Wrong Place, Wrong Man

Chapter 4

I walked.
Inside, the building was nothing like I expected.
No dirty warehouse. No bare lightbulbs. No bloodstained concrete floor.
The entrance opened into a vast renovated space of dark wood, steel and exposed brick. The original industrial structure had been preserved, but everything inside it was immaculate. Warm light reflected from polished floors. A sweeping staircase rose along one wall, and somewhere deeper inside the building I could hear the muted sound of voices.
I stared despite myself.
Whoever Mr. Valenti was, he had money.
A lot of it.
Marco guided me toward a corridor.
My heels clicked against the floor.
The sound made something cold move through my stomach.
I thought of the gunshots again.
The man beside the marina.
Help me.
I swallowed hard.
We passed two more men.
Neither asked who I was.
One looked at Marco.
Marco shook his head once.
That was apparently enough.
The farther we went, the quieter the building became. By the time we reached the end of the corridor, I could hear nothing except our footsteps.
Marco stopped in front of a pair of dark wooden doors.
For the first time since we’d arrived, he seemed hesitant.
Not frightened exactly.
Careful.
The larger man stepped past us and opened one of the doors.
“Wait here.”
I almost laughed.
“Wasn’t planning on sightseeing.”
Nobody found that funny.
They led me inside.
The room was large, although it took me several seconds to understand what I was looking at because my attention went immediately to the man sitting at the far end of it.
He wasn’t alone.
Three men stood around a long table scattered with papers and open folders. Another leaned against the wall near the windows.
But none of them mattered.
Not really.
Because the man sitting behind the desk was the only person in the room who wasn’t standing.
He hadn’t even looked at me.
One hand rested loosely against the arm of his chair while the other held a glass containing a small amount of amber liquid. His black suit fit him with the kind of precision that made it obvious it hadn’t come from a department store. The white shirt beneath it was open at the throat, no tie, revealing the faintest trace of black ink disappearing beneath the collar.
More ink covered part of the hand holding the glass.
He was listening to the man standing beside him.
Calmly.
Completely.
As though the armed men who had just dragged a strange woman into his office weren’t important enough to interrupt his conversation.
Then the man beside him stopped speaking.
The room fell silent.
The man behind the desk lifted his eyes.
They landed on Marco first.
“Problem?”
His voice was low.
Not loud. Not rough.
Low enough that everyone else seemed to become quieter around it.
Marco stepped forward.
“Boss, she saw everything.”
The man’s gaze moved to me.
For one second, perhaps two, he said nothing.
I had expected someone older.
I didn’t know why.
Maybe because men who had armed guards and decided whether witnesses lived or died weren’t supposed to look thirty.
They certainly weren’t supposed to look like him.
His hair was dark, thick and pushed back from his forehead with the kind of careless precision that probably required more effort than it appeared to. A short shadow of dark stubble sharpened an already hard jaw, and the tattoos I had noticed on his hand continued beneath the cuff of his shirt.
Another disappeared beneath his collar.
But it was his face that held me.
Not because it was handsome.
Although, annoyingly, it was.
Painfully so.
It was the complete absence of uncertainty in it.
He looked at me the way a man might look at something placed unexpectedly on his desk.
Not alarmed.
Not curious.
Simply deciding what to do with it.
His gaze returned to Marco.
“Everything?”
“Enough.”
The man slowly placed his glass on the desk.
“Then why is she still breathing?”
My stomach dropped.
Nobody laughed.
Nobody reacted at all.
I suddenly understood something important.
This wasn’t a performance.
He wasn’t trying to frighten me.
He had asked a genuine question.
Marco glanced toward me. “She appeared after it started. We didn’t know if anyone had seen her arrive.”
The man’s eyes returned to mine.
This time they stayed there.
“Come here.”
I didn’t move.
One of the men behind me shifted.
The man at the desk noticed.
His eyes never left mine.
“I said come here.”
There was nothing particularly threatening in his tone.
That somehow made it worse.
I walked forward.
One step.
Then another.
My heels sounded obscenely loud in the silence.
I stopped several feet from the desk.
He looked at the space between us.
“Closer.”
I stayed where I was.
Something changed in his eyes.
Not anger.
Interest, perhaps.
Very slight.
“Do you always have trouble following simple instructions?”
“Only when they’re given by men who ask why I’m still breathing.”
Silence.
Somebody behind me inhaled.
The man’s gaze remained on mine.
Then, very slowly, he leaned back in his chair.
“What’s your name?”
I hesitated.
He waited.
“Bonnie.”
“Bonnie what?”
“Powell.”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-four.”
“Where do you work?”
I told him.
“What do you do there?”
“Corporate events and brand partnerships.”
His gaze moved briefly over my clothes before returning to my face.
“That explains the outfit.”
I looked down at myself.
The skirt. The blouse. The heels.
A smear of blood marked the edge of one shoe.
My stomach tightened.
I looked back at him.
“Do you have a problem with my outfit?”
One of the men behind me shifted again.
The man at the desk didn’t.
“No.”
His eyes travelled over me once more, slower this time.
“Not at all.”
Something about the way he said it made heat crawl unexpectedly along the back of my neck.
I hated that.
I hated him for noticing.
I hated myself slightly more for noticing that he’d noticed.
He reached for his glass.
“Were you expected home?”
“Yes.”
A lie.
His eyes lifted immediately.
“By whom?”
I said nothing.
“Boyfriend?”
“No.”
“Husband?”
“No.”
“Family?”
I hesitated.
His gaze sharpened.
“No,” I said finally.
“Then nobody is waiting.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t need to.”
I clenched my jaw.
He took a slow sip from his glass.
“What did you see?”
“Nothing.”
His expression didn’t change.
“I have terrible eyesight.”
Marco made a sound behind me.
The man’s eyes flicked toward him.
That was all.
Marco went silent.
I looked between them.
Interesting.
The man behind the desk returned his attention to me.
“You watched a man get shot.”
“I saw a man fall over.”
“Twice?”
“Very unfortunate balance.”
For the first time, something shifted at the corner of his mouth.
So faintly that I almost imagined it.
Then it disappeared.
“Do you know who I am?”
“No.”
“Have you heard my name before tonight?”
“No.”
“Do you know who the man was?”
“No.”
“Do you know why he was killed?”
“No.”
“Did you see who shot him?”
I paused.
His eyes sharpened.
“No.”
“You hesitated.”
“I was thinking.”
“About your answer?”
“About whether you’re always this irritating.”
The room went completely still.
I knew I’d gone too far the moment the words left my mouth.
There it was again.
Impulse.
Wonderful f*****g timing, Bonnie.
The man stared at me.
I waited for anger.
It didn’t come.
Instead, he set the glass down and stood.
Oh.
That was unfortunate.
He was taller than I’d realised.
Much taller.
I was five-seven without my heels, perhaps five-nine and a half in them, and he still had enough height on me to make me tilt my chin when he came around the desk.
He moved without hurry.
That was the worst part.
Men who wanted to intimidate people usually made a show of it. They raised their voices, invaded your space, threw things, puffed themselves up.
He didn’t need to.
Everyone else in the room had already gone quiet.
He stopped in front of me.
Close.
Not touching.