THE MAFIA BOSS WATCHED HIS INJURED MAID COLLAPSE BENEATH A MASSIVE PAINTING, BUT WHAT FELL FROM THE BROKEN FRAME MADE HIM FORGET EVERY GUEST AT HIS ENGAGEMENT DINNER.

The man with the roses wore a hospital visitor's badge turned backward.

At first I thought he had the wrong room. He was young, maybe thirty, with neatly combed hair and a charcoal overcoat still wet from the rain. His smile looked practiced.

"Miss Ellis? These are from the family."

I glanced at the flowers. The bouquet was enormous, arranged with lilies and baby's breath. A cream-colored card sat between the stems.

"Which family?" I asked.

"The Carusos."

"Who sent them?"

"Mr. Caruso, naturally."

My phone was still in my hand. I knew Enzo hadn't sent flowers. He was chasing a child through Chicago, not selecting arrangements at midnight. More importantly, whoever had sent the warning knew someone was coming.

"Would you mind leaving them at the nurses' station?" I said.

He hesitated. "I was told to deliver them personally."

"Well, I've just had stitches, and flowers make me sneeze."

His gaze moved to my phone.

The silence that followed seemed to press against the walls.

"I can put them on the table," he said.

"Please don't."

He took a step closer.

I pressed the call button beside my bed with my good hand. The man saw my thumb move. His smile vanished.

"You made this bigger than it needed to be, Ruby."

My stomach dropped.

"Who are you?"

He reached into his coat.

I threw the paper cup of water at his face.

He jerked back, swearing. I grabbed the metal tray beside my bed and pushed it between us just as the nurse came in. The tray hit the floor with a crash. The man turned and ran.

"Security!" the nurse shouted.

I held the railing of the bed, shaking so hard I could barely breathe.

Hospital security caught him near the service elevator. Detective Ortiz arrived within twenty minutes. She found a second phone and a roll of medical tape in his coat, along with an envelope containing photographs of my father and sister.

"Did he touch you?" she asked.

"No."

"Did he say anything else?"

I repeated his words. She wrote them down, then asked about the messages.

The paper bird photo had come from a temporary work phone Marco was using. He confirmed that he'd sent it. The warning, however, had come from a different number with no identifying information.

"Someone knew this man was on his way," Ortiz said. "That could be help, or it could be someone trying to draw you into another trap. Don't answer anything else without showing me."

"My father and sister—"

"Two officers are already going to their house."

I let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding.

"I want to go home."

"I know. But I need you to stay somewhere secure until we understand who is targeting you. We can arrange it without involving Mr. Caruso."

That mattered. Everyone seemed to assume the rich man whose family had created this disaster could solve every part of it. I didn't want to trade fear of Serena for dependence on Enzo.

"Thank you," I said.

At three in the morning, Ortiz told me the stranger's name was Nolan Pike. He'd been hired by a private security subcontractor with ties to Adrian Bell, an attorney who handled investments for Serena's family. Nolan refused to explain why he'd come to my room.

Meanwhile, Marco and Enzo had gone to the Blue Door Learning Center, a small nonprofit after-school program tucked into a brick storefront on the north side. The place was closed. Police obtained access after verifying that Mia Mercer had attended several times during the previous year.

They found her drawings hanging on a corkboard: houses with blue roofs, a dog with six legs, and a woman whose smile filled her entire face.

On one drawing, a blue door stood alone in the middle of a green field. Underneath, in crooked letters, was written:

When I need help, I can ask Ms. June.

June Mercer.

The guardian whose name I had seen on the registration form.

The staff said June had stopped bringing Mia to the center two weeks earlier. They also said a polished blonde woman had begun appearing outside the building, parked in a silver sedan. She never came inside.

Enzo called me after sunrise.

"We found June's last known address," he said. His voice sounded worn down to the bone. "She's not there, but Detective Ortiz is trying to locate her."

"Did you get any sleep?"

"No."

"You need to."

A pause. "You sound like someone with children."

"I helped raise Sophie. That's not the same thing, but it taught me a little about what panic does to your judgment."

He let out a humorless breath. "My judgment hasn't been worth much lately."

I thought about saying that he'd failed Mia simply by believing she was dead. But that would have been cruel and untrue. Grief doesn't make a person foolish. Deceit doesn't turn its victims into accomplices.

"Find the people who lied to you," I said. "Then listen to the people who protected her."

"And what about you?"

"I intend to heal. My sister intends to yell at me for not coming home. And I intend to find another job."

He was quiet.

"You've already decided?"

"I can't work in a house where your fiancée nearly broke my arm."

"Former fiancée," he said. "And you won't have to. You're entitled to your wages, medical expenses, and a chance to tell the police what happened without worrying about retaliation. My attorneys will not contact you unless you ask."

"Good."

"Ruby?"

"Yes?"

"Thank you for telling me the truth, even when you were afraid."

I closed my eyes. "Find Mia."

By eight, Sophie and Dad were with me in a secure hospital room. Dad walked with a cane since the stroke, and he hated that his speech still stumbled when he grew emotional. He stood at my bedside and touched the edge of the clean bandage.

"You should've called," he said slowly.

"I did call."

"Before... it got this bad."

My throat tightened. "I was trying not to worry you."

"That's my job," he said, and wrapped his good arm around me.

Sophie hugged me from the other side, careful of my shoulder. "You're the worst liar in Chicago."

"I've been told."

She pulled away, eyes shining. "We're getting through this together, okay? No more secrets because somebody has money."

I nodded.

Later that morning Detective Ortiz returned with a photograph of June Mercer. She was a soft-faced woman in her early sixties, with short brown hair and reading glasses hanging from a chain.

"We found her car abandoned at a commuter train station," Ortiz said. "No signs of a struggle. But she hasn't used her credit card in ten days."

"Could she be hiding?"

"Possibly. Her last voicemail to the Learning Center said she was worried about a man who introduced himself as an attorney. We believe that was Adrian Bell."

I remembered Serena holding my injured shoulder while she threatened Dad's home. Fear for family was a language she spoke fluently.

"She might have hidden somewhere for Mia's sake," I said.

"That's our working theory."

"What about Enzo's former wife? The girl's mother?"

Ortiz studied me. "You know her name?"

"No. Nobody at the mansion talked about her."

"Claire Rowan Caruso. She divorced him after telling him their daughter died. She disappeared from public life. Her last confirmed address was in Wisconsin three years ago."

"Is she alive?"

"We haven't confirmed her current whereabouts."

The thought made me cold. Six years was a long time to keep a lie alive. It would take more than one person.

At noon, Enzo went to a police interview instead of an emergency meeting of his business partners. Ortiz told me that detail without praise; she was simply explaining why investigators now had access to Serena's rental accounts. Still, I pictured a man who'd spent his life being obeyed forced to sit in a small room and answer questions like anyone else.

I hoped it changed him.

The afternoon sunlight lay in pale rectangles across my hospital blanket when Marco phoned again.

"We've located June Mercer," he said.

"Where?"

"She's at a church shelter under a different name. She'll talk only if someone promises Mia won't be returned to Serena."

"Can she tell you where Mia is?"

"She's trying. She says Serena had a second property, one with a blue door, but nobody will give us an address."

I sat up slowly. "The drawing. A blue door in the middle of a field. It might not be the Learning Center at all."

"That's what we think."

"Is there a church or a farmhouse she visited? Somewhere that would have stood out to a little girl?"

"We're checking."

He hesitated.