Riker stayed near the door, close enough to reach her but far enough not to crowd the medical staff.
“You can sit,” Lily told him.
“I am comfortable.”
“You’re terrifying the blood pressure machine.”
His mouth almost smiled.
He moved to the chair beside her.
Lily watched the paramedic wrap her ankle and realized her hands had finally stopped shaking.
She had survived Derek before.
What frightened her now was not him.
It was the possibility that someone had used her history with him to manufacture a public trap for her husband.
“How would Derek know you were coming?” she asked.
Riker’s eyes narrowed.
Lily had texted him fifteen minutes before the confrontation to say she was finishing the last of her Christmas shopping.
He had replied that he was nearby and would meet her at the mall’s east entrance.
Very few people knew his movements.
But Lily’s social schedule was easier to find.
A bookstore had posted that she would be signing stock that morning.
Fans had photographed her leaving.
Someone could have followed her.
Jonah entered the room holding a tablet.
“We found something.”
He placed it in Lily’s hands.
Parking-garage footage showed Derek and Vanessa arriving forty minutes before Lily.
They had not parked and gone shopping.
They had remained near an entrance facing the garage elevators until Lily appeared.
Then they followed her inside.
Another camera caught Derek making a call moments before approaching her.
Jonah had no access to the call records, but the timestamp was enough to interest the investigating officer.
Lily looked at Riker.
“This wasn’t random.”
“No.”
“Then banning him from your restaurants is the least interesting thing happening today.”
That earned a real smile from him, brief and darkly amused.
Evelyn arrived shortly afterward in a charcoal coat, carrying a leather folder.
She spoke to police, collected incident numbers, confirmed preservation requests with mall management, and then sat across from Lily.
“There is another problem,” she said.
Lily knew from her face that it was significant.
Evelyn opened the folder.
“Marcus Vale.”
The name from the edited video’s upload chain.
Lily remembered Derek mentioning him years earlier.
Marcus had been a friend of a friend, a public-relations fixer who boasted that truth mattered less than what people saw first.
Evelyn slid a printed company profile across the table.
“Vale Consulting has been working for the Harrow Development Group for six months.”
Riker’s expression changed.
Lily noticed immediately.
“Who are they?”
“A competitor,” he said.
Harrow Development had been trying to win a major waterfront redevelopment contract.
One of Riker’s legitimate construction companies was the leading bidder.
The contract was worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
More importantly, the city council vote was four days away.
A viral video portraying Riker as a criminal using armed men to terrorize a civilian in a shopping mall could poison the bid without ever proving a crime.
Lily looked from the company profile to the anonymous messages.
The plan suddenly made sense.
