Chapter 3 - THE APARTMENT IN CICERO
For several seconds, nobody moved.
Evelyn stared at the dead phone in Lorenzo's hand.
Her mind rejected Celeste's final sentence with the same stubbornness it had once rejected the police officer who came to their apartment and said her father was missing.
Still alive.
Two words could reopen a grave even when no body had ever been buried in it.
"Call her back."
Rafe shook his head.
"Blocked and routed."
"Then trace it."
"We are trying."
Evelyn looked at Lorenzo.
"Did you know?"
"No."
"That answer is getting old."
"It remains true."
"Your fiancee knew my father was alive."
"My former fiancee."
"That distinction is very comforting."
Lorenzo put the phone down.
"Celeste wanted a reaction."
"She got one."
"That is why you do not move until we understand what she wants you to do."
Evelyn grabbed her coat from the chair where one of the guards had placed it.
"I know exactly what she wants me to do."
"Where are you going?"
"Home."
Lorenzo stepped in front of the door.
"No."
"My father left things."
"Fourteen years ago?"
"A box."
"What kind of box?"
"The kind that belongs to me."
"Then it belongs to whoever is watching your apartment now."
Evelyn hated him for making sense.
"There might be something in it."
"Then we go together."
"I am not taking the Chicago mafia to my studio apartment."
Rafe lifted an eyebrow.
"Technically only three of us would fit."
Evelyn glared at him.
Lorenzo ignored the exchange.
"We wait until police activity settles."
"They just put my face on television."
"It will not settle."
"Exactly."
Evelyn stepped closer to him.
"Every minute we wait is another minute Celeste has to get there first."
Lorenzo studied her.
She could almost see him recalculating.
"Rafe."
"I already hate this plan."
"Get a second car."
Thirty minutes later, Evelyn sat in the back of a delivery van that smelled like onions.
Rafe drove.
Lorenzo sat beside him wearing a dark work jacket one of the safehouse men had found.
Without the suit, he looked less like a newspaper photograph and more dangerous somehow.
The city outside had become a grid of flashing lights and blocked streets.
News helicopters circled the river.
Evelyn's name appeared on a digital billboard above a gas station as part of a breaking-news feed.
She looked away.
"Does this happen to you often?"
Lorenzo glanced back.
"Being falsely accused?"
"Being accused."
"Often."
"Falsely?"
"Less often."
Rafe coughed into his fist.
Evelyn almost smiled despite herself.
Then she remembered her father.
"What would he have stolen?"
Lorenzo's amusement disappeared.
"If Celeste was telling the truth, probably records."
"The third ledger?"
"My father told me Daniel destroyed it."
"Did your father lie?"
"Constantly."
"Useful family tradition."
"You are free to stop accepting my help."
"You locked me in a safehouse."
"And yet you remain argumentative."
"It is one of my survival skills."
They reached Cicero after midnight.
Evelyn's block looked ordinary.
That made it frightening.
A laundromat glowed at the corner.
A bus hissed to a stop.
Two teenagers crossed the street carrying takeout.
Nothing about the scene said her life had been detonated three hours earlier.
Rafe parked behind a closed pharmacy.
"Two men across from her building."
Lorenzo looked through the windshield.
"Police?"
"Could be."
"Could be Vane."
"Could be ours."
Evelyn leaned forward.
"That is reassuring."
Rafe pointed to a dark sedan.
"Driver has not looked at his phone in six minutes."
"So?"
"Normal people look at their phones."
Lorenzo opened his door.
"We go through the rear."
Evelyn led them through an alley behind her building.
The back gate squealed exactly as it had every night for nine months.
She winced.
Rafe whispered something unkind about maintenance.
They climbed a narrow metal staircase.
Evelyn stopped outside her kitchen window.
The glass was dark.
The frame was also slightly open.
She never left it open.
"Someone is inside."
Lorenzo moved her behind him.
Rafe drew his gun.
Evelyn whispered.
"There is only one room."
"Stay here."
"It is my apartment."
"Then you should be especially interested in not being shot in it."
Lorenzo slid the window upward.
Rafe entered first.
Lorenzo followed.
Evelyn waited three seconds and climbed in anyway.
Her apartment looked as if a storm had learned how to open drawers.
Mattress split.
Cabinets emptied.
Clothes scattered.
Her mother's old photographs lay face down on the floor.
Evelyn's chest tightened.
"They knew what they were looking for."
Rafe crouched near the closet.
"Maybe."
"Or they wanted us to think they did."
Lorenzo looked around.
"Where is the box?"
Evelyn went to the radiator.
It had been installed crooked before she moved in.
Behind it was a narrow gap in the wall.
She knelt and reached inside.
Her fingers touched cardboard.
Still there.
She pulled out a faded blue shoebox wrapped in a grocery bag.
Lorenzo watched her.
"That is your father's archive?"
"He liked expensive shoes."
"I remember."
The casual certainty in Lorenzo's voice stabbed her.
He had memories of Daniel Carter that Evelyn did not.
She opened the box.
Inside were old photographs, a deck of cards, three casino chips, a broken watch, a brass key, and a small black notebook.
Evelyn touched the notebook.
"I have never seen this."
Rafe moved closer.
"You never opened the box?"
"I did."
"A hundred times."
"That notebook was not here."
Lorenzo's eyes narrowed.
"Someone added it."
The apartment door clicked.
