Page 7 of You, Only You

My blood went cold.

Meridian Holdings. She'd found it. In less than twenty-four hours, she'd identified the thread that could unravel everything. Not just the Harrington case, but the entire architecture of what I'd built over seven years.

She smiled, not triumphant or cruel, just quietly satisfied. "I thought that might get your attention. Have a good day."

The door swung shut behind her.

I stood in the break room, holding a dry cup in still hands, my carefully constructed world shifting on its axis. The rational part of my brain was already running contingencies. Meridian was defensible. The documentation was solid. There were legitimate reasons for its existence.

But beneath the calculations, something else stirred. Not fear, exactly. Something I couldn't categorize, which was unusual, because I categorized everything. She'd looked at me and talked about wanting to see what was underneath, and some part of me, some deeply inconvenient part, had responded to that.

I didn't name the response. Naming things gave them power.

I put the clean mug away in the overhead cabinet and left the break room. She would dig into Meridian. She would find connections. She would ask questions I couldn't answer without revealing everything.

I had two choices:Stop her, or trust her.

I didn't trust anyone. That was the foundation of everything I'd built. Trust was how people got hurt. Trust was how monsters flourished. Trust was a weakness I couldn't afford.

But as I walked back to my office, Lindsey Ashford's words echoed in my head.The ugly truths are the ones that matter most. They're the ones people work hardest to keep hidden.

She wasn't wrong.

The question was whether I was willing to let her find mine, and what would happen if I did.

3.Lindsey

Ifound the pattern at 9:47 PM on a Tuesday, alone in a glass conference room, with cold coffee and a neck ache and the dawning realization that I was either about to blow this case wide open or make a spectacular fool of myself.

The past three days at Sterling & Steele had taught me several things. First, that the firm operated with the sleek, silent efficiency of a well-oiled machine: every file in its place, every protocol documented, every interaction calibrated to project competence and discretion. Second, the staff treated me like a mild rash: something to be managed with polite distance until I inevitably went away on my own. And third, that Will Steele was everywhere and nowhere, a presence I felt in the prickle at the back of my neck long before I ever saw him.

Our paths had crossed exactly four times since our meeting in the coffee room.

The first was in the elevator on my second morning. I'd stepped in, coffee in hand, and found him already there, phone pressed to his ear, mid-conversation. He'd glanced at me with just a flicker of his ice-blue eyes and continued talking in a low, clipped tone about depositions and discovery deadlines. I'd stood three feet away, staring at the ascending floor numberswith the intensity of someone decoding classified documents, and tried not to notice that his cologne existed.

I noticed.

When the doors opened on thirty, he'd ended his call and gestured for me to exit first.

"Ms. Ashford," he'd said. Nothing else. Just my name, delivered like a chess move.

"Thank you," I'd replied, and walked out without looking back.

Professional. Mature. The cologne was irrelevant. Completely irrelevant. I definitely did not spend the next three minutes trying to identify the specific notes.

The second encounter was more unsettling. I'd been leaving late on day two, arms full of copied files in a configuration that blocked approximately seventy percent of my forward vision, when I'd turned a corner and nearly crashed directly into his chest. His hand had shot out to steady me, gripping my elbow through my blazer sleeve. The touch was brief, two seconds, maybe three, but something went through my arm that I am going to describe as a nerve response because that is the clinical explanation.

We'd both frozen, standing far too close in the dim hallway.

"Watch your step," he'd said quietly, and released me like I'd burned him.

"The files," I'd said. "They were blocking my, um. Vision situation."

Vision situation. Those were the words I chose. With my entire vocabulary available to me.

Then I fled toward the elevator bank. My elbow was warm for an hour afterward, which I firmly attributed to fabric friction. A well-documented physical phenomenon.

The third encounter hadn't involved Will at all, but it had involved someone watching me.