Chương 4
“Why Emma?”
“Because Lily had already been entered under your last name. Emma’s identification band only said Baby B.”
Marcus looked toward the girls. Lily was showing Emma how to fold the corner of a sheet of paper into a crooked triangle. Emma watched with solemn concentration.
“Who took her?”
“Dr. Vale and I did. We were told we were moving her to another floor. Instead we were taken to the old ambulance bay. A man put Emma into a private medical transport. Dr. Vale started arguing. One of Victor’s men hit him. Grace arrived in a wheelchair with a nurse named Nora.”
“After giving birth.”
“She pulled out her IV. She was bleeding through the back of her gown. She had heard enough to know something was wrong.”
Karen stopped. She pressed one knuckle against her mouth.
“What happened to Nora?” Marcus asked.
“The nurse tried to get Grace back inside. A car came into the bay. Victor’s men grabbed Grace. Nora fought them. The driver hit her with the door. She struck her head on the concrete.”
“Dead?”
“Not immediately.”
Marcus waited.
“Grace took Nora’s uniform. Dr. Vale switched their identification bands. It was his idea. He said if the men believed Grace was still in the chair, we could get Emma away.”
“You put an injured woman in my wife’s clothes.”
Karen’s face hardened.
“We put an unconscious nurse in a gown. We did not put her in a car. Victor’s men did that.”
“And Grace let them.”
“She was half conscious, unarmed, bleeding, and holding a premature infant. What would you have had her do?”
The old answer rose first: fight, call him, trust the protection around her.
But the protection around her had belonged to Victor.
Marcus looked at his hands.
Karen’s voice dropped.
“We got into the medical transport with Emma. Dr. Vale drove. Grace kept saying we had to go back for Nora. He said if we went back, all four of us would die. Ten minutes later, we saw smoke behind us.”
Marcus had seen that smoke from a photograph before he reached the scene. The car had burned beneath concrete, heat contained long enough to erase almost everything recognizable. A wedding ring had been recovered near the passenger seat. Dental records had confirmed Grace’s identity. The medical examiner had called the certainty sufficient.
“Who changed the dental records?”
“I don’t know.”
“Dr. Vale?”
“He said he didn’t.”
“Where is he?”
“He disappeared six months later.”
“Dead?”
“We don’t know.”
“You seem to know very little for someone who has had seven years.”
Karen stood abruptly.
“Do you think we had investigators? Lawyers? Men in every city? Grace cleaned hotel rooms under fake names. I worked overnight shifts using a Social Security number that belonged to a dead woman. We taught Emma not to answer the door. We left an apartment because a neighbor asked which school she attended. We knew enough to stay alive.”
Emma had stopped folding paper. She was listening.
Karen saw it and sat again.
Marcus did not apologize. Apologies made too soon were another form of self-protection.
He folded Grace’s letter and put it back in the envelope.
“When did you last see her?”
“Wednesday night.”
Today was Saturday.
“She left our apartment after getting a call.”
“From whom?”
“She wouldn’t say.”
“Did she take her phone?”
“A prepaid one.”
“Vehicle?”
“Train.”
“Destination?”
“She said she had to meet someone near Union Station.”
“What time?”
“Six thirty.”
“And you waited three days before doing anything.”
“I did things.”
“What things?”
“I called the number she gave me for emergencies. It was disconnected. I went to two places we had used before. I checked the hospital under three names. I went to the police station, stood across the street for twenty minutes, and left because I didn’t know what name to give them without handing Emma to your family.”
Marcus’s phone vibrated again.
This time he looked.
Victor.
He declined the call.
A message appeared almost immediately.
Call me. Now.
Marcus turned the phone facedown.
“Your dress,” he said.
Karen looked at him as though the subject were obscene.
“What about it?”
“You didn’t wear that to take a child to the conservatory.”
“It belongs to the woman whose apartment we used.”
“Why are you wearing it?”
“Our clothes were in the washer when someone came into the building. I took what was hanging nearest the door.”
“Someone followed you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Jonah, check the park footage. Every camera facing the conservatory, path, and street. Find how Karen arrived and who arrived after her.”
Jonah nodded.
“Have the apartment address ready,” Marcus told Karen.
“No.”
He looked at her.
“The girls remain here with you. Nobody enters the room without your permission. You give Jonah the address, and he sends people to determine whether the place is compromised.”
“Your people are the threat.”
“Some of them.”
“You don’t know which.”
“That’s why Jonah goes himself.”
Jonah’s eyebrows shifted slightly.
Marcus met his eyes.
“If he intended to lie today, he would have done it better.”
Jonah accepted the insult as if it were deserved.
Lily tugged Marcus’s sleeve.
“Can Emma see my room?”
“This isn’t our house.”
“My other room.”
Marcus had bought the townhouse partly because Lily hated sleeping in hotels when threats required them to leave their Gold Coast home. She had filled one upstairs bedroom with books, stuffed animals, and a collection of small glass horses he considered ugly but dusted himself when they stayed.
He looked at Emma.
“Would you like to go upstairs?”
Emma glanced at Karen.
Karen nodded.
Lily took her hand.
Emma startled at the contact, then allowed herself to be led toward the stairs. The teddy bear bumped lightly against her knee.
Halfway up, Lily turned.
“Dad?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t yell at Aunt Karen.”
Karen looked away.
Marcus waited until the girls disappeared around the landing.
“She thinks I yell,” he said.
“Do you?”
May you like
“Not usually.”
“What do you do instead?”
