Chapter 7 - THE SHELTER SERENA LEFT BEHIND
The first vehicle stopped outside the machine shop without headlights.
The second blocked the gate.
The third rolled behind the building.
Mateo watched the movements through a crack in the loading door and swore under his breath.
"Professional."
Leo crouched behind a steel support with Beatrice beside him.
"How many?"
"At least eight."
Nico strained against the chair.
"Untie me."
Leo ignored him.
"They know the exits."
Mateo nodded.
"Which means they know the building."
"Or they know our people."
That possibility hung in the darkness.
The machine shop had been chosen by Leo's own team less than an hour earlier.
Only six people knew the location.
One of them had either talked or been followed.
Beatrice whispered.
"Is there another way out?"
Mateo pointed toward the canal side.
"Old maintenance tunnel."
Nico laughed weakly.
"Flooded."
"Partly."
"Water is waist deep."
Beatrice looked at her bandaged wrist.
"Wonderful."
Leo stared at her shoes.
"You can stay here if you prefer bullets."
"I was going to complain about the shoes, not the water."
For reasons Beatrice could not understand, Leo almost smiled again.
Then glass broke near the front office.
The moment disappeared.
Mateo cut Nico's restraints.
"Can you walk?"
"Yes."
"Then walk quietly."
The first armed man entered through the office door.
Leo's guards delayed him without turning the building into a battlefield.
They knocked over shelving, triggered the old fire suppression system, and filled the front half of the machine shop with steam and chemical mist.
Mateo led Leo, Beatrice, and Nico toward a grated stairwell beneath the rear platform.
A shot cracked somewhere behind them.
Metal sparked above Beatrice's head.
Leo shoved her down the stairs.
"Move."
"I am moving."
"Faster."
"My body was not designed for secret tunnels."
"Tonight it is."
They reached a concrete passage that smelled like rust and river water.
Cold water covered the floor.
Beatrice stepped in and gasped.
"That is not waist deep."
Mateo looked back.
"On Nico."
Beatrice stared at Nico's shorter frame.
"I hate all of you."
They pushed through the water while footsteps echoed above.
At one point, Beatrice slipped on submerged debris.
Leo caught her around the waist before she fell.
For a second, she was pressed against him in black water beneath a warehouse where armed men were hunting them.
Neither spoke.
Then Nico hissed.
"Romance later."
Beatrice pulled away so fast she nearly fell again.
"There is no romance."
Leo looked at Nico.
"Keep walking if you want to keep breathing."
Nico obeyed.
The tunnel opened behind an abandoned pumping station two blocks away.
A secondary vehicle waited there because Mateo, unlike most men Beatrice knew, planned for failure.
They reached it just before another set of headlights appeared at the far end of the street.
Mateo drove.
Nico lay across the rear cargo area with a medical kit pressed against his shoulder.
Leo sat beside Beatrice.
"Hospital."
Nico shook his head.
"Shelter first."
Leo looked at him.
"You are bleeding through the bandage."
"Then drive faster."
Beatrice leaned over the seat.
"You almost got Lily killed and now you think stubbornness is attractive?"
Nico shut his eyes.
"No."
"Good."
"I think staying alive long enough to show you the evidence is attractive."
Mateo took a sudden right turn.
"He's right about one thing."
"Victoria may already be moving on the shelter."
Leo checked his phone.
"No calls."
"That is not reassuring."
Serena's shelter occupied a converted brick schoolhouse on the west side.
The sign outside read HAVEN HOUSE.
Beatrice had helped choose the name.
She had also spent twelve Saturdays painting bedrooms, assembling beds, and sorting donated clothing before Serena died.
After the bombing, Leo donated enough money to keep the project alive but never entered the building.
Grief had made the place unbearable to him.
Tonight, he stepped through its doors for the first time.
The night supervisor, Maria Ellis, recognized Beatrice immediately.
"Bee?"
Beatrice hugged her with one arm.
"We need the old donation storage room."
Maria looked at Leo, Mateo, and bleeding Nico.
"Do I want to know?"
"No."
"Good."
Maria locked the front entrance behind them.
"Storage is downstairs."
Leo looked around the lobby.
Framed photographs of Serena covered one wall.
In every image, she was laughing, working, carrying boxes, or kneeling beside children.
One photograph showed her with Beatrice, both women covered in blue paint.
Leo stopped in front of it.
Beatrice noticed.
"She got paint in my hair."
Leo looked at the photograph.
"She hated painting."
"She hated being told she hated something more."
His mouth shifted.
"That sounds like her."
For one quiet second, the conspiracy disappeared and two people simply missed the same woman.
Then Mateo called from the basement.
"Found the donation records."
They joined him beneath shelves filled with boxes labeled by year.
Beatrice searched the inventory sheets from two years earlier.
