Chapter 4 - The Woman Who Slept Behind Three LocksBy sunrise, Nessa had acquired 3 things she had never wanted.
A security detail.
A burner phone.
And a bedroom in Ezra Blackwood’s house.
She objected to all 3.
Ezra ignored 2 objections and negotiated the third.
“You can leave whenever you want.”
They stood inside the entrance hall of his Rosedale home.
Nessa folded her arms.
“Then I’m leaving.”
“After sunrise.”
“It is sunrise.”
“When we know nobody followed us.”
“You said whenever I want.”
“I lied.”
“That lasted 11 seconds.”
“Personal record.”
Nessa looked around.
The house was not what she expected.
No marble lions.
No gold railings.
No portraits of dead men holding shotguns.
There were books.
Hundreds of them.
Dark wooden floors.
A piano nobody appeared to use.
Photographs arranged along one wall.
Ezra at 8.
Ezra at 15.
Ezra beside an older man Nessa assumed was Gabriel.
A woman appeared in only 3 photographs.
Beautiful.
Dark-haired.
Always looking slightly away from the camera.
“Your mother?”
Ezra followed her gaze.
“Yes.”
“Where is she?”
“Dead.”
Nessa looked at him.
“I’m sorry.”
“It was 16 years ago.”
Time did not make certain facts smaller.
It only made people better at carrying them.
Nessa knew that.
Ezra handed her a key.
“Guest room upstairs. Third door.”
“What happens now?”
“I speak to my father.”
“I’m coming.”
“No.”
“You brought me here because you think the leak is inside your family.”
“I brought you here because someone tried to shoot you.”
“Both can be true.”
Ezra’s jaw shifted.
Nessa stepped closer.
“You hired me to notice things.”
“I didn’t hire you.”
“Fine. You entered into an aggressively vague criminal consulting arrangement.”
“That’s better.”
“I need to see your father.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re afraid of him.”
The room went silent.
Ezra’s face emptied.
Nessa had seen men react violently to less.
Ezra simply looked at her.
“You’re very comfortable making dangerous observations.”
“They’re usually the useful ones.”
“My father had 2 strokes.”
“That wasn’t my observation.”
His eyes narrowed.
“You change when people mention him.”
“How?”
“You become 17.”
That landed.
Nessa knew because Ezra stopped blinking.
She continued.
“You stand straighter. Your voice gets flatter. You stop asking questions and start issuing orders.”
“You learned all of that from 1 conversation?”
“Posture.”
He almost laughed.
Instead, he walked toward the kitchen.
“Coffee?”
“Is that agreement?”
“It’s coffee.”
“I’ll take it as agreement.”
Gabriel Blackwood lived 40 minutes north of Toronto in a property surrounded by enough land to make privacy feel like geography.
They arrived at 9:12.
The attack had left evidence.
A damaged gate.
Broken glass.
Two black SUVs with bullet marks along their sides.
Nessa counted security personnel.
Fourteen visible.
Probably more hidden.
Gabriel sat inside a glass conservatory overlooking bare autumn trees.
He was 67.
The strokes had damaged the left side of his body but not his eyes.
Those were sharp.
Gray.
Ezra’s eyes.
Nessa understood immediately where the coldness came from.
“Cellist.”
Gabriel’s speech was slow but clear.
“Nessa Caldwell.”
“I know.”
He looked at Ezra.
“She put you down?”
Ezra’s mouth tightened.
“Yes.”
Gabriel smiled.
“Good.”
Nessa liked him slightly more.
Then Gabriel said:
“Men who cannot be embarrassed become stupid.”
She liked him considerably more.
Ezra remained standing.
“Who knew I was coming here last night?”
Gabriel’s smile disappeared.
“Everyone who mattered.”
“That’s the problem.”
Gabriel looked at Nessa.
“Why is she here?”
“She found Vance.”
“I heard.”
“She also found a second access pattern.”
Gabriel’s expression changed.
“Where?”
“Your office.”
Gabriel was silent.
Then he looked toward the man standing beside the conservatory doors.
“Leave.”
The man left.
Gabriel waited until they were alone.
“There are 5 people with access.”
“Names.”
“You.”
“I wasn’t there.”
“Pavl.”
“He was at Iron Works.”
“Daniel Mercer.”
“Credentials were copied.”
“My nurse, Helen.”
“And?”
Gabriel looked at Ezra.
“Your uncle.”
Nessa felt the shift.
Ezra did not visibly react.
“Sebastian?”
Gabriel nodded.
Nessa had seen the name.
Sebastian Blackwood.
Gabriel’s younger brother.
Vice chairman of Blackwood Holdings.
Publicly respectable.
Privately invisible.
“Where is he?”
Ezra asked.
“Montreal.”
Nessa and Ezra looked at each other.
Draos territory.
Gabriel saw it.
“You think my brother is Shepherd?”
“I think anyone can be Shepherd.”
Ezra’s voice held no emotion.
Gabriel leaned back.
“You always did.”
Something old moved between father and son.
Nessa recognized family damage when she saw it.
It had its own grammar.
“You taught me.”
Ezra said it quietly.
Gabriel looked toward the windows.
“That isn’t something a father should be proud of.”
Ezra did not answer.
For the next 2 hours, Nessa examined access logs.
Sebastian’s credentials appeared nowhere.
That bothered her.
People who committed crimes made mistakes.
People who arranged crimes through others often appeared perfectly clean.
Too clean was its own evidence.
At 12:37, Nessa found something.
A printer log.
“Ezra.”
He came behind her.
“November 8.”
“What?”
“Your father’s office printed 26 pages at 3:14 a.m.”
