Chương 10
The photograph also showed Emma at the top of the stairs.
Her face was partially visible.
Within an hour, strangers online were comparing it to old photographs of Lily.
Evelyn had the girls’ tablets removed.
Too late.
Lily had already seen a headline asking whether Chicago’s most feared family had hidden a second heiress.
“What’s an heiress?” she asked.
“Someone whose privacy has been stolen by people who need advertising revenue,” Evelyn said.
Lily considered that.
“Is Emma one?”
“No,” Karen said.
Marcus said, “Possibly.”
Karen turned on him.
“She is a child.”
“So is Lily. That has never stopped the press.”
Emma had gone very still.
“Will they find Mommy?”
Marcus crouched near her.
“They may help us find her.”
“Mommy says people who look for us don’t always want to help.”
“She was right.”
“Then why are you letting them?”
“Because hiding did not keep her safe.”
Karen’s expression tightened, but she did not interrupt.
Emma touched the repaired seam of the bear.
“Are you going to hurt Uncle Victor?”
“No.”
The answer surprised Lily.
Marcus looked at both girls.
“I hurt him yesterday. It was wrong.”
Lily watched him with narrowed eyes, deciding whether adults could be trusted when they admitted what children already knew.
“What will you do instead?” she asked.
“Tell the truth.”
Karen gave a small, humorless laugh.
Marcus glanced at her.
She lifted both hands.
“I didn’t say anything.”
The warrant for St. Casimir arrived shortly after three.
Federal agents entered with local officers and medical regulators. Marcus was not permitted to go. Neither were Jonah, Karen, or Evelyn.
They waited at the townhouse.
Waiting proved harder than action. Marcus walked from the study to the window, from the window to the kitchen, and from the kitchen back to the study until Lily told him he was making everyone nervous.
He sat.
Karen folded the same paper napkin into smaller and smaller squares.
At four twenty, Ortiz called.
Grace was not at the facility.
Dr. Vale had been.
He had been admitted six weeks earlier under the name Arthur Vance after suffering a stroke. Someone removed him that morning, less than an hour after Victor’s visit.
The facility’s electronic record showed the discharge had been authorized by a physician who did not exist.
Security footage had been deleted.
A nurse remembered a woman in a green coat visiting Dr. Vale two nights earlier.
Grace had found him.
In his room, investigators recovered a paper coffee sleeve with numbers written inside. The handwriting belonged to Grace.
The numbers matched a storage unit in Bedford Park.
Marcus listened on speaker.
“Do you have the unit?” he asked.
“We are working on access.”
“How long?”
“Long enough to do it correctly.”
“Someone removed Vale this morning.”
“We know.”
“So they know about the unit.”
“Possibly.”
Marcus stood.
Ortiz’s voice sharpened.
“Mr. Blackwell, do not go there.”
He ended the call.
Evelyn stepped in front of him.
“No.”
“She gave us the location.”
“She gave Dr. Vale the location. We do not know what it contains.”
“Victor does.”
“Then the agents need to reach it before he does.”
“They won’t.”
Jonah entered the hallway.
“Sir.”
He held up his phone.
A traffic camera had captured the minivan associated with Dr. Vale traveling southwest. One of Jonah’s men recognized the driver as Paul Drennan, a former Blackwell employee who now worked security for Victor.
The van had turned near Bedford Park.
Marcus took his coat.
Karen followed.
“You are not leaving me here.”
“Yes, I am.”
“If that unit contains something Grace wanted, I may know what it is.”
“You stay with Emma.”
Karen’s face twisted.
“I have stayed with Emma every day for seven years. I slept beside her when she had pneumonia because Grace was working nights. I held her in bus stations while your men searched motels. I taught her to read using grocery flyers. Do not tell me staying is the only thing I can do.”
Marcus looked toward the stairs.
Emma stood there holding the bear.
Lily beside her.
Karen’s anger disappeared.
Emma said, “Find Mommy.”
Marcus left with Jonah and Karen.
Evelyn called Ortiz before the car reached North Avenue.
The agent’s response came through the speakers.
“You are compromising an active investigation.”
“I’m driving on a public street,” Marcus said.
“You are traveling toward evidence connected to a kidnapping.”
“I have not entered the property.”
“Turn around.”
“Get there first.”
He ended the call.
Karen stared through the window.
“You enjoy making every situation worse?”
“I enjoy knowing what is happening.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“No.”
The admission made her look at him.
Bedford Park lay beyond the freight yards and industrial strips near Midway, where warehouses sat behind chain-link fences and airplanes descended low enough to make conversations pause. The storage facility occupied a long cinder-block building between a tire distributor and an empty lot.
Police vehicles were already approaching from the east.
Victor’s men had arrived first.
The front gate hung open. A dark minivan idled beside the third row of units. Its side door was open.
Marcus’s SUV stopped outside the fence.
Jonah reached beneath his jacket.
“No weapons,” Marcus said.
Jonah looked at him.
“You invited federal agents into your house twelve hours ago,” Marcus continued. “Do not give them a reason to forget why.”
Jonah removed his hand.
Karen was out of the vehicle before either man could stop her.
She ran through the gate.
Marcus followed.
The unit stood open. Two men were carrying cardboard boxes toward the minivan. Paul Drennan turned at the sound of Karen’s shoes striking pavement.
He recognized Marcus and froze.
“Put them down,” Marcus said.
One man dropped his box.
The other kept moving.
Sirens grew louder.
Drennan glanced toward the street.
“Victor said this belonged to him.”
May you like
“Victor was wrong.”
Drennan looked exhausted rather than threatening. He had gained weight since leaving Marcus’s employment. A hearing aid sat behind his right ear. Marcus remembered paying for it after an explosion damaged the man’s hearing.
