Chapter 1 - The Heel That Never Landed
Vanessa Sterling's heel stopped an inch from my face.
Three hundred people saw her kick. Three hundred people saw me catch her ankle before the silver stiletto could hit my jaw. And for one perfect, awful second, the richest woman in the ballroom was balanced on one leg while the housekeeper she had spent weeks tormenting held the other.
"Let go of me!" she hissed.
I could feel the tremor in her calf. I could also see the cameras. Two photographers had turned toward us before she kicked, as if they'd been waiting.
"Please don't make me take this any further," I said.
She tried to wrench her leg free. I lowered her foot slowly until her heel touched the marble, then opened my hand. The room exhaled. Somewhere behind us, a glass shattered.
Vanessa brushed her emerald dress flat and smiled for the photographers. "She attacked me," she announced. "I hope somebody got that."
My name is Naomi Calder. I was thirty-four, wearing a charcoal hotel uniform, and making nineteen dollars an hour. For eight years before that, I'd worked in protective security, where reading a room wrong could put a person in the ground. I hadn't missed the photographers turning early.
"Naomi," the hotel manager murmured beside me, "go to the service corridor. Now."
Vanessa's fiance, Graham Vale, stood near the stage, unable to meet my eyes.
I started toward the corridor. Then I saw June Mercado, our nineteen-year-old evening attendant, at the far wall. She had promised to meet me after the champagne toast. Instead, she was staring toward the security doors, terrified.
June lifted two fingers. Our signal for trouble.
May you like
A man in a dark suit stepped between us. Brennan Pike, head of event security, walked past with June's yellow employee lanyard hanging from his pocket.
June was suddenly nowhere to be seen.