Baby clothes.
Cribs.
Strollers.
Kitchen supplies.
Then she found it.
ONE WHITE DIAPER BAG - ROSSI RESIDENCE.
Maria checked the storage map.
"Box C-fourteen."
The shelf was empty.
Beatrice stared at the gap.
"Where is it?"
Maria's face tightened.
"That section hasn't been touched in months."
Mateo examined the dust.
One rectangular space was clean.
Someone had removed the box recently.
"Security cameras?" Leo asked.
Maria nodded.
They rushed upstairs.
The shelter's camera system was basic but functional.
Maria pulled up the last forty-eight hours.
At 4:17 that afternoon, a woman wearing a volunteer badge entered through the rear door.
She wore a baseball cap and a loose coat.
Her face stayed turned away from the camera.
Beatrice watched her walk toward the basement.
"Stop."
Maria paused the video.
The woman's left hand rested on the railing.
A diamond ring flashed beneath the fluorescent light.
Beatrice knew that ring.
She had polished it from the bathroom counter more times than she could count.
"Victoria."
Leo's face went hard.
Maria advanced the footage.
Twenty-three minutes later, Victoria left carrying a cardboard box.
She had taken the diaper bag hours before locking Lily in the cellar.
Which meant the notebook had been part of the plan all along.
"She knew," Beatrice whispered.
Mateo nodded.
"Before tonight."
Leo looked at the timestamp.
"Then why lock Lily in the cellar?"
Nobody answered.
The question was worse than the answer they already had.
If Victoria had recovered the notebook at four seventeen, she had no reason to risk everything by attacking Lily two hours later.
Unless she had discovered something inside the notebook that made Lily dangerous.
Beatrice looked at the video again.
"Show me her leaving in slow motion."
Maria replayed it.
Victoria crossed the rear hall with the box.
At the door, the bottom flap shifted.
Something fell out.
A small black object bounced near the baseboard.
Victoria did not notice.
Beatrice pointed.
"There."
They hurried to the rear hallway.
Maria moved a bench.
Behind it lay a thin black notebook insert, no larger than a passport.
The leather cover had separated from the main notebook years earlier and been tucked inside as a pocket.
Beatrice opened it.
A folded sheet of paper slid out.
Serena's handwriting covered both sides.
The first line read, IF VICTORIA FINDS THIS, SHE WILL THINK SHE HAS EVERYTHING.
Leo looked at Beatrice.
"Read it."
Beatrice continued.
THE BLACK NOTEBOOK IS A DECOY.
THE REAL RECORD IS WITH THE PERSON WHO FIRST TAUGHT LILY TO SAY THE TRUTH OUT LOUD.
Beatrice stared at the sentence.
Leo stared at her.
"That's you."
"I don't have any record."
"Serena thought you would."
Beatrice read the next line.
BEE, YOU MAY NOT KNOW YOU HAVE IT.
Her skin prickled.
"What does that mean?"
Maria leaned closer.
"Maybe she put something in your belongings."
Beatrice thought of four years of rooms, uniforms, shoes, books, boxes, and secondhand furniture.
Nothing made sense.
Then she remembered Serena's last birthday gift to her.
A cookbook.
Not an expensive one.
A thick old volume filled with handwritten family recipes.
Serena had laughed when Beatrice complained that most of the measurements were written as a pinch, a handful, or until it looks right.
Beatrice looked at Leo.
"My cookbook."
"Where is it?"
"My room."
Mateo checked his phone.
"The house is still compromised."
"Then we secure it," Leo said.
Nico, pale from blood loss, pushed himself upright against the desk.
"Wait."
Everyone looked at him.
"The people who came to the machine shop knew where we were."
"Yes," Mateo said.
"Only six people knew."
Mateo's expression changed.
Nico continued.
"One of your guards called someone while you were inside."
Leo stepped closer.
"Which guard?"
"I couldn't see his face."
"Uniform?"
"Rossi tactical."
Mateo swore.
Beatrice looked at the room full of Serena's photographs.
The enemy was still inside Leo's organization.
Maybe inside the house.
Maybe inside the hospital.
Her stomach dropped.
"Lily."
Leo was already dialing.
The call rang once.
Twice.
Three times.
No answer.
He called the second guard.
No answer.
The night nurse.
No answer.
Leo's face lost every trace of color.
He ran for the door.
Beatrice followed.
Behind them, Maria called the hospital directly.
She reached the nurses' station.
Then her voice changed.
"Mr. Rossi!"
Leo stopped.
Maria stared at the phone.
"They say Lily Rossi was discharged ten minutes ago."
Beatrice felt the floor disappear beneath her.
"Discharged by whom?"
Maria listened.
Then she looked at Leo.
"Her father."
May you like
Leo stood six feet away from her.
