Chapter 2 - The Man Behind the Camera
My name is Maya Bennett. I was twenty-nine, worked three jobs, and had promised myself I would never walk into Sterling House again.
Five minutes after Vanessa's heel missed my face, I was standing in a pantry with a security guard named Reed blocking the door. The man from the corridor had vanished.
"Your phone," Reed said.
"Why?"
"Guests' privacy."
"That policy didn't bother the thirty people filming me."
He reached for my apron. I stepped back.
"Touch me and your next conversation is with my lawyer."
"You have a lawyer?"
"Not yet. But I have a phone."
A kitchen door opened. Adrian entered without the roomful of admirers he'd carried downstairs.
"Reed. Outside."
"Sir, Ms. Sterling said—"
"I said outside."
The guard left reluctantly. Adrian waited for the door to close.
"Are you injured?"
"No. Is that the question you came to ask?"
He winced. "I'm sorry about my sister."
"She's not an unexpected rainstorm, Mr. Sterling. She made three choices in front of witnesses."
"Two kicks," he said.
"The third was going to land."
He looked at my service shoes. "You trained?"
"My father taught me to keep my balance."
That answer changed his face. "Your father?"
"Daniel Bennett. He maintained the security systems here for eleven years."
Adrian leaned against the counter. "I knew Daniel."
"Then you know he died in an accident after reporting a missing foundation account."
"The investigation found no—"
"The investigation never opened his laptop."
Through the pantry wall, someone announced that the charity auction would resume. People applauded. Upstairs, a guard was probably explaining to Vanessa why the cameras were suddenly useless.
"I wasn't hired by accident," I told Adrian. "Your gala manager called me personally. She said my father's old supervisor had requested me."
"Who?"
"Elliot Price."
Adrian went still. Price was the foundation's chief operating officer, a man photographed beside the Sterling family at every hospital ribbon cutting for twenty years.
"Elliot isn't here tonight," Adrian said.
"He was. I saw him behind the camera."
Adrian opened the service door and called for his head of security. Nobody answered. Then his phone vibrated.
He read the message, and his skin lost color.
"What is it?" I asked.
May you like
He turned the screen toward me. A photograph showed my younger brother Noah outside his college dorm. Under it were seven words.
TELL THE WAITRESS TO LEAVE BEFORE MIDNIGHT.
