Chapter 12 - The Song in the Dark
Distrust changed the shape of the garage.
Five minutes earlier, we had been standing together against whoever hunted us.
Now every glance felt like a question.
Adrien was the first to move.
"Phones on the hood."
Marco stared at him.
"Adrien."
"Everyone."
He placed his own phone down first.
I followed.
Bell did the same.
Evelyn hesitated.
Adrien's eyes narrowed.
"Mother," I said.
She pulled a small burner phone from inside her coat.
Then another from her waistband.
Then a third from her boot.
I stared.
"Really?"
"Old habits."
Marco almost looked offended by the number.
Adrien handed every device to one of his men for isolation.
"No outgoing communication."
"You think one of us called them?" Bell asked.
"I think information left a closed circle."
"There are other ways."
"Then we find them."
Marco had traced the background sounds on Marcus's call to three possible locations.
One was a maintenance tunnel beneath Grand Central.
Another was a pumping station in Brooklyn.
The third was an abandoned mail facility near Penn Station.
Trains.
Pipes.
Water.
All three fit.
"They want us split," Marco said.
Adrien nodded.
"So we don't split."
I looked at him.
"Marcus could die while we debate architecture."
"Marcus tried to kill you."
"He threatened me."
"He put his hands around your throat."
"I remember."
My voice sharpened.
"That does not mean I want him tortured to death in a basement."
Adrien studied me.
"No."
His voice softened.
"It doesn't."
Evelyn looked at the maps.
"Penn Station."
Marco frowned.
"Why?"
"Luca used the old mail tunnels in the nineties."
"You are certain?"
"I followed him there twice."
Adrien did not ask how.
We moved within ten minutes.
Evelyn stayed behind with Bell because her wound needed treatment.
She fought the decision until she nearly fainted.
That ended the argument.
Adrien, Marco, six men, and I entered the abandoned facility through a service ramp.
The building smelled like rust and wet concrete.
Train vibrations traveled through the floor every few minutes.
We found Marcus in a locked sorting room below street level.
Before Marco opened the door, I heard him coughing on the other side.
The sound stopped me harder than a gunshot would have.
I knew that cough.
Marcus had developed it every winter after a childhood case of pneumonia.
For three years, I kept cough drops in my purse because he never remembered to buy them.
That was the cruelty of intimate betrayal.
Your body kept ordinary knowledge long after trust became impossible.
I knew how he took coffee.
I knew he hated wet socks.
I knew he slept with one foot outside the blanket.
I knew the tiny scar beneath his chin came from falling off a bicycle at eleven.
And now I knew he had been paid to enter my life.
Both sets of knowledge existed together.
Neither canceled the other.
Adrien noticed I had stopped walking.
"You can stay here."
I shook my head.
"No."
"You do not owe him help."
"I know."
"Then why go in?"
I looked at the locked door.
"Because I need to see him when he does not control the room."
Adrien studied me.
I expected him to tell me that was dangerous.
Instead, he nodded.
Marco cut the lock.
The door opened.
The smell reached us first.
Blood.
Damp concrete.
Old oil.
Marcus lifted his head toward the light.
The fear on his face was real.
I hated that I could still recognize the difference.
For years, I had wondered whether the kindness I saw in him had been an act.
Standing there, I understood a worse truth.
A person could be kind on Tuesday and violent on Friday.
A person could love someone and still decide fear gave him permission to hurt her.
The good moments did not excuse the bad ones.
The bad ones did not have to be fake for the danger to be real.
That complexity hurt more than discovering our entire relationship had been a performance would have.
He was tied to a chair beneath a single hanging light.
Blood covered one side of his face.
His shirt was torn.
For one second, I saw the man who had brought me soup when I had the flu and slept on the floor beside my bed because I kept waking from nightmares.
Then he lifted his head.
I saw the man from last night too.
Both were real.
That was the hardest part.
"Lena."
His voice cracked.
Adrien held me back while Marco checked the room for explosives.
