I almost started crying again as soon as I entered the dimly lit room.Connor was lying in a hospital bed, dressed in a flimsy hospital gown and his eyes closed. He was hooked up to a ton of machines, and the gentle beep… beep of an EKG machine filled the silence. There was an IV with clear fluid taped to his arm.He looked peaceful. For that, I was grateful.I sat down next to him in a chair and held his hand with both of mine.“Connor, can you hear me?” I whispered.There was no sound but the beeping of the heart monitor.There were so many things I wanted to say to him… and now that he couldn’t hear me, couldn’t talk back… now was the only time I had the courage to say them.“I just wanted to tell you… I love you,” I said, wiping tears off my cheek. “You don’t have to say it. You don’t ever have to say it. I just want you to know that I love you. I’ve always loved you, and I never stopped loving you. I’m sorry I walked out two months ago… I just… please… please get well… please… ev

I didn’t have to turn around, though, to tell who it was. I could see his towering height and imposing outline reflected in the glass, his body silhouetted against the white glow of the hallway.“How is he?” Mr. Templeton asked in a weary voice.I looked over my shoulder at him. Truthfully, I was a little scared.Make that a lot scared.“He’s doing fine,” I said in a quiet voice, trying to mask my nervousness.“Is he in much pain?”How can he even ASK that? I wondered – and then realized that the only image he had of his son was of him yelling at Mrs. Templeton from the hospital doorway.I wasn’t sure I should tell him – I was pretty sure Connor would be angry with me – but hell, he was a father asking about his son.“He’s in a lot of pain, but they’ve got him on pain killers. He’s sleeping right now.”“Good,” Mr. Templeton said, and he sounded like he meant it. Like he was relieved.He slowly walked over to the glass and stood by me, though he never looked at me once. He just gazed o

The cops came by shortly thereafter to question Connor. I watched them suspiciously the entire time, wondering which one might be getting paid off by Miranda. Connor knew about as much as I did – which is to say, not much more than he’d been shot. He repeated the story several times, but nothing interesting surfaced until one of the cops asked, “Did you recognize the shooter?”“No. Do you have any information on him?”The cops looked at each other. “Not yet.”“‘Not yet’? It’s not like he got away – you’ve got his goddamn corpse.”“His prints aren’t in the FBI database, the federal prison system, or any of the state prison systems.”“Of course not, somebody either hacked the system and wiped his record, or he’s from out of the country,” Connor snapped. “Have you tried Interpol yet?”The cops looked at each other again. “Uh… that’s our next step. All that about somebody hacking the system or him being a foreigner – why did you say that?”“Because the person behind this isn’t going to t

I swept open the glass door of our office and cried, “Anh, you are not going to believe what that asshole did to…”I stopped in my tracks.Nobody was in.Even though the door was unlocked, nobody was inside.“Hello? Anybody here?” I called out as I checked all the smaller rooms.Nobody. Not Anh, not Susan, not Phuong – nobody.I was beginning to get scared.I whipped out my cell phone and dialed.Anh’s chirpy little voice said, “Hi, this is Anh Nguyen of Ross and Associates. Leave me a message and I’ll return it as soon as possible. Have a great day!”“Anh, this is Lily,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper as I paced up and down the main room. “Where are you? Nobody’s here, but the door to the office was open – call me as soon as you get this, okay?”I hung up and collapsed in an office chair, then swiveled around to stare out the floor-to-ceiling window at the trees.What the hell was going on?Was it Miranda?Was she targeting not only Connor, Johnny, and Sebastian, but my best

We moved in together almost immediately, and split our time between Connor’s Manhattan penthouse and an apartment we rented in Santa Monica. Ross and Associates became bicoastal, with Anh taking over West Coast operations and me handling the East. I spend almost all my time with her whenever I’m in Los Angeles, and we Skype at least an hour every day for business, so it’s not as though I don’t see her… but I miss her. That’s the one slightly melancholy note to everything else wonderful happening in my life.Connor asked if I wanted to give up the business, but it gives me something to do – something of my own. Something I can feel proud of building.The shooter was finally identified as one Johann Wurtzel, a former special forces operative in the German military. Apparently he went to the dark side after he got out; the investigative team turned up numerous mercenary jobs he had done. They also found a week-old $100,000 deposit in a Swiss bank account. It came from a small company he