Fourteen stories up. The wind was so bad she could taste metal in her teeth.
Rosaline was flat on her stomach against the scaffold like some kind of lizard and honestly. She felt like one too. One hand death-gripping the railing, the other holding a laser measuring tool she absolutely could not drop because the thing cost eight hundred dollars and she made two-forty a day.
This wasn't even her job.
The contractor, Mike, or Mark, or whatever his name was called in sick. Third time this month. The man was probably face-down in some Wicker Park bar right now. Everybody on site knew it. Nobody said anything because nobody ever says anything on construction sites unless a beam falls on somebody.
She could've reported him. Could've walked right into the site manager's trailer and been like, hey, your guy's a drunk and also terrible at his job.
But then. Questions.
And questions are where Rosaline's life falls apart.
Somebody asks your full name. Somebody types it into Google on their lunch break. Somebody sees the headlines. And then you're packing your stuff into a trash bag at 6 AM before first shift because you can't face any of them.
She'd done that twice already. Dallas. Then Memphis. She was tired.
So yeah. Here she was. Fourteen floors up, wearing a hard hat with somebody else's sweat stains, a vest that said *Rose* and nothing else.
She aimed the laser at the joint where the beam meets the column and her stomach dropped. Not from the height.
The numbers were wrong.
Not just today. This guy had been measuring off the wrong reference point for three pours. Three. If nobody caught it and the concrete kept going up based on his garbage numbers, the east face load distribution would be off by close to four percent.
Four percent sounds like nothing right? Like who cares.
Rosaline cared. Four percent is how cracks start. Four percent is how buildings that should last a hundred years start showing stress fractures in five. She knew this. She knew it better than almost anyone alive and she knew it for the worst possible reason and she was NOT going to think about that right now.
She fixed the measurement. Wrote it in her field journal. The pen skipped three times. Cheap pen. Everything in her life was cheap now.
She didn't sign her real name. She never signed her real name.
The wind changed direction and she looked down. Heights didn't bother her. She actually kind of liked them. Fourteen stories of empty air is honest. You know where you stand. It's the ground where people lie to you. It's conference rooms and courtrooms and newsrooms and all the other rooms where people smile and then destroy your entire life.
But she didn't look down because of her height.
She looked because her neck was doing that thing again. That prickle. Like someone pressing a cold thumb right at the base of her skull. Three days now.
Black sedan. Parked across the street. Same exact spot.
Windows were so dark you couldn't see in. Engine off but she'd been watching and the driver-side mirror moved twice in the last hour. Twice. She counted. She always counted now. She counted exits and mirrors and strange cars because that's the kind of person she became. The kind who's always looking over her shoulder.
Three days with the same car and the same spot. She didn't like it. Her gut didn't like it. Her gut was basically screaming.
She clipped the tool to her belt and climbed down. Boots on metal rungs going clang clang clang all the way down. By the time she reached the ground her palms were sweaty and gross inside her gloves, and she knew it wasn't from the climb because she'd done this climb fifty times and her palms never sweat from it.
Shift ended at four-thirty. She signed the timesheet. Rose Williams. Took her pay in a brown envelope because cash meant no bank account meant no paper trail meant nobody found her. The envelope was light. Two forty. She folded it into her jacket pocket next to her phone and a crumpled receipt from the dollar store.
Two hundred forty dollars. Ten hours.
In her old life that was fifteen thousand a week. Easy. Sometimes more.
She shoved that thought down hard. Sat on it. Put a brick on top. The old life was dead. She killed it herself and if she started mourning it now she'd crack and she couldn't afford to crack because David needed her.
Her phone buzzed.
She already knew.
Chicago Memorial Hospital — Billing Department.
They called every day now. Every single day is like clockwork. David's meds alone were four thousand a month and Dr. Kessler kept bringing up this experimental treatment, she'd looked at the price once and just... laughed. Right there in the hospital hallway. Not a real laugh. The ugly kind. The kind where your body short-circuits because crying would mean admitting how screwed you actually are.
David thought she was fine. David thought she had some consulting gig overseas. He'd ask about it on FaceTime and she'd make stuff up—oh yeah, the project's going great, the client's difficult but you know how it is—and he'd nod and smile and he looked so thin now, so tired, and she'd hang up and sit in her car and just. Sit.
She let the phone ring out.
She walked toward the bus stop. Head down, collar up.
Halfway there.
Car door.
Not a slam, a click. Quiet. Careful. The kind of sound someone makes when they're trying not to scare you and that in itself is scary because why would a normal person be thinking about that?
Her hand went into her pocket. Fingers around her key. The pointy end sticking out between her knuckles the way Megan taught her back in college. "Keys between fingers, Ros. Always." Megan was five-foot-two and paranoid about everything and it turns out she was right to be.
She walked faster.
"Excuse me."
Behind her. Ten feet. Maybe less. Voice was deep but he wasn't yelling or anything. Just... talking. Like he expected her to stop just because he opened his mouth.
She didn't turn around.
"Not interested."
Flat. Dead. She'd practiced that tone in bathroom mirrors across three states.
"I think you will be." She stopped.
Not because of what he said. Because of how he said it. Like he knew something. Like he was holding something she needed and he knew she knew and he was just... waiting.
She hated that feeling.
She turned around.
And the guy standing there on the cracked sidewalk did not look like a stalker. He looked like money. The kind of money that has a smell. Tall. Dark hair, short, expensive cut. Jaw that was almost annoying—like come on dude, really? Charcoal coat. Shoes that were definitely Italian and had definitely never stepped on a sidewalk this busted before today.
He looked like the kind of man who has someone else carry his umbrella.
But his face. His eyes specifically. They didn't match the rest of him. Rich guys have this look cold, bored, like they're calculating what you're worth before you finish saying hello. This guy didn't have that.
He looked exhausted.
Not regularly tired. Deeply tired. Hasn't-slept-in-weeks tired. And he was looking at her like OK this is gonna sound weird but like she was something he lost a long time ago and just found on the side of the road. This mix of relief and disbelief. Like he wanted to reach out and touch her shoulder just to make sure she was solid.
It freaked her out.
"My name is Christopher Thorne."
He said it and waited.
And her brain went oh no. Oh no no no.
Thorne Development. Everyone in structural engineering knew that name. The Steel King. Half the new Chicago skyline was his. She used to read about his projects in trade journals back when she still had a desk to read them at. Back when she was somebody.
Her throat went dry. Tongue like sandpaper.
"Wrong person." She was already turning. "I don't know what you want but it's not me."
"I don't think so."
Quiet. Almost soft. Which was worse than if he'd yelled honestly because the soft ones always know exactly what they're doing.
Then he said it.
"I have a contract for you, Rosaline Vance.