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A gust of wind funneled down the glass and steel ravines of Midtown Manhattan and knifed through Hez’s suit coat. He shivered and stepped behind one of the massive columns outside Hornbrook’s building. Late March meant spring in southern Alabama, but winter still held sway in New York.

Where was Bruno? He was supposed to meet Hez ten minutes ago, and the meeting with Hornbrook started in five. Had Hornbrook’s minions somehow learned that Bruno was coming and intercepted him on his way from the airport? Hez wished they’d had more time to plan this out.

A cadaverously thin man of about thirty-five rolled up on a skateboard. He wore a black beanie and baggy jeans that flapped around his bony legs. An ancient Metallica T-shirt showed through his unzipped snowboarding jacket. Hez smiled with relief and stuck out his hand. “Bruno! It’s great to finally meet you in person.”

Bruno popped up his skateboard and grabbed it with his left hand while he gave Hez a perfunctory shake with his right. “Hey, Hez.”

He craned his neck and looked up at the tower in front of them. “So this is it, huh? Think there’s a chance things’ll get rough in there?”

Hez pressed his lips together and nodded. He and Bruno hadn’t had a chance to discuss the danger in detail. “Things could get very rough.”

Bruno considered that for a long moment, and Hez was afraid he might back out. But Bruno just shrugged. “Not my first rough situation. Besides, if they kill us, they may regret it.”

That wasn’t the most reassuring thing to hear, but at least Hez wasn’t going in alone. He took a deep breath and pushed back at the fear rising in his chest. “Let’s go. We don’t want to be late.”

They checked in at the security desk and then rode up in a gleaming brass-and-marble elevator they had to themselves. It had no buttons for different floors, just a slot for a key card. The building’s tenants apparently didn’t want any surprise visitors.

The doors opened, and they stepped into the lobby of Hornbrook Finance, LLC. Steel letters inlaid in expensive-looking walnut paneling announced the firm’s name, and black leather furniture surrounded a glass table in a small waiting area. The receptionist, a muscular man with sharp brown eyes, waved them over. Two more very fit men emerged from a door behind the reception desk. They gave Hez and Bruno a quick but thorough search and confiscated Bruno’s skateboard. Then one of the men led Hez and Bruno through the door, with the other Hornbrook minion bringing up the rear. Hez hadn’t seen a gun, but he had no doubt all three men were armed.

They walked down a short, windowless hall to a conference room with a large table and south- and east-facing floor-to-ceiling windows. Allen Boswell sat on the table’s far side next to a silver-haired sixtyish man. James Hornbrook. Neither of them rose when Hez and Bruno entered. “It’s 10:02,”

Hornbrook said without preamble. “You have thirteen minutes left.”

The door clicked shut behind Hez as he and Bruno sat opposite Hornbrook. Their chairs were squarely in the glare from the sunlight pouring in through the windows. It was an old power move designed to distract opponents and make them uncomfortable. Fortunately, Hez was prepared. He pulled out a pair of sunglasses and slid them on as he took his seat. “Are we being recorded?”

Boswell’s mouth quirked in irritation. “Why does it matter? New York is a one-party state. My client can record any conversations that take place in here.”

Hez furrowed his brows. “Hmm. He can legally record any conversation that he’s a part of, which isn’t quite the same thing.”

Hornbrook gave a contemptuous little chuckle. “Thank you for the free legal advice. Now make your offer. You’ve got ten minutes left.”

“I’m getting to that, but the recorded conversation thing has bugged me ever since Jess Legare warned me about it. In fact, that was one of the last things she said before she was murdered. And it really bugged me once I realized you were recording conversations you weren’t part of.”

Hornbrook’s icy-blue eyes flashed. “What are you talking about?”

Hez fought to keep his tone calm and confident. “Your MO appears to be to invite people to your office for a negotiation, present an offer, and then leave while the other side discusses it. Then you eavesdrop on their conversation and use it against them. You sometimes even blackmail people with the recordings. Those are felonies under New York law.”

“That’s a lie.”

Hornbrook’s voice was flat and cold. “Who told you that?”

Bruno raised his hand. “Your video surveillance system has garbage security, BTW.”

Boswell gave a predatory smile. “Hacking is a federal felony, and I happen to be friends with the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. And yes, your confession was just recorded.”

