Gwen translated for Marcus, her blood running cold. “The safe,” Marcus whispered, his face going white. “It’s behind the Monet.” He ran to the office. Gwen followed, with Leo grabbing her hand and refusing to let go. Marcus threw open the office doors. The room smelled faintly of citrus. He wrenched the priceless painting aside, revealing a high-tech keypad and biometric scanner for his safe. “He used a chemical. An accelerant,” Marcus muttered, “on the wiring. My God. He wasn’t stealing anything. He was planting a bomb. A firebomb. Timed to go off when the system recalibrates tonight.” “A bad man in a different suit,” Gwen said, thinking aloud. “Not your security.”
Marcus looked at Leo, who was hiding behind Gwen, pointing at a small framed photo on a side table. It was a picture of Marcus shaking hands with a man at a corporate event. The man had a slick smile and was wearing a dark, well-cut suit. “That’s Robert Stallard,” Marcus said, his voice numb. “My chief rival. We’re in a hostile-takeover bid. But how did Leo—” “He was here,” Gwen signed to Leo. Leo shook his head. On TV. Dad yells at the TV when he sees him. He’s the bad man. But the man in the office, he looked… Leo pointed to his own face. He looked like her. Leo ran out of the office and grabbed an iPad. His fingers flew across the screen, pulling up the Aurelia restaurant website. He tapped on the our-team page, and there, smiling a venomous, triumphant smile, was the manager, Cynthia Davies.
The pieces slammed into place. Cynthia, furious at being sidelined, and already allied with Stallard, had used her knowledge of Thorne’s habits, his dinner reservations, his home. Perhaps she had a key, or codes from a previous private dinner. She let Stallard’s operative in to plant a device meant to destroy Marcus’s research and possibly kill him and his son. And the only witness was an eight-year-old boy. The boy everyone ignored. The boy whose delirious warnings of fire and man were not fever dreams, but a literal, accurate report of a corporate assassination attempt.