"Clear."
Only then did we approach.
Marcus looked at Adrien.
"You came."
"For information."
"Charming."
Marco cut the restraints.
Marcus collapsed forward.
I caught him automatically.
He flinched when I touched him.
I almost laughed at the cruelty of that reversal.
"Who took you?"
"Men I didn't know."
"Who questioned you?"
"A speaker in the wall."
Adrien crouched in front of him.
"Male or female?"
"Voice distortion."
"What did they ask?"
Marcus looked at me.
"The lullaby."
My skin crawled.
"How did you know about it?"
"I didn't until they asked."
"Then why did you tell me someone in the garage told them?"
Marcus reached inside his torn shirt.
Adrien grabbed his wrist.
"Slowly."
Marcus pulled out a small black object no larger than a coin.
A transmitter.
"They put this in my collar."
Marco took it.
"Short-range burst device."
"It activated during the call," Marcus said.
"They were listening to whoever was around you."
I understood.
No one in the garage had necessarily betrayed me.
The enemy had simply listened.
Relief lasted less than a second.
Then Marcus added something worse.
"But they already knew Evelyn was alive."
Adrien's eyes narrowed.
"How?"
Marcus looked at me.
"Because she has been talking to them."
My chest tightened.
"No."
"I heard recordings."
"Recordings can be altered."
"I know her voice."
"You met her once."
"I met her more than once."
The room went still.
I stared at him.
"What?"
Marcus looked ashamed.
"After the museum, she contacted me every few months."
"Why?"
"She paid me to tell her what Luca's people asked me to do."
My stomach turned.
"You were working for both sides."
"Yes."
"While living with me."
"Yes."
I stepped back.
The pain in my ribs flared.
I welcomed it.
Physical pain was simple.
Marcus kept talking.
"At first I did it for my father."
"Stop saying at first."
My voice cracked through the room.
Everyone fell silent.
I looked at him.
"You don't get to divide three years into the part where I was an assignment and the part where you decided you loved me."
His face broke.
"Lena."
"Did you love me when you searched my desk?"
He looked down.
"Did you love me when you copied my keys?"
Silence.
"Did you love me last night when you put your hand around my throat?"
He closed his eyes.
"No excuse."
"Good."
I wiped tears from my face angrily.
"Because I am tired of everyone explaining why hurting me was necessary."
Adrien looked away.
My mother was not there to hear it.
Somehow I hoped the words would reach her anyway.
Marcus breathed carefully.
"I attacked you because I panicked."
"That is an explanation."
"Not an excuse."
He met my eyes.
"You told me you found an old storage receipt in my desk."
I remembered.
The paper with 417 printed across the top.
I had assumed it was from a client file.
"I knew Luca would think I had failed."
"So you tried to stop me from leaving."
"Yes."
"By hurting me."
He nodded.
"Yes."
There was no redemption in the answer.
Only ownership.
That mattered more than I wanted it to.
Adrien stood.
"What recordings of Evelyn did they play?"
Marcus rubbed blood from his mouth.
"One was recent."
"How recent?"
"Three days ago."
My heart slowed.
"What did she say?"
Marcus looked at me.
"She said Lena is ready."
A chill moved through the room.
"Ready for what?"
"I don't know."
"What else?"
"She said if Adrien finds her first, let him."
Adrien's face hardened.
"And then?"
Marcus swallowed.
"She said he will take her exactly where we need her to go."
No one spoke.
Every place we had gone replayed in my head.
Pier Nineteen.
Box 417.
The Viscari estate.
The surveillance room.
Had we been following clues?
Or a path my mother designed?
Marco's phone vibrated.
He checked it.
"Carlo is awake."
Adrien turned immediately.
"Can he speak?"
"Bell says yes."
A second message arrived.
Marco read it.
His face changed.
"What?"
"Luca is gone."
Adrien's expression became dangerous.
"Gone where?"
"No one knows."
Marco looked up.
May you like
"And he took Carlo's black seal with him."
