Chương 3
Claire had prepared for that.
In the bathroom was a soft twin carrier modified with two supporting pockets and a broad strap, the sort intended for an adult but shortened crudely with sewn folds. Claire had practiced with Lily using stuffed animals.
That detail made Alexander’s stomach turn.
People did not practice emergency infant evacuation with a five-year-old unless they believed something real was coming.
A man entered.
Lily heard Claire say, “You’re not taking anything.”
Another voice said, “Mr. Vale is done asking.”
Claire locked Lily in the bathroom from the outside.
There was shouting.
A crash.
Then silence.
Lily waited because Claire had taught her to count slowly to six hundred.
She reached four hundred and something before somebody tried the bathroom handle.
She didn’t make a sound.
The person left.
Eventually Lily pushed a small screwdriver beneath the door through the gap, a second piece of Claire’s planning. The lock was the simple privacy kind. She worked until the button released.
Claire was gone.
So were both of her phones.
There was blood on the kitchen floor.
Not much, Lily said.
She knew because she checked.
Ortiz’s face stayed neutral.
“What did your mom tell you to do if she wasn’t there?”
“Get Nora and Mae. Go downstairs through the laundry stairs. Go out the back. Find Mr. Blackwood.”
“Did she tell you where he would be?”
“His big building.”
Lily looked at Alexander.
“She said he comes out before eight most mornings.”
Alexander’s throat tightened.
Claire had known his schedule.
“What if he wasn’t there?” Ortiz asked.
“Go to the front desk and say Claire Monroe sent me.”
“Did she tell you anyone else to call?”
“A lady named Maya.”
“Last name?”
“Chen.”
Alexander knew Maya Chen.
Attorney. Former federal prosecutor. Claire’s closest friend from graduate school.
Ortiz wrote the name down.
“What happened after you left the building?”
“I went behind the bakery.”
“With both babies?”
Lily nodded.
“The carrier hurt.”
Alexander looked down.
The worn coat covered bruising near her shoulder where the strap had rubbed.
She had made it less than half a block before the man from the apartment building found her.
“He kept saying to come with him,” Lily said. “I said no. Then I saw Mr. Blackwood’s car.”
“Did you know him?”
“Yeah.”
That word landed harder than Alexander expected.
Ortiz followed Lily’s glance.
“How?”
“He used to make pancakes.”
Alexander looked away.
Claire had mocked his pancakes because they came from a boxed mix.
Lily had eaten four.
That had been two years ago.
One ordinary Sunday morning he had almost forgotten.
Ortiz finished gently.
The babies were mildly cold but stable. Both had lost a little weight since their last recorded pediatric visit, but nothing immediately dangerous. Lily was dehydrated, exhausted, and hungry.
Hospital staff brought food.
Lily ate half a grilled cheese sandwich with one hand while touching Mae’s blanket with the other.
Alexander’s phone vibrated thirty-four times in twenty minutes.
Marcus finally took it.
“You have forty-three messages now.”
“Turn it off.”
“Board chair called six times.”
Alexander looked at him.
“My uncle?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you tell him anything?”
“No.”
“Good.”
Marcus hesitated.
“Security at the tower sent me the street footage. They got the plate on the first SUV.”
“Give it to Ortiz.”
“Already did.”
Alexander’s eyes narrowed.
Marcus shrugged.
“You pay me for judgment.”
“Occasionally.”
“You mostly pay me to stand behind you and look unpleasant.”
“You’re exceptionally gifted.”
Marcus almost smiled.
Then his face changed.
“Second SUV’s plate was obscured.”
Alexander looked toward the hospital room.
“Was it the same make?”
“Same fleet class. Black Chevrolet Suburban. Tinted.”
“Rental?”
“Could be.”
A nurse walked past carrying fresh blankets.
The smell of hospital detergent triggered something small and useless in Alexander’s memory: Claire standing in his kitchen two years ago, folding Lily’s tiny socks because she said his housekeeper folded them wrong.
He had told her socks did not have a wrong way.
Claire had stared at him.
“You have never been responsible for a five-year-old’s left foot at six-thirty in the morning.”
Lily had been three then.
Alexander sat down in the plastic chair outside the room.
His steel watch felt too heavy.
Detective Ortiz came out.
“Mr. Blackwood.”
“Yes.”
“Tell me about Claire Monroe.”
He looked at the closed door.
“What part?”
“The part where a missing woman tells her child to bring two newborn babies to you.”
Alexander rested his forearms on his knees.
“We were together.”
“When?”
“On and off for almost three years.”
“Ended?”
“Eighteen months ago.”
“Children are twelve days old.”
“Yes.”
Ortiz waited.
Alexander hated people who used silence effectively.
Claire had been better at it than anyone.
“We saw each other ten months ago.”
“One time?”
“Yes.”
“Did you know she was pregnant?”
“No.”
“Did she have a reason to think you’d be dangerous if you found out?”
Alexander looked at her.
“No.”
“Did she have a reason to think somebody around you would be?”
That question stayed between them.
“I don’t know.”
“You hesitate a lot for a man who says he doesn’t know.”
“She came to me that night because she believed something was wrong inside my company.”
“What?”
“She wouldn’t say.”
“Why not?”
“She didn’t trust me.”
Ortiz closed her notebook.
“Why?”
Alexander looked toward the floor.
Because the true answer did not fit neatly into a sentence.
A year and a half earlier, Claire had told him someone was following her.
He had taken it seriously.
Too seriously.
Without telling her, he assigned a Blackwood security contractor to watch her apartment and office. He monitored the reports himself for nearly two weeks.
He called it protection.
Claire called it proof that he didn’t understand the difference between caring for someone and controlling them.
She resigned from Blackwood Development three days later.
Their relationship lasted another month.
Barely.
“I made a decision on her behalf once,” he said.
“What kind of decision?”
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“I had security watch her without telling her.”
Ortiz’s expression hardened.