Bruno rolled his eyes. “Don’t bother calling him. He’ll just refer it to the FBI, and the Bureau will send it to their Cyber Division. My name will get flagged there, and your complaint will get routed to Special Agent Martin Lee. So just call Martin and say you want to make a complaint about Bruno Rubinelli. I’ve got his direct dial in my phone if you need it.”

Boswell’s grin faltered. His mouth opened and closed.

“Oh, one other thing,”

Bruno said. “Martin will probably have some questions about exactly what I was hacking ’n’ why, so you know, you should be ready to talk about that.”

Hornbrook brought his right palm down on the table. “Enough of these games!”

His gaze flickered to a spot behind Hez. A soft swish of fabric indicated someone moving behind him. “You have one minute left to make your offer.”

Hez took a deep breath and made his final move. “There’s one more thing you should know. We ran facial-recognition software over the entire video database and managed to identify nearly everyone you illegally recorded. We have emails or cell numbers for most of them, and we have a mass notice set to go out. If we don’t hit the kill switch by eleven o’clock, they’ll all get links to a database containing the illegal recordings.”

That was a bluff. The mass notice wouldn’t be ready to go out for at least another three weeks—which was why Hez had hoped to wait a month before putting his plan into action. If Hornbrook killed them now, he could stop it. But there was no way for him to know that—or so Hez hoped.

Bruno leaned forward. “Fun fact: a bunch of the guys you cheated are connected to organized crime.”

Hornbrook sat perfectly still for a long moment. A single bead of sweat appeared at his perfect hairline. “What do you want?”

Hez realized he’d been holding his breath. He relaxed just a little and finally made his offer. “Your company will forgive TGU’s entire debt and make a twenty-million-dollar donation. You will repay everyone you cheated, erase your video library, and stop surreptitiously recording people.”

Boswell cleared his throat. “And in return you’ll destroy the database of video you illegally hacked and stole from my client?”

Hez shook his head. “Nope. We’ll hit the kill switch on the mass notice and promise not to tell anyone about your client’s spying.”

“But if anything ever happens to either of us, the notice automatically goes out,”

Bruno added. “Just thought you should know that.”

“We’ll need to discuss this.”

Hornbrook looked past Hez again. “Take these guys out to the lobby.”

Hez permitted himself a small smile as he and Bruno stood. “I’m more generous with my time than you are. I’ll give you twenty minutes.”

The trapped, hopeless look in Hornbrook’s eyes told Hez everything he needed to know about how the rest of the negotiations would go.

* * *

Savannah’s pulse kicked at the sight of Hez standing on the curb at the Mobile airport. His jubilant grin told her more than his quick call on the way to LaGuardia. He opened the back door and threw his backpack onto the floor, then climbed into the front passenger seat beside her.

He leaned over for a lingering kiss, tasting of triumph and Skittles, and her head spun with joy as she clung to him. She kissed him back until a horn blared behind them and someone yelled out a rude comment. Her cheeks heated, and she pulled away. “I still can’t believe you saved TGU and forced him to give such a huge donation. My head is still spinning.”

“And here I thought the color in your cheeks was because you loved me so much.”

Smiling, she pulled away from the curb as he was buckling his seat belt. “You guessed right.”

She ran her window down to let in the spring air. “It’s a gorgeous day. Let’s take 98 down along the water. I want you all to myself to savor the victory.”

His long legs stretched out under the dash. “Sounds good to me. I’m beat. The last twenty-four hours have been a blur, and I don’t think I slept at all. But even though I’m tired, I don’t think I could sleep if I tried. It all went perfectly.”

She listened to him recount the confrontation and Hornbrook’s reaction. “I’ll bet you were sweating bullets that it wouldn’t work.”

“Bruno’s comment about the FBI really rattled them. Everything changed in an instant. They realized we had an ace or two up our sleeves, and they suddenly didn’t want to gamble anymore. It was priceless.”

Hez yawned and leaned back against the headrest.

The road spooled out in front of them, and the tires hummed along the pavement. The afternoon sun slanted through the window and warmed Savannah’s arm. She went quiet and hoped he might catch a few winks of sleep. There was so much to do now. News of this would hit social media immediately, and there would be reporters, professors, and students to deal with. She didn’t dare think about what the school would do with that sudden influx of money. It was almost too much to hope for.

On the south side of Point Clear, she slowed to catch a glimpse of her favorite house along this stretch of road. About the same time she spotted the round rose window, she saw the Open House sign in the yard and gasped.

