Chapter 3: What Luke Did While I Wasn't Looking
I called Luke into my study that evening.
He came in relaxed.
That was the first thing I noticed.
Two years of working for me had taught every man in this building to read the temperature of a room before they crossed the threshold.
Luke walked in like a man who had already decided he was safe.
"Close the door."
He did.
Then he sat down across from me without being invited.
"You want to tell me something," I said.
"I want to ask you something." He leaned forward, elbows on his knees.
"The cleaning girl.
Emma.
How long has that been going on?"
"Nothing is going on."
"Danny.
I saw her walk out of your bedroom at six in the morning."
"She fell asleep.
I covered her with a blanket and let her sleep.
That's the full story."
Luke was quiet for a moment.
His jaw moved slightly, like he was chewing on something he hadn't decided to swallow yet.
"She's a maid," he said finally.
"I'm aware."
"She takes two buses to get here.
She's got debt.
She's got a sick mother.
She's got nothing." He paused.
"That's exactly the kind of person who looks for an angle."
I looked at him.
"Are you telling me she's dangerous, or are you telling me you already did something about it?"
The silence lasted one second too long.
"Luke."
"I ran a background check.
Standard."
"When?"
"This morning."
"Before or after you came to me?"
He didn't answer.
That was its own answer.
I rolled my chair back from the desk.
"What else?"
"I talked to the head housekeeper.
Told her to document any time Emma was seen in areas she wasn't assigned to.
For your protection."
"For my protection." I repeated it slowly.
"You started building a file on a twenty-six-year-old cleaning woman because she fell asleep on my bed."
"Because she's getting close to you.
And people who get close to you get used as leverage.
You know that better than anyone."
He wasn't wrong about the world.
He had never been wrong about the world.
That was why I'd kept him beside me for eleven years, through three turf disputes, two federal investigations, and the worst eighteen months of my life after the shooting.
But his hands were too steady.
His voice was too even.
A man doing something purely protective looks nervous when he's caught.
Luke looked like a man who had rehearsed this conversation.
"Pull the file," I said.
"Whatever you started building.
Pull it."
"Danny—"
"And tell the housekeeper to stop."
Luke stood slowly.
"You're making a mistake."
"I make my own mistakes."
He walked to the door.
Stopped with his hand on the frame.
"She asked the housekeeper questions on her second night," he said.
"About the estate.
About the layout.
About your schedule."
He left before I could respond.
I sat there in the quiet of my study for a long time after that.
The lamp on my desk threw a circle of yellow light across the surface.
Outside, Chicago hummed its low, indifferent hum.
Emma had asked about my schedule.
That meant nothing.
New staff always asked about schedules.
It was practical.
It was the kind of thing an exhausted woman working a night shift would need to know.
I told myself that.
I almost believed it.
Then I opened my desk drawer and found the envelope that had been slipped beneath the blotter sometime that day.
No name on the outside.
One photograph inside.
Emma.
Younger.
May you like
Standing outside a building I recognized immediately.
The building where I'd been sh0t.
