terrifying than the gun.

He got her up by the elbow and moved her through the swinging service door just as the first distant sirens began to bleed into the street outside.

In the narrow hall beside the kitchen, chefs stood frozen with towels in their hands and pale faces turned toward the dining room.

Chloe could hear shattered glass being kicked aside, a customer vomiting in the bathroom, Leo hauling the gunman somewhere private.

Dominic stopped beside the dry-storage shelves and faced her.

‘Tell me exactly what you saw before you wrote the note.’

Chloe’s mouth was dry enough to stick.

But for six weeks she’d sat beside her mother’s hospital bed listening to monitors scream and nurses speak in calm voices over disaster.

Panic, she had learned there, wasted seconds.

So she forced herself to breathe once and answer cleanly.

‘He came in sixteen minutes after you.

Olive jacket.

Wet boots.

No reservation,’ she said.

‘Sarah looked confused at the host stand, like she hadn’t seated him.

Mr.

Callahan came over and sat him himself.’

Dominic’s eyes sharpened.

‘Go on.’

‘He never opened the menu.

He checked the mirrors first.

Then Leo.

Then you.’ She swallowed.

‘His chair was angled to your booth.

When he slid his hand under the napkin, I saw the suppressor.’

‘Anything else?’

Chloe thought hard.

Then it hit her.

‘He kept looking toward the service alley door,’ she said.

‘Not the front exit.

Like he already knew the fastest way out.’

Dominic nodded once.

‘Inside help.’

Mr.

Callahan shoved through the hall entrance before Chloe could answer.

His white shirt was untucked now.

Sweat darkened the collar.

He kept trying to look at Chloe without looking like he was looking at Chloe.

‘I had no idea who that man was,’ he said too quickly.

‘You know me, Dominic.

I run a restaurant, that’s all.

The hostess was slammed.

I was just helping the floor.’

Dominic didn’t even glance at him.

‘Leo,’ he said toward the doorway, as if the bodyguard had been standing there all along.

‘Get the driver’s footage.

And copy the DVR before anything disappears.’

Callahan went still.

That tiny pause told Chloe more than any confession could have.

Leo’s voice came back from somewhere deeper in the restaurant.

‘On it.’

Callahan tried to recover.

‘Footage of what? You’re acting insane.

There’s been a shooting in my dining room—’

Now Dominic looked at him.

‘In your dining room,’ he repeated.

‘At my back.

With a plan that included killing a waitress.

So yes, Patrick.

I would say we’re past normal service issues.’

Callahan blanched at the use of his first name.

The gunman groaned from the wine room.

Leo had zip-tied his wrists and dragged him onto the tile near the reserve racks.

Blood ran down one sleeve where Dominic had smashed his arm, but he was conscious, breathing hard, eyes full of hatred.

Dominic stepped into the doorway, Chloe behind him despite every instinct telling her to run.

The shooter saw her and smiled.

That smile chilled her more than the gun had.

‘Should’ve kept walking, sweetheart,’ he said.

Leo drove a hand into the back of his neck hard enough to bounce his face off the tile.

‘Try again,’ Leo said.

Dominic held up the laminated card.

‘Who wrote