Chapter 9 - Echoes in the Dark
We didn't return to the penthouse until late evening, the corporate board meeting having ended in a tense, bruised stalemate that bought Jonah exactly forty-eight hours. The high-rise was dead silent, save for the hum of the server banks two floors down. I was sitting at the marble desk compiling the updated medication schedule when my cell phone buzzed against the marble surface—a private number with a local area code that made my stomach drop like a stone.
I stared at the screen, letting it ring twice before swiping it away, my hand trembling slightly. It was a reflex I thought I'd left behind in the emergency room parking lot three months ago.
"Answer it," Jonah's voice cut through the quiet from the dim corner near the windows. He was nursing a fresh glass of whiskey, his wheelchair parked sideways so he could watch the tense line of my shoulders.
"It's nothing," I said too quickly, setting the phone face down.
"People don't look like they're about to throw up over 'nothing'," Jonah said, wheeling closer with a slow, deliberate roll. The wheels made a soft *whir* against the rug. He stopped a foot away from the desk, resting his tattooed hand beside his glass. "Who's calling? A creditor? A family member? Or the person who gave you that cut on your forehead?"
I touched the small, pale scar above my eyebrow instinctively, a defensive wall snapping into place. "That's none of your business, Jonah. My medical license and my references were verified before I walked through those doors."
"References can be bought, and licenses can be hidden," Jonah said quietly, his voice dangerously low, devoid of malice but heavy with an investigator's precision. "I don't hire ghosts, Quinn. And I don't keep people around who are running from something that might eventually blow up this entire floor."
"I'm not running," I whispered, the exhaustion of the past forty-eight hours finally breaking my professional armor. My voice cracked, a rare fracture that I hated myself for showing. "I'm just trying to stay alive long enough to pay off a life I didn't ask for."
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Jonah didn't push. He looked at me for a long, searching moment—really looked at me—seeing past the gray t-shirt and the clinical competence straight down to the raw panic I kept locked behind my ribs. Slowly, he reached out and slid his own whiskey glass across the smooth marble surface toward me, stopping it just short of my fingertips.
"Drink it," he commanded softly, his tone shifting from employer to something infinitely more dangerous and tender. "Then tell me what you're so afraid of. Because if we're going to share this cage, I need to know if the door is locked from the inside or the outside."