Hez’s eyes flew open. “What’s wrong?”

“Look! My favorite house is for sale!”

They’d driven by it plenty of times in the past, but he’d never been inside. The owner, Edward Mossberg, was an architecture professor, and he’d been a friend of her grandfather’s. Grandpa Andre had brought her to visit several times when she was a child. “Do we even want to look at it? It’s probably way over our budget.”

“I’d love to see it.”

“I’m half afraid to. It was a magical place when I was a kid, and I’d hate to see all its foibles now. I might see it through a different lens.”

But she turned into the lane anyway and parked in a space at the end of the driveway. From here it was just as charming as she remembered. She pointed out the folly perched on the hillside overlooking Mobile Bay. The miniature medieval watchtower had always felt so real to her, and it was still in pristine condition.

She turned off the car and opened her door. The green carpet of grass was soft underfoot. Bees hummed in the flower beds along the walk to the door, and hummingbirds fluttered around the red feeders. “I think there are several acres here. The yard seemed to go on forever when I was a kid. The owner tinkered with this place for fifty years, and every time we came, he’d added something new. I wonder if Mossberg Cove is still here.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a sea cave, and Professor Mossberg pretended it was a pirate hideout. His grandkids loved it, and so did I.”

“It sounds idyllic.”

Hez squinted in the sun as he stared toward the house. “It’s really different, though.”

Different wasn’t a strong enough word. Unique, mesmerizing, and magical would be more apt descriptions but still not the right words to describe how the home made her feel. “Let’s go inside.”

A woman wearing a slim tan skirt and an eager smile greeted them inside the front door and handed them a listing paper. “Have a look around and let me know if you have any questions.”

Savannah nodded and stood enchanted by the play of sunlight through the prism window onto the inlaid floor, made from wood from myriad different countries. She remembered watching the Mossberg kittens chase beams of light around the room. “I think there are prisms in most of the windows.”

“There are prisms in every window,”

the Realtor said. “You seem familiar with the house.”

“I came often when I was a child,”

Savannah said. She thanked the Realtor, then led Hez through the living room and up a spiral staircase to a tiny observatory perched on top of the house. “No window is the same. There’s the one with the stained-glass rose and another with a hummingbird, and then there are all those prisms. They make rainbows where you least expect them, and they never look the same in the summer as they do in the winter.”

Hez stared up at the roof in the observatory. “Is that thing retractable?”

She nodded. “I was here once during an eclipse, and Professor Mossberg opened it. I wanted Grandpa to buy the house when I was ten, and he tried, but Professor Mossberg refused to sell it. Can you imagine Simon exploring this house? He would love it so much.”

And it might help heal him. Hez would do about anything for her, but she didn’t want to ask him to bankrupt them over a house.

She’d been afraid to look at the price, but she had to know. Her gaze dropped to the listing paper, and she blinked. “Hez, it’s not nearly as expensive as I thought. Look.”

He took the paper and read methodically through the listing. “We might be their only prospects. It probably costs the earth to keep up. If we broke a window, it’s hard to say how much it would cost to repair. That retractable roof on the observatory probably leaks, and I have no idea how hard it would be to maintain.”

She stepped closer to slip her arms around his waist. “I know it’s not practical, but I’m not feeling particularly practical right now. Maybe it’s crazy, but I want this house, Hez. What do you think?”

He pulled her closer. “I think you’re much more beautiful than the house and even more irresistible.”

He tipped her chin up and kissed her.

The breath left her lungs and all thoughts of the house flew from her head. Hez centered her, and where they lived didn’t matter. His fingers trailed through her hair, and a rainbow of light touched his face when he drew back.

“Can’t you just picture it, Hez?”

she whispered. “Us slow dancing through rainbows on that gorgeous inlaid floor, having a picnic in the little tower, swimming in the cove, growing old together here.”

He smiled and wrapped a lock of her hair around his finger. “I can see us living here with Simon and our kids forever. Even all that upkeep might not be bad. I need something to keep me out of the office on weekends. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but let’s make an offer. I’ll bet we can get a good deal.”

His hand trailed down to her cheek. “I’d give you the moon if I could.”

A starburst of joy jolted through her chest. This home would be their fresh start, and she imagined their children running through the grass with Simon. Their laughter was a faint whisper on the wind, but it was coming.