Chapter 1 - One Inch

"GET ON YOUR KNEES! YOU'RE NOTHING BUT A HOUSEKEEPER!"

Vanessa Sterling's silver stiletto came at my face so fast that a woman behind me screamed.

I caught her ankle an inch from my nose.

Three hundred guests stopped talking. Champagne glasses hung in midair beneath the Hartwell Grand's crystal chandeliers.

"Let go of me!" Vanessa shrieked.

I lowered her foot to the marble. "Gladly. Now stay away from me."

My name is Lena Ortiz. I make nineteen dollars an hour cleaning rooms in a hotel where the smallest suite costs more than my monthly rent. Before that, I worked professional security for eight years. I knew the difference between a drunk guest and an ambush.

Vanessa turned straight toward the photographers. "She attacked me! Somebody call security!"

The shutters clicked before she'd finished speaking.

That was what bothered me. Their cameras had been aimed at my face before Vanessa even lifted her leg.

Across the ballroom, Iris Ward stood beside the dessert station. She was twenty-three, quick with a joke, and the only waitress who saved the kitchen's bruised fruit for the night crew instead of throwing it away. Tonight she looked sick.

She tapped her collarbone twice.

Our signal. I need help. We had made it up after a guest cornered her near the linen closets last winter.

I started toward her.

Calder Pike stepped into my path. The hotel's security chief was broad, smooth-shaven, and always seemed to know which cameras were recording.

"You're coming with me, Lena."

"Move."

"That's an order."

Over his shoulder, Iris vanished through the service door. Something yellow swung from Pike's jacket pocket: her employee badge.

"Where is she?" I asked.

He smiled. "You should worry about yourself."

The freight elevator opened behind him onto a dark passage.

BANG. BANG. BANG.

Three desperate blows came from the metal beyond the doors.

Pike reached for the control panel. "We can do this the easy way."

I heard a girl's voice, muffled but unmistakable.

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"Lena, don't let him take me downstairs!"

Then the elevator began to descend.