Rafe killed the lamp.
Darkness swallowed the room.
Lorenzo pulled Evelyn beside the kitchen counter.
Footsteps entered.
One person.
Slow.
Careful.
The beam of a flashlight moved across the floor.
Evelyn heard the front door close.
Then a familiar voice whispered.
"Evie?"
Her whole body went rigid.
Gilbert.
Rafe raised his gun.
Evelyn grabbed his wrist.
"Wait."
Gilbert stepped farther inside.
His flashlight found the ruined mattress.
He swore.
"Evie, if you are here, do not scream."
Lorenzo moved out of the darkness.
"Good advice."
Gilbert nearly dropped the flashlight.
Rafe took his gun before he could reach beneath his coat.
Evelyn switched on the lamp.
Gilbert looked exhausted.
A bruise darkened one side of his jaw.
"You drove Celeste away."
He looked at Evelyn.
"I had no choice."
"Everyone has a choice."
"They had my daughter."
Evelyn stopped.
Gilbert's daughter, Tessa, was thirteen.
He kept her school picture taped inside his locker at work.
"Who had her?"
"Men I had never seen."
"Three days ago they came to my house."
Gilbert looked at Lorenzo.
"They knew every route your people planned for tonight."
Rafe pushed him into a chair.
"Who gave them the routes?"
"I do not know."
"Wrong answer."
"I do not know."
Gilbert's voice cracked.
"They told me to leave the north service door unlocked."
"They told me to get Celeste out after the first blast."
"If I refused, they sent me pictures of Tessa sleeping."
Evelyn's anger did not disappear.
It changed shape.
"Where is she now?"
"Safe."
"You found her?"
Gilbert nodded.
"My sister took her across the state line two hours ago."
Rafe's expression stayed hard.
"Then why come here?"
Gilbert looked at the blue box.
"Because Celeste told me this apartment mattered."
"She said if the waitress survived, she would come back for something her father left."
Lorenzo picked up the black notebook.
"This?"
Gilbert's eyes widened.
"I have never seen that."
Evelyn believed him.
She wished she did not.
Lorenzo opened the notebook.
The first pages were blank.
So were the next ten.
Then a line of numbers appeared in Daniel Carter's handwriting.
Evelyn recognized the sharp seven and the way he crossed his zeros.
Her throat tightened.
"That is his."
Lorenzo turned pages.
Rows of dates and numbers filled the center of the notebook.
At the bottom of one page was a sentence.
IF THEY USE THE WORD CLEANERS, TRUST NO MORETTI EXCEPT THE BOY.
Rafe looked at Lorenzo.
Evelyn read it twice.
"The boy."
Lorenzo's face changed.
He was sixteen when Daniel disappeared.
"He meant you."
Gilbert whispered.
"Why would her father trust you?"
Lorenzo did not answer.
A red dot appeared on Gilbert's chest.
Evelyn saw it before anyone else.
"Down!"
The window exploded.
Gilbert jerked backward.
Rafe fired toward the opposite rooftop.
Lorenzo pulled Evelyn to the floor.
A second shot punched through the wall.
A third shattered the lamp.
Darkness returned.
Gilbert made a wet sound near the chair.
Evelyn crawled to him.
"Gilbert."
His hands were pressed to his shoulder.
Blood seeped between his fingers.
"Not chest."
He sounded surprised.
"Lucky me."
Rafe dragged him behind the counter.
"Shooter moving."
Lorenzo took the notebook.
"We leave now."
Evelyn grabbed the blue box.
A fire alarm began ringing in the hallway.
Smoke slid beneath the apartment door.
"They set the building on fire," she said.
Rafe opened the rear window.
"Then we have company downstairs."
Someone pounded on Evelyn's front door.
"Police!"
Another voice shouted from the hallway.
"Open the door!"
Lorenzo looked at Rafe.
"Too fast."
Evelyn understood.
The shooter had fired less than a minute ago.
Real police could not have arrived that quickly.
The door buckled inward.
Rafe helped Gilbert through the rear window.
Evelyn climbed after him with the box.
Lorenzo stayed behind long enough to push the refrigerator in front of the door.
Then he followed.
They descended the fire escape as smoke rolled from the second floor.
At the bottom, Evelyn looked up.
A man stood in her kitchen window.
He wore a police jacket.
He was not looking for survivors.
He was looking directly at her.
Then he raised a phone and took her photograph.
Lorenzo saw him too.
"Move."
They ran into the alley.
Gilbert stumbled.
Evelyn caught him.
At the corner, a black sedan accelerated toward them.
Rafe fired at the windshield.
The car swerved.
Lorenzo shoved Evelyn behind a dumpster.
The sedan clipped a parked car and vanished down the street.
Sirens were now approaching for real.
Lorenzo took the blue box from Evelyn.
"We split."
"No."
"Rafe takes Gilbert."
"You come with me."
Evelyn stared at him.
"Why?"
"Because whoever put that notebook in your apartment wanted you to find it."
He held up the book.
"And whoever tried to kill us wanted to make sure you did not finish reading it."
Evelyn looked at the final pages.
One corner showed a drawing she remembered from childhood.
A tiny crown over the letter E.
Her father used to draw it on lunch bags.
"There is more."
"Yes."
Lorenzo's eyes held hers.
May you like
"And I think it tells us where Daniel Carter has been for fourteen years."
