Chapter 2 - THE WRONG TARGET
“Hands where I can see them,” Grant ordered.
The tattooed guard froze with one hand beneath his coat. Ethan stepped in front of Noah. Elena grabbed the boy and pulled him behind an overturned banquet table.
“Don’t look,” she told him.
“I already saw him push it.”
“I know. Stay with me.”
The guard withdrew his hand. He held a phone.
Its screen was lit with a message: DID HE COME TO THE BOY?
Grant took the phone before Ethan could read the sender’s name. He turned the guard around and pinned his wrists behind his back.
“What’s your name?” Ethan asked.
“Cole.”
“You work for me?”
Cole said nothing.
Grant searched him and found a visitor badge clipped inside his coat. The name on it was false; Elena knew because the photograph showed a different man. Cole saw her notice. His expression hardened.
Ethan called for the police. As he spoke, Elena studied the shattered pyramid. Its support had not merely slipped. One metal brace lay several feet from the stand, bent at the hinge.
Somebody had pulled it loose.
“Mr. Vale.” She held up the brace.
Grant glanced over. “Staff assembled it this afternoon. They’ll need to answer for that.”
“He pushed the table,” Noah said.
Cole shook his head. “The kid’s confused.”
“No.” Noah’s voice rose. “You used both hands.”
Ethan knelt in front of him. “Where were you when you saw it?”
“By the strawberries.”
“Did anyone tell you to go there?”
Noah looked toward the far end of the ballroom. “Uncle Julian did. He said there was a surprise for me.”
Ethan’s brother stood among the guests, one hand around a drink he had forgotten to lift. Julian wore the easy smile he brought to every family photograph, but it vanished when Ethan looked at him.
“I told him about the chocolate fountain,” Julian said. “That’s all.”
Ethan stood. “Then why did Cole ask whether I came to the boy?”
“I’ve never seen that man before.”
Cole laughed once, sharply. “That makes two of us.”
The ballroom doors opened for the arriving officers. In the confusion, Grant slipped Cole’s phone into his own pocket.
Elena saw it. So did Cole.
For the first time since the pyramid fell, the guard looked frightened.
“Check the north balcony,” he told Ethan. “Before anybody goes up there.”
Grant struck him hard enough to silence him.
Ethan turned to his head of security. “What’s on the north balcony?”
May you like
Grant’s hand closed around the phone in his pocket.
“Nothing,” he said.
