Chapter 9 - The Apartment
Gabriel did not let Chloe touch the phone.
"Send it to me."
"No."
"It's a picture of me."
"Which is why you're not staring at it again."
Chloe's temper flared.
"Do not decide what I can see."
He looked at her.
The words struck him twice now.
Once as an accusation from Chloe.
Once as an echo of Beatrice.
He forwarded the photograph to her.
"Fine."
Chloe opened it on her own phone.
The picture showed her asleep on the left side of her bed.
A half-read paperback rested on the floor.
Her phone charger stretched across the nightstand.
Nothing was disturbed.
That made it worse.
Whoever entered had wanted access, not theft.
The timestamp was 2:17 a.m.
Chloe remembered waking around three because she thought she heard the radiator knock.
Maybe it had not been the radiator.
Her stomach rolled.
Beatrice watched her.
She signed.
You are not going home.
Chloe gave a humorless laugh.
"I was about to argue."
Beatrice folded her arms.
Chloe sighed.
"Fine."
Gabriel looked almost offended.
"She gets a fine?"
"She asked."
"I told you the same thing earlier."
"You ordered."
Rocco muttered from the desk.
"This may be the most educational night of your life."
Gabriel looked at him.
"Careful."
"See?"
Rocco pointed at Chloe.
"Orders."
Beatrice smiled.
The moment ended when Chloe zoomed in on the photograph.
"Wait."
Gabriel moved beside her.
"What?"
She enlarged the mirror over her dresser.
A sliver of the photographer was reflected in the glass.
Only a shoulder.
Dark coat.
White cuff.
And a ring.
Chloe pinched the screen larger.
The ring had a square black stone.
Rocco's face changed.
"Luca wears one like that."
Gabriel looked at him.
"So does Vincent."
Rocco frowned.
"Since when?"
"Since my father gave them matching family rings when they turned twenty-one."
Chloe lowered the phone.
"Convenient."
Gabriel called two men.
"Go to her apartment."
Chloe shook her head.
"I'm going too."
"No."
"We're doing this again?"
"Someone was inside your bedroom yesterday."
"Which is exactly why I need to know what they touched."
"My people can look."
"Your people missed a spy device in your own house for six months."
Rocco looked at the floor.
Matteo coughed into his hand.
Gabriel stared at Chloe.
"That was unnecessary."
"It was accurate."
Beatrice raised both hands.
I go too.
Gabriel looked at her.
"Absolutely not."
She was already walking toward the door.
Chloe followed.
Rocco smiled faintly.
"You seem to have lost control of the room."
Gabriel gave him a murderous look.
"You are not helping."
They reached Chloe's building before dawn.
Police tape stretched across the front entrance.
Chloe stopped on the sidewalk.
"What happened?"
One of Gabriel's security men approached.
"Your landlord called police after he saw the door open."
"My door?"
"Yes."
"Was anyone hurt?"
"No."
Chloe exhaled.
Then she saw Mrs. Flores from the second floor standing beside an officer in slippers and a winter coat.
Mrs. Flores spotted Chloe.
"Honey!"
She rushed over.
"You weren't inside, were you?"
"No."
Mrs. Flores grabbed both her hands.
"Thank God."
Chloe looked at the open building door.
"What did they do?"
Mrs. Flores glanced toward Gabriel and lowered her voice.
"Who are these men?"
"Complicated."
"They look expensive."
"Also complicated."
Mrs. Flores leaned closer.
"Your apartment is destroyed."
Chloe's stomach dropped.
She moved toward the entrance.
A uniformed officer blocked her.
"Resident?"
"Chloe Bennett."
He checked his notes.
"We need to speak with you."
Gabriel stepped up behind her.
The officer looked at him.
Recognition flashed across his face.
His posture changed.
Chloe hated that.
"You can speak to me after I see my apartment," she said.
The officer hesitated.
"Five minutes."
Chloe climbed the stairs.
Her front door hung from one hinge.
Inside, every drawer had been emptied.
Books covered the floor.
Cushions had been cut open.
Kitchen cabinets stood wide.
Leo's framed photographs lay face down.
Chloe walked toward them carefully.
The glass in one frame was cracked.
She picked it up.
Leo was making a ridiculous face at the camera.
The photo had been taken three weeks before he died.
Chloe pressed it against her chest.
Beatrice touched her shoulder.
Chloe looked at her.
I'm sorry.
This time, Chloe accepted the words.
She put the photograph on the counter.
"They were looking for something."
Gabriel surveyed the room.
"Not money."
Chloe opened the small tin she kept behind the flour container.
Two hundred dollars in emergency cash was still there.
"Definitely not money."
Rocco entered behind them.
"Anything Leo left you?"
"Everything he owned."
"Specifically anything weird."
