Chương 10
“Thank you.”
She studied him.
“You should save that word,” she said. “You’re going to need practice.”
Outside, the morning had become bright and colorless. Police vehicles crowded the field around Bellwether. Rail officers searched the inactive spur. Federal agents entered with evidence cases. News helicopters would arrive as soon as somebody noticed the collection of county and state vehicles, though Ortiz had requested an air restriction over the terminal.
Sebastian walked toward the ambulance holding Ruby’s hand.
At the edge of the loading bay, an officer stopped him and removed the gold watch from his wrist, his phone from his pocket, and the bracelet wrapped in white cloth from inside his shirt.
Ruby saw it.
“My bracelet.”
The officer glanced at Ortiz.
“It is evidence,” Ortiz said.
Ruby’s fingers tightened around Sebastian’s hand. “He’ll lose it.”
The statement was directed at Ortiz, but Sebastian heard the history inside it. He misplaced school forms, forgot theme days, and once sent her to a birthday party a week early. He delegated things that mattered until somebody else made them happen.
Ortiz opened the cloth with gloved hands.
The red stone flashed beneath the warehouse lights.
“We’ll keep it secure,” she said.
Ruby shook her head.
Sebastian crouched beside her. “It helped me find you.”
“Micah found me.”
“Yes.”
“And Theo brought it.”
“Yes.”
“So it’s theirs too.”
The officer holding the evidence bag waited.
Ruby touched the heart charm with one finger.
“Don’t clean the scratch,” she said.
Ortiz sealed it. “We won’t.”
At the hospital, the world divided them into rooms.
Ruby went through imaging, blood work, interviews, and an examination by a pediatric specialist. She cried when a nurse tried to remove the remains of her party dress, not because she wanted the dress but because she had worn it when her father last saw her before everything changed. The nurse found a gown and let her keep the dress in a bag beside the bed.
Theo refused treatment until someone confirmed that Micah was in the same building.
Micah needed surgery to clean the gunshot wound but no repair to the bone. A social worker named Denise Harper asked him questions about foster placements, relatives, school attendance, and where he had slept during the previous six months. He answered the first three, lied about the fourth, and refused the rest.
Ranger was transported to an emergency veterinary clinic in a police utility vehicle. Theo tried to go with him. Denise explained that he could not leave the hospital until child welfare determined his placement.
Theo sat on the floor beside Micah’s bed and stopped speaking.
Sebastian received nine stitches in his arm and treatment for a scratched cornea. Two agents remained outside his room. Ortiz sat in the corner with a paper cup of coffee and read the first summary from the estate server.
Every few minutes, her eyebrows rose.
“How bad?” Sebastian asked.
“For whom?”
“Be specific.”
She turned a page. “You.”
“That is not specific.”
“You have spent twenty years converting specificity into plausible deniability. Let me enjoy being vague.”
He leaned back against the hospital pillow.
Through the wall came the intermittent murmur of Ruby speaking to a forensic interviewer. He could not hear the words. He could hear when she stopped.
“How long?” he asked.
“As long as she needs.”
“She hates repeating herself.”
“Most kidnapping victims do.”
“Can I be in the room?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because children edit themselves around parents. Especially powerful ones.”
“She is six.”
“She knows when you are upset.”
“I’m not asking her to protect me.”
Ortiz set down the report. “She spent the night doing exactly that.”
Sebastian looked toward the wall.
Ortiz continued more quietly. “She told the first responding officer she tried not to cry because the boy outside the vent looked scared. She told the nurse not to cut the dress because you bought it. She asked about Warren, Micah, Theo, and the dog before she asked whether the men could come back.”
Sebastian closed his eyes.
“I gave her a house full of guards.”
“You gave her a house full of your problems wearing earpieces.”
He opened his eyes again.
Ortiz did not apologize.
A federal prosecutor arrived before noon. Two attorneys sent by Sebastian’s firm arrived three minutes later and argued with the agents in the hallway. Sebastian recognized one of their voices and asked that neither be allowed inside.
Ortiz looked surprised. “They are here to protect you.”
“They are here to protect the organization.”
“Today you can tell the difference?”
“Today they can.”
The prosecutor introduced herself as Claire Donnelly. She was younger than Sebastian expected, with a canvas tote bag, wet hair, and the expression of someone already inconvenienced by the size of the case.
She advised him of his rights.
He asked whether the statement was necessary since he had heard it before.
“It is necessary because you have a history of later claiming language was ambiguous,” she said.
Ortiz looked into her coffee cup to hide her reaction.
Donnelly explained that any cooperation would be evaluated but promised nothing. The evidence server, once voluntarily provided, could support warrants and prosecutions. Sebastian could stop speaking at any time. Counsel was strongly recommended.
He said, “Dominic used my logistics companies to move narcotics.”
Donnelly’s pen stopped.
Ortiz looked at him.
“How do you know?” Donnelly asked.
“I suspected three weeks ago.”
“Suspected based on what?”
“Fuel records, missing refrigerated trucks, payments to dispatchers who did not work for us.”
“And you reported this?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“I intended to handle it internally.”
Donnelly’s face remained still. “Define handle.”
Sebastian watched a nurse wheel a cart past the open door. One wheel clicked every time it turned.
“Not legally,” he said.
Donnelly resumed writing.
May you like
The interview lasted four hours.
He described shell companies, cash routes, warehouse access, judges, union contracts, officers who accepted money, and businessmen who paid for threats disguised as consulting. He did not know every detail. For the first time, he said “I don’t know” without feeling the need to replace it with a more commanding sentence.