Gabriel frowned.
“Nobody was here.”
Nessa opened the security records.
The camera system had been offline for maintenance from 2:50 until 4:00.
“Scheduled?”
Ezra asked.
Gabriel shook his head.
Nessa checked the maintenance authorization.
Signed electronically.
Daniel Mercer.
Except Mercer had been in Vancouver that week.
She checked the network origin.
A device registered to Blackwood Holdings.
Then the MAC address.
Then the installation records.
The device belonged to a tablet issued 6 years earlier.
Assigned to—
“Sebastian.”
Ezra said the name before Nessa could.
Gabriel closed his eyes.
For a long time, nobody spoke.
Then Gabriel said:
“Find him.”
Ezra stood.
Nessa remained seated.
“Not yet.”
Both men looked at her.
“If Sebastian is Shepherd, he has spent months making you look everywhere except at him.”
She pointed at the screen.
“He wants you to find Vance.”
Ezra frowned.
“Why?”
“Because Vance is disposable.”
She thought through it.
“Vance gets exposed. You tighten security. You think you stopped the leak.”
Gabriel’s expression darkened.
“While Sebastian remains.”
“Exactly.”
Ezra looked toward the grounds.
“Then we make him believe it worked.”
Nessa nodded.
That afternoon, they created a lie.
Blackwood Holdings would submit a revised harbor proposal on Friday.
The document contained false numbers.
Only 4 people would receive it.
Ezra.
Gabriel.
Pavl.
Sebastian.
Daniel Mercer would receive a separate version with different numbers.
If Draos moved against one set, they would know the source.
It was simple.
Dangerously simple.
At 6:30, Ezra drove Nessa back toward Toronto.
Halfway there, she said:
“You haven’t slept.”
“Neither have you.”
“I’m not driving.”
“That sounds discriminatory.”
“You almost hit a curb 10 minutes ago.”
“I avoided a cyclist.”
“There was no cyclist.”
Ezra looked at her.
“Are you always this pleasant?”
“When exhausted.”
“So this is pleasant?”
“You should see hostile.”
“I did.”
He touched his ribs.
Nessa smiled despite herself.
The smile surprised both of them.
Ezra looked away.
That was worse.
Something had changed.
Not dramatically.
There was no music.
No cinematic revelation.
Only 2 tired people sitting inside a car after surviving gunfire and discovering that betrayal might share Ezra’s last name.
Sometimes intimacy began much less romantically than people admitted.
At the house, Nessa showered.
She slept for 3 hours.
When she woke, darkness had returned.
She found Ezra in the kitchen.
He was cooking.
That was unexpected enough that she stopped in the doorway.
“You cook?”
“Occasionally.”
“What is it?”
“Pasta.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“It’s the answer you’re getting.”
She sat at the island.
His sleeves were rolled to his elbows.
Bruising spread along his right side.
Dark purple.
Nessa stared.
“You should have that checked.”
“It has been.”
“When?”
“While you were asleep.”
“You brought a doctor here?”
“Yes.”
“Of course you did.”
He placed a bowl in front of her.
Nessa ate.
It was annoyingly good.
Ezra leaned opposite her.
“You play when you’re nervous.”
She looked up.
“What?”
“Your fingers.”
She had been tapping the countertop.
Cello fingering.
She stopped.
“You observe too.”
“I’m learning.”
“That sounds dangerous.”
“For you?”
“For everyone.”
The phone rang.
Ezra answered.
He listened.
Then his face changed.
Nessa set down her fork.
“What?”
“Draos just amended their harbor financing package.”
“Which numbers?”
Ezra looked at her.
“The false numbers we sent Sebastian.”
Silence filled the kitchen.
Nessa had expected satisfaction.
Instead, she felt sick.
Because proving betrayal was different from suspecting it.
Ezra walked toward the window.
His shoulders became rigid.
Seventeen again.
Nessa watched him.
“What was he to you?”
Ezra did not answer immediately.
Then:
“My father was rarely home.”
He looked into the darkness.
“Sebastian taught me to drive.”
Nessa said nothing.
“Taught me to shoot.”
A pause.
“He took me to my first hockey game.”
There it was.
Not an uncle.
A second father.
Ezra’s hand tightened around the phone.
“When my mother died, he was the person who told me I was allowed to cry.”
Nessa’s chest tightened.
Ezra laughed once.
There was nothing amused in it.
“I haven’t thought about that in years.”
“You don’t have to do anything tonight.”
He looked at her.
“People always say that when they mean the opposite.”
“I mean it.”
“Draos moves tomorrow.”
“Then tomorrow is soon enough.”
His eyes stayed on hers.
Something fragile existed in the silence.
Not weakness.
Permission.
Nessa stood.
She approached him.
Then she did something she had not planned.
She touched his wrist.
Nothing more.
Ezra looked down at her hand.
He could have interpreted it as pity.
He did not.
“I don’t know how to do this.”
His voice was almost inaudible.
“Do what?”
“Need someone.”
Nessa swallowed.
“Neither do I.”
They stood there for several seconds.
Then the security alarm screamed.
Every light in the house went red.
Ezra moved instantly.
He pulled Nessa behind him.
A voice came through his earpiece.
“North perimeter breach.”
Another voice:
“Two vehicles.”
Then:
“Fire.”
Orange light exploded beyond the kitchen windows.
A car burned near the gate.
Ezra reached for the weapon hidden beneath the counter.
Nessa stared toward the darkness.
And understood.
Sebastian knew.
The trap had worked.
May you like
But Shepherd had realized there was a trap.
And now he was coming home.
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