Chloe stared at him.
"He was nineteen."
"Fair."
She looked around.
"His laptop was destroyed in the crash."
"Phone?"
"Police returned it smashed."
"Books?"
Chloe's eyes moved toward the hall closet.
"His notebooks."
She ran.
The closet door had been ripped open.
A cardboard box sat on the floor.
Empty.
"No."
She crouched beside it.
"They took them."
Rocco swore.
Gabriel looked at the torn cardboard.
"What was in the notebooks?"
"School notes."
"Anything about Beatrice?"
"I don't know."
Chloe closed her eyes.
"I never read them."
Guilt hit her unexpectedly.
For two years, she had kept Leo's things because throwing them away felt impossible.
She had not opened the box because opening it felt worse.
Beatrice crouched beside her.
She signed.
Maybe he knew you would not read them.
Chloe frowned.
"What do you mean?"
Beatrice repeated the thought.
Maybe he hid something somewhere you would notice instead.
Chloe looked around the apartment.
Something she would notice.
Leo had known her better than anyone.
He knew she alphabetized spices when stressed.
He knew she checked the stove three times before bed.
He knew she hated crooked picture frames.
Her eyes moved to the hallway wall.
One frame was crooked.
It held a photograph of Chloe and Leo at Coney Island.
She walked toward it.
The frame had always hung straight.
Always.
She lifted it from the nail.
On the back, beneath the brown paper backing, someone had drawn a tiny handshape in blue ink.
The ASL letter L.
Chloe's heart accelerated.
"Leo."
She tore the backing open.
A thin metal key fell into her palm.
Rocco leaned closer.
"Not the same as the station key."
"No."
Chloe turned it over.
A number was stamped into the metal.
314.
Beatrice signed.
Locker.
Gabriel looked at Chloe.
"Union Station?"
"Maybe."
Rocco shook his head.
"Station lockers use electronic codes now."
Chloe stared at the number.
"Then somewhere older."
Mrs. Flores appeared in the doorway behind the officer.
"Chloe?"
The officer tried to stop her.
"Ma'am, please."
"I remembered something."
Chloe turned.
"What?"
Mrs. Flores pointed toward the broken front door.
"A man came here last week."
Gabriel's expression sharpened.
"What man?"
Mrs. Flores looked at him suspiciously.
"I was talking to her."
Chloe almost smiled.
"What man, Mrs. Flores?"
"Tall."
"Hair?"
"Dark."
"Age?"
"Your age, maybe a little older."
Chloe glanced at Gabriel.
Mrs. Flores followed the look.
Her eyes widened.
"Him."
Silence.
Chloe looked at Gabriel.
"What?"
Mrs. Flores pointed directly at him.
"That's the man."
Gabriel went still.
"You've seen me before?"
"Last Thursday."
"I was not here last Thursday."
Mrs. Flores folded her arms.
"I know what I saw."
Chloe's chest tightened.
Gabriel took out his phone.
"Show me the building camera."
The officer frowned.
"We already collected footage."
Gabriel looked at him.
"Then show her."
Ten minutes later, they were crowded around a laptop in the landlord's office.
The hallway camera showed a man in a dark coat walking toward Chloe's door at 9:42 p.m. the previous Thursday.
His face appeared in profile.
Chloe stopped breathing.
It was Gabriel.
Same jaw.
Same hair.
Same build.
Even Gabriel stared.
"That's not me."
Mrs. Flores shook her head.
"That's you."
Rocco moved closer to the screen.
"Pause it."
The officer paused.
Rocco zoomed in on the man's right hand.
A square black ring caught the hallway light.
Gabriel looked at his own hand.
He wore no ring.
"Vincent," he said.
Chloe looked at the screen again.
The resemblance was astonishing from the side.
"Why would he want me to think it was you?"
Gabriel's expression darkened.
"Because he knew eventually you'd see footage."
The officer clicked to the next camera angle.
The man turned his face more fully.
Not Gabriel.
Vincent.
He entered Chloe's apartment using a key.
Chloe felt sick.
"How did he have a key?"
No one answered.
The footage skipped twenty-three minutes.
Vincent emerged carrying nothing.
Before leaving, he looked directly into the camera.
Then he held up one finger.
He mouthed two words.
Chloe leaned toward the screen.
She read them clearly.
ASK GABRIEL.
The officer looked confused.
Chloe turned slowly.
"Ask you what?"
Gabriel's face had changed.
Rocco noticed first.
"You know."
Gabriel did not answer.
Chloe stepped closer.
"What does he want me to ask you?"
Gabriel looked at Beatrice.
Then at Chloe.
"The night Leo died, I was at his university."
Chloe stopped breathing.
"Why?"
Gabriel's voice was quiet.
May you like
"Because I was meeting Luca."
