She Was Running From Her Dangerous Police Husband — Then a Mafia Boss’s Giant Dog Saved Her Silent Daughter and Exposed a Deadly Secret

Chapter 2

The fire alarm tore the airport apart thirty seconds later.

Harper never saw who pulled it. One heartbeat the terminal was a held breath; the next, sirens split the high glass ceiling and red light strobbered across the crowd like a wound flashing open. Bodies shoved, suitcases toppled, someone screamed about a bomb, someone else screamed about nothing at all. In the chaos Tyrell’s professional instinct spun him around — a cop responding to an emergency, trained to save everyone but the people who belonged to him.

His grip on Harper’s arm loosened for exactly one second.

A woman with a sharp black bob appeared out of the crowd like a blade sliding from a sheath. She did not look at Harper. She seized her wrist, and she said four words in a voice that allowed no argument.

“Follow me. Now.”

Behind them, Tyrell was forcing back through the surge, his face a mask of cold fury that Harper had learned to fear more than any weapon. She scooped Emma up and ran. Any choice was better than standing still. That had been her whole theology for eight months.

The woman — Giana, she would learn later, the cousin, as if the word explained anything — moved through the crowd with the economy of someone who had been trained to move unseen. A staff-only door. A corridor of flickering fluorescent light. An emergency exit that opened onto a parking garage breathing exhaust and darkness. A black SUV waited with its engine purring and its rear door open like a mouth.

“Get in.”