Chapter 4 - THE RECORDING
Gabriel made it twenty-seven steps into the service corridor before his legs began to fail.
Harper counted because counting was easier than panicking.
Twenty-four.
Twenty-five.
Twenty-six.
Twenty-seven.
Then he hit the wall with one shoulder and slid down hard.
"Gabriel."
"I am fine."
"That line is getting old."
Even now, a brief shadow of amusement crossed his face.
Harper tore open his jacket.
The bullet had entered high along his right side and exited near his back.
There was too much blood, but the wound did not appear to have struck the center of his chest.
She remembered enough from caring for her mother to know that guessing was dangerous.
"Elias!"
Footsteps thundered toward them.
Elias appeared with another guard behind him.
"Shooter moved east."
"Forget him," Harper snapped.
Elias looked at Gabriel.
"Car is coming."
Gabriel gripped Harper's wrist.
"Package."
She held it up.
"I have it."
"Recorder?"
"Yes."
"Do not give it to anyone."
Elias stared at him.
"Boss-"
"Anyone."
The warning was not aimed at Harper.
That realization lodged in her mind even as they lifted Gabriel to his feet.
Someone inside his circle could not be trusted.
They left through a loading entrance and climbed into a black SUV that stopped hard against the curb.
Harper sat beside Gabriel in the rear seat and pressed folded gauze against his wound while Elias drove.
"Hospital," she said.
"No."
"You were shot."
"I noticed."
"You need a trauma surgeon."
"I have one."
"Of course you do."
Gabriel's lips had begun to lose color.
Harper pressed harder.
He hissed.
"Sorry."
"Do not be."
"I am not."
This time he actually smiled.
It vanished when the SUV turned sharply.
"The recorder," Gabriel said.
"What about it?"
"If I lose consciousness, keep it."
"You are not losing consciousness."
"Harper."
"No."
"That is not how blood loss works."
"Then stop losing blood."
His eyes closed for half a second.
"Very practical."
"I am serious."
"So am I."
He opened his eyes.
"Do not give it to Morrison."
Harper's hand froze.
"Why?"
"Because I do not know why she hid your mother's connection to Thomas."
"You think she is involved?"
"I think secrets make good people dangerous."
Gabriel's voice weakened.
"And bad people useful."
His eyes closed again.
This time they stayed closed.
"Gabriel."
No response.
"Gabriel."
Harper slapped his cheek lightly.
Elias looked in the mirror.
"Two minutes."
"Make it one."
The SUV entered an underground garage beneath a private medical building near Back Bay.
A team was waiting with a gurney.
Harper stepped back as they took Gabriel through a secured elevator.
Only then did she realize that her hands were covered in his blood.
She stared at them.
Four days ago she had washed Derek's blood from her knuckles after finally shoving him hard enough to escape.
Now another man's blood covered her hands because he had put his body between her and a bullet.
She did not know what to do with that difference.
Elias came to stand beside her.
"He will be all right."
"You do not know that."
"I have seen him survive worse."
"That is not comforting."
Elias nodded.
"Fair."
Harper looked at him.
"Who knew we were going to South Station?"
Elias's expression changed.
"You, me, Mr. Ashford, Mrs. Morrison, and two men on outer security."
"Names."
"Daniel Price and Malcolm Pierce."
"Who is Malcolm?"
"Mr. Ashford's operations chief."
"How long has he worked for Gabriel?"
"Fourteen years."
Harper looked toward the elevator.
"Long enough to know everything."
"Yes."
"Long enough to sell everything."
Elias's eyes narrowed.
"Careful."
"Gabriel told me not to give the recorder to anyone."
That stopped him.
"Anyone?"
"His word."
Elias swore under his breath.
"Then keep it hidden."
"From you too?"
He met her gaze.
"Especially from me."
Harper studied him.
For the first time that morning, she felt less alone.
Two hours later, a surgeon came out and said the bullet had missed Gabriel's lung by less than an inch.
He had lost blood but was stable.
Harper's knees nearly folded with relief.
She hated the intensity of it.
She barely knew him.
She barely trusted him.
Yet the thought of him dying because he had protected her had lodged beneath her ribs beside the older pain.
Morrison arrived shortly after noon with Noah.
Harper met them in a private waiting room.
Noah ran to her.
Morrison looked at the dried blood on Harper's clothes.
"His?"
Harper nodded.
"He is stable."
Morrison closed her eyes briefly.
"Thank God."
Harper watched her.
"You knew my mother."
Morrison opened her eyes.
"Yes."
"You knew about the key."
"I knew she had hidden something."
"Did you know where?"
"No."
"Did you know Derek Lawson was watching me?"
Morrison hesitated.
That hesitation was answer enough.
Harper stood.
"You did."
"Not until I saw your application."
"My application had his name on it?"
"No."
"Then how?"
"Your emergency contact was your brother, and your previous address was on Columbia Road."
Harper waited.
"I had someone check the address."
"Without asking me."
"Yes."
"And you found Derek."
"I found a marriage record."
Harper laughed bitterly.
"Everyone seems very comfortable investigating me."
Morrison flinched.
"I was trying to keep you safe."
"That sentence is becoming popular in this house."
Noah looked between them.
Harper softened her voice.
"Noah, can you go with Elias for five minutes?"
"Is he the big man?"
Elias, standing by the door, raised one eyebrow.
"Apparently."
Noah almost smiled.
He followed Elias into the hall.
Harper turned back to Morrison.
"Who did my mother save?"
Morrison sat down slowly.
"Me."
Harper had not expected that.
