Chapter 1 - The Key on the Dessert Plate

The blonde waitress slid a hotel key across my husband's dessert plate and whispered, "Room 1704. Your wife can leave now."

I knew that room number. My father had been found outside its door eight years earlier.

My husband, Miles, stared at the gold key card as though it might explode. Across the candlelit table, I put down my fork. The grand ballroom of the Halcyon Hotel glittered with chandeliers, diamonds, and people pretending not to listen.

"I'm sorry," I said. "What did you just tell my husband?"

The waitress smiled. She was young, beautiful, and wearing a burgundy vest over a white blouse. Her name tag read DELANEY.

"A private message, ma'am."

"Then why deliver it in front of me?"

She leaned closer to Miles, letting her blond hair brush his shoulder. "Some men get tired of being watched."

A man at the neighboring table stopped chewing. Miles moved the key away with one finger.

"Delaney," he said quietly, "you were told not to do this."

That sentence landed harder than the insult. He knew her. Worse, he had expected her.

"Told by whom?" I asked.

Before he could answer, the waitress looked directly at me. "He was there the night your father died. Did he ever tell you that?"

My pulse hammered. Miles had sworn he was out of town that night, repairing a bridge in Baltimore. I had believed him ever since.

"Stop," Miles said.

"Which part?" Delaney asked. "The room? Or the bridge?"

I reached for the card. On its back, someone had scratched four words into the plastic: ASK ABOUT THE CLOCK.

At the front of the ballroom, Graham Voss, the hotel's silver-haired chairman, raised his champagne glass. "To a new era for the Halcyon!"

Applause crashed around us. Tomorrow the board would vote to sell the hotel my father built from a failing train depot into something beautiful. I held forty-six percent of its shares. Voss controlled forty-two. The remaining twelve belonged to the employees' benefit trust, and no one would tell me who had been voting those shares.

Delaney straightened. Her smile was gone.

"Don't go upstairs alone," she murmured.

Then she turned away, and I saw a fresh bruise circling her wrist beneath the cuff of her blouse.

My phone vibrated. A photograph appeared from an unknown number: Miles standing outside Room 1704 the night my father died.

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Below it was a message.

YOUR HUSBAND KNOWS WHO LOCKED HIM IN.