Chapter 1 - The Man Who Wasn't Supposed to Be There
The groom was still holding the microphone when a stranger grabbed the bride and kissed her.
Nora had spent three weeks picking flowers for the wedding. She'd argued about napkin colors, laughed at terrible cake samples, and told herself Grant's impatience was just stress. Now she remembered the way he'd insisted on replacing her apartment locks. The way his driver always knew when she left work. The way he'd said, smiling, that she was safer when someone was watching. She had mistaken surveillance for devotion. That realization was worse than the stares of the guests. It meant her own memories were turning against her.
A hundred guests gasped. A champagne flute shattered. Someone yelled, "Security!" But the woman in the stranger's arms didn't slap him. She gripped his jacket like she was drowning, and he was the first solid thing she'd touched in years.
"You have five seconds to let go of my fiancée," said Grant Whitmore from the head table.
The stranger pulled back just enough to speak against her cheek. "Tell me he didn't make you do it, Nora."
Nora Bell's lips trembled. "Eli?"
Eli Mercer had been declared dead thirty-one months ago. She knew because she'd stood beside his closed casket in the rain. Now he was standing in the biggest ballroom in Chicago, breathing hard, with a scar across his eyebrow and blood on his white collar.
"I can explain," he said.
Grant came off the stage. "No, you can't. That is my wedding rehearsal dinner, and that is my future wife."
"Ask her why your security team searched her apartment yesterday," Eli said.
The room fell into that ugly silence rich people call discretion.
Nora shook her head. "What are you talking about?"
Eli opened his hand. In his palm lay a small silver key. It belonged to her mother, who had died when Nora was seventeen. The key had vanished the same night Eli's car went over a bridge.
"Your mom didn't die in an accident," he said. "Neither did I."
A phone rang on the nearest table. Then another. Then every phone in the ballroom lit up with the same emergency alert from an unknown sender.
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On each screen was a picture of Nora asleep in her bed, taken the night before.
Under it were six words: SHE IS NEXT. HE CAME BACK TOO LATE.