"How?"
"Seven years ago, the night Thomas died, I was in the hospital too."
Morrison's fingers tightened around each other.
"I had been in the car with him."
Harper stared.
"You were there when he was shot?"
"Yes."
"Why was that never in the police report?"
"Because I was not supposed to survive."
The room went silent.
"Thomas had discovered that someone inside Gabriel's organization was selling schedules, routes, and names to Adrian Vale."
"Who?"
"He did not tell me."
"Why were you with him?"
Morrison looked at the floor.
"Because Thomas was my son."
Harper's mind stopped.
"What?"
Morrison's eyes filled, but she did not cry.
"I gave birth to him when I was nineteen."
"But he was Gabriel's brother."
"Gabriel's father raised Thomas as his own."
Harper sat down without meaning to.
"Did Gabriel know?"
"No."
"You have worked in his house all these years and never told him?"
"His father made me promise."
"His father is dead."
"Promises do not always die with the people who demand them."
Harper thought of Derek.
"They should."
Morrison nodded sadly.
"Sometimes."
"What happened that night?"
"Thomas called me and said he had proof."
Her voice became distant.
"He wanted me to take it somewhere safe."
"The hospital file?"
"No."
"Then what?"
"I never saw it."
Morrison swallowed.
"A car followed us near Tremont."
"Vale's men?"
"I do not know."
"Derek?"
"I saw him later."
Harper leaned forward.
"Where?"
"At St. Bartholomew's."
"In plain clothes?"
Morrison nodded.
"He came into the trauma corridor before the police were officially notified."
"How?"
"That is what frightened Mara."
"My mother."
"She recognized him."
Harper's pulse accelerated.
"From where?"
Morrison looked at her.
"That is the part she would never tell me."
While Gabriel was in surgery, Harper finally washed his blood from her hands in the clinic restroom.
The water turned pink, then clear.
She kept scrubbing after there was nothing left to remove.
Morrison appeared in the mirror behind her.
"You will take the skin off."
Harper shut off the faucet.
"I am fine."
"That word appears to be contagious in this family."
Harper almost smiled.
Then she saw the blood on the cuff of Morrison's coat.
"That is mine," Morrison said.
"I cut my hand at the house."
Harper dried her fingers slowly.
"Did Gabriel always do this?"
"Get shot?"
"Put himself between danger and other people."
Morrison leaned against the wall.
"Not always."
"What changed?"
"Thomas died."
Harper looked at her.
Morrison's eyes remained on the floor.
"Before that, Gabriel believed being the strongest person in a room meant never taking the first hit."
"After Thomas, he began measuring strength differently."
"Is that supposed to make me trust him?"
"No."
Morrison raised her eyes.
"Trust should not be assigned by biography."
"It should be earned in present tense."
Harper thought about Derek telling stories of a difficult childhood every time he wanted sympathy after hurting her.
His father drank.
His mother left.
He had been bullied.
His first partner died.
Every story had been true.
None of them had made Harper's bruises less real.
"People use pain as permission," Harper said.
Morrison nodded.
"Yes."
"Gabriel too?"
"Sometimes."
That answer made Harper look at her sharply.
Morrison did not soften it.
"Do not turn him into a hero because he took a bullet."
"A man can protect you in one moment and still be wrong in another."
"Remember that."
Harper stared at the older woman.
"You care about him."
"Very much."
"And you still say that?"
"Especially because I care about him."
Morrison opened the restroom door.
"Love without truth is only another locked room."
Harper stood alone after she left.
For reasons she could not explain, she thought of the bathroom door in Beacon Hill and the way Gabriel had closed it to give her privacy instead of stepping farther inside.
A nurse entered before Harper could ask more.
"Mr. Ashford is awake."
Gabriel looked pale, angry, and very much alive.
Harper stood beside his bed while Morrison remained outside.
"You look terrible," Harper said.
"You look worse."
"I am covered in your blood."
"Then technically we both look terrible."
She almost laughed.
Instead, she took the recorder from inside her coat.
"You told me not to give this to anyone."
Gabriel's eyes sharpened.
"Good."
"Morrison told me something."
"What?"
Harper hesitated.
It was not her secret to reveal.
Not yet.
"She was in the car with Thomas."
Gabriel stared at her.
"She said she was a witness."
"She told the police she arrived at the hospital later."
"She lied."
"Yes."
Gabriel looked toward the door.
Pain moved across his face, and Harper knew it had nothing to do with the wound.
"Play the recorder."
She pressed the power button.
For several seconds, there was only static.
Then a woman's voice filled the room.
Mara Queen.
Harper had not heard her mother's voice in two years.
Her knees almost gave out.
"If anyone is hearing this, then I failed to keep it buried."
Harper covered her mouth.
Gabriel watched her but said nothing.
The recording continued.
"Thomas Ashford was conscious when he arrived."
Static swallowed several words.
"He told me the shooting came from inside his own security route."
More static.
"He said the man with the silver ring knew the change before Gabriel did."
Gabriel's eyes hardened.
Then Mara's voice changed.
Lower.
Frightened.
"Officer Derek Lawson came into records at 1:17 in the morning."
Harper stopped breathing.
"He told me to delete the intake scan."
The recording crackled.
"When I refused, he said he knew where my daughter went to school."
Harper's eyes filled.
Gabriel's hand tightened against the sheet.
"He knew Harper's name before I gave it to him."
A long pause followed.
May you like
Then Mara whispered the sentence that changed everything.
"If Derek Lawson ever gets close to my daughter, it will not be by accident."
