Chương 8
“Why?”
Vale said nothing.
Vincent did.
“Because frightened people make deliveries they wouldn’t make if they understood them.”
One minute.
The detective returned with another officer carrying a small evidence bag.
“We’re taking the drive.”
Mara did not surrender it immediately.
The detective’s eyes hardened.
“Ms. Reed.”
“If this gets erased while it’s in police custody—”
“Then there will be a record of that.”
“That doesn’t bring the evidence back.”
“No, but you holding it in a parking garage doesn’t preserve it either.”
He was right, which irritated her more than it should have.
She dropped the drive into the bag without touching the sides.
The officer sealed it.
Thirty seconds.
Everyone watched Mara’s phone in the detective’s hand.
Nothing happened.
Ten seconds.
Vincent counted under his breath until Mara told him to stop.
He stopped at three.
The minute passed.
No explosion.
No disappearing files.
No sinister notification.
Somewhere below, a car horn sounded twice.
Vincent rubbed his forehead.
“Well, that was anticlimactic.”
Mara’s phone vibrated in the detective’s hand.
The message contained no text.
Only an audio file.
The detective looked at Mara.
“Do I have your permission?”
“Yes.”
He tapped it.
Static filled the garage.
Then a man coughed.
Vale went rigid.
Mara looked at him.
The recording continued.
A chair scraped across a floor.
Someone shuffled papers.
Then a voice said, “If Adrian ever hears this, I failed.”
Vale did not move.
Vincent whispered, “Jesus.”
Mara had never heard Adrian Vale’s father speak, but she did not need to ask.
The resemblance lived in the rhythm rather than the sound.
The same controlled pauses.
The same refusal to hurry merely because the world wanted something.
The recording crackled.
“I signed the account authorization on October fourteenth because Eleanor asked me to.”
Vale’s face changed at the name.
Mara caught it.
“Who’s Eleanor?”
He did not answer.
His father’s recorded voice continued.
“I told myself it was temporary.”
A long silence followed.
“I told myself several things.”
Papers shifted.
“If the transfers have continued, then Warren was right.”
Mara looked toward the elevator.
Pike had known him.
Not through Adrian.
Through his father.
The recording skipped.
A different voice appeared for half a second, too distorted to identify.
Then Vale’s father spoke again.
“Do not give this to my son.”
Adrian closed his eyes.
The words seemed to strike harder because they were calm.
“He will try to fix it.”
The recording ended.
No one spoke.
The detective replayed the last five seconds.
He will try to fix it.
Mara watched Vale open his eyes.
Whatever she expected to find there was absent.
No grief.
No surprise.
Only an old injury discovering that it had not finished.
“Eleanor,” Mara said again.
Vale looked at the sealed evidence bag.
“My sister.”
Mara stared at him.
“You said your sister—”
“Her full name was Eleanor Vale.”
“And she asked your father to create the account?”
“Apparently.”
“You didn’t know?”
“No.”
Vincent lowered the handkerchief from his temple.
“Adrian.”
Vale turned on him.
“What?”
Vincent’s hesitation was tiny but unmistakable.
Mara saw it.
So did Vale.
“What do you know?”
“Nothing certain.”
“That has never stopped you before.”
Vincent glanced at the detectives.
“This may not be the place.”
“The place became irrelevant around the second gunshot.”
Vincent pressed his lips together.
“Your father contacted Warren after Eleanor died.”
Vale stared at him.
Mara felt the garage become smaller.
“How do you know that?” Vale asked.
“My grandfather.”
The answer sounded absurd enough that Mara almost thought she had misheard.
Vale did not.
“Your grandfather sold refrigerators.”
“He also played poker with Warren Pike for twenty-three years.”
Mara looked between them.
“You left that out?”
Vincent gave her a tired, irritated look.
“I left out a lot of things because until approximately forty minutes ago they were family gossip.”
“What gossip?”
“That Warren helped Thomas Vale move records out of one of the old companies before an audit.”
Vale’s voice dropped.
“When?”
“After Eleanor’s funeral.”
Mara did the arithmetic.
Eleven years.
Two years before Thomas Vale died.
“Where did he move them?”
Vincent looked at the address still visible on Mara’s phone.
“According to my grandfather, a warehouse nobody used anymore.”
Nobody needed to say Harbor East.
The detective did anyway.
“Twenty-eight nineteen?”
Vincent nodded.
Vale started walking.
The detective caught his arm.
“No.”
“Take your hand off me.”
“You are not going to that building.”
“My father hid records there.”
“And someone just shot a man connected to those records.”
“Which makes speed relevant.”
“It makes you staying alive relevant.”
Vale pulled his arm free but did not continue.
Mara expected an argument.
Instead, he looked at her.
It was the first time all night he seemed to be asking rather than deciding.
She hated that she understood the question.
She hated more that she already had an answer.
“We don’t go alone,” she said.
The detective shook his head.
“You don’t go at all.”
Mara looked at the sealed drive, then at the address.
“Then you go.”
“We’ll send officers.”
“Now.”
He studied her.
“That isn’t your call.”
“No.”
Mara folded her arms.
“But Warren Pike got shot carrying evidence your department didn’t know existed, somebody photographed the inside of my apartment, and a dead man just told us he hid something connected to thirty-two million dollars.”
The detective’s jaw tightened.
Mara added, “So I’m comfortable being annoying.”
Vincent murmured, “She is exceptionally qualified.”
The detective ignored him.
His radio crackled.
A dispatcher’s voice came through, broken by static.
Units were being sent to St. Vincent’s.
The detective raised the radio.
“Repeat.”
The reply came clearer.
A man had entered the hospital loading area using a stolen maintenance badge.
Security had detained him after he tried to access the trauma floor.
Mara’s stomach dropped.
“Pike.”
The detective was already moving.
“Lock down his room.”
Vale caught Mara’s wrist.
Not hard.
Just enough to stop her from following.
May you like
She looked at his hand until he released her.
“Someone wants Warren dead,” he said.
