his open hand.

Mine.

I recognized it in half a second.

The plain gold band, too small for his finger, with a scratch on the inside that I remembered from the chapel.

I stood in the doorway and my anger came up and turned into something else.

Fourteen months he had kept it.

He had stood beside me in meetings and called me *Ms. MacAuley* with that thing in his pocket.

I crossed the room and put my hand over his, and closed his fingers around the ring.

His eyes opened.

He looked at me, and for a second he didn't breathe.

"Hallie."

"Don't move."

"I'm not."

"Rule three says you don't touch me unless I say so."

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