Chương 11
“I know.”
“But you will testify.”
Enzo gave a tired nod. “If I live.”
“You’ll live.”
“That sounded like a promise.”
“It wasn’t.”
Nate’s blueprints showed the tunnel beginning beneath a defunct rail-loading platform. A tactical team entered there while Damiano approached the main repair building carrying the original ledger in a canvas bag.
The port wind cut through his shirt and suit jacket. Rain had stopped, but water dripped from cranes and roof edges. Container stacks rose beyond the pier like dark apartment blocks.
His watch showed eleven fifty-two.
Vittorio opened the repair-building door before Damiano knocked.
He held a pistol low against his thigh.
“You came alone.”
“No one comes alone anymore.”
“Take off the jacket.”
Damiano did.
“Turn around.”
He turned.
Vittorio searched him and found no weapon. His hand passed over the wire but did not stop. The transmitter was thin, hidden beneath a medical adhesive patch.
“Where’s Enzo?”
“Safe.”
Vittorio smiled. “You think that word means something because there’s a child now.”
“Where is Maeve?”
“Inside.”
The building contained old compressors, workbenches, and shelves of rusted parts. Two men stood near the rear wall. One was Rocco Venn, heavier than Damiano remembered, with a pistol tucked into his waistband. The other wore a hooded sweatshirt and kept glancing toward a steel door.
Maeve sat in a chair near the center of the room.
Her wrists were bound. One side of her face had swollen. She looked at Damiano without relief.
That hurt more than he expected.
“You shouldn’t have come,” she said.
Vittorio laughed. “That was almost tender.”
Damiano kept his eyes on Maeve. “Elena is safe.”
Her shoulders lowered by a fraction.
“With Sofia,” he added.
Maeve closed her eyes once. When she opened them, some of the fury had left.
“Bruno?”
“Also safe.”
“Did Elena give him away?”
“No.”
A sound escaped Maeve, half laugh and half sob, quickly swallowed.
Vittorio pointed toward the canvas bag. “The book.”
Damiano placed it on a workbench.
Vittorio did not approach. “Open it.”
Damiano removed the ledger.
“That’s Book A.”
“It’s what I have.”
“You have the drive.”
“The police have it.”
Rocco’s hand moved toward his waistband.
Vittorio’s expression remained calm. “Then you have made a difficult morning worse.”
“You chose the morning.”
“I chose leverage. Morning happened.”
Damiano looked around. One side door. Steel door at rear. Two visible guns. The tactical team should have been beneath them in the tunnel, but the earpiece Keene had offered would have been discovered. He had no sign they were in position.
Vittorio walked behind Maeve and rested the barrel of his pistol against the chair, not her body.
“Tell him,” he said.
Maeve stared at Damiano. “Tell him what?”
“Why you left.”
“He knows enough.”
“He knows Enzo frightened you. He doesn’t know you chose not to tell him about the baby.”
Damiano kept his breathing slow.
Maeve’s eyes shifted toward him. “I was going to.”
“When?” Vittorio asked. “After kindergarten?”
“Shut up.”
“You had eight years.”
“And he had a lifetime to become the kind of man a woman could call.”
Rocco glanced at Damiano, waiting for anger.
Damiano understood then. Enzo had been right. Vittorio did not merely want the records. He wanted the room to become personal enough that everyone forgot why Maeve had been taken.
“Why did you cancel the meeting with Keene?” Damiano asked.
Maeve’s eyes narrowed. “What?”
“The police meeting. Why did you cancel?”
Vittorio said, “She thought you had someone inside.”
“I’m asking her.”
Maeve studied him. She seemed to hear what he was trying to do.
“Someone accessed my intake file,” she said. “Only six people knew about it.”
“Was Enzo one?”
“No.”
“Was Nate?”
“No.”
“Did you give Book B to Enzo before or after?”
“After.”
Vittorio pressed the pistol harder against the chair. “This isn’t court.”
“No,” Maeve said. “In court, the furniture is cheaper.”
Rocco told her to shut up.
She looked at him. “You first.”
There she was. Older, bruised, terrified, and still capable of making defiance sound like irritation.
Damiano said, “Vittorio, if the police have the drive, killing us changes nothing.”
“It changes who speaks.”
“The records speak.”
“Records need context.”
“You’re providing it.”
Vittorio’s eyes moved toward Damiano’s shirt.
The room tightened.
“Search him again,” he said.
Rocco approached.
Before he reached Damiano, a compressor coughed to life somewhere behind the steel door. The hooded man turned toward it.
Maeve kicked backward.
The chair struck Vittorio’s knees. His pistol fired into the concrete floor.
The sound filled the building.
Damiano hit Rocco before Rocco cleared his waistband. They went into the workbench together. Metal tools scattered across the floor.
The steel door burst inward.
Officers entered shouting commands.
The hooded man dropped to his knees immediately. Rocco tried to lift his pistol. Damiano trapped his wrist against the floor until two officers pulled them apart.
Vittorio seized Maeve by the hair and dragged her from the chair. His gun pressed beneath her jaw.
The officers stopped.
“Back!” Vittorio shouted.
His calm had disappeared. For the first time, he looked less like a man in control than a man who had built his entire life around avoiding the moment when control failed.
Maeve’s hands remained bound, but one had worked partly free. Blood from the plastic tie marked her wrist.
Damiano stood slowly.
Keene’s voice came from behind the tactical line. “Vittorio, put the weapon down.”
“You brought her,” Vittorio said to Damiano.
“I called her.”
“You called police.”
“Yes.”
The word carried through the building.
Vittorio stared at him. “You burn thirty years for this woman?”
“No.”
“For the girl?”
“No.”
“Then why?”
Damiano looked at Maeve. Her face was pale. She was breathing through her nose, steadying herself.
“Because it should have burned before she had to come looking for proof.”
Vittorio shook his head. “You think that makes you clean?”
“No.”
“You think prison makes you brave?”
“No.”
May you like
“What do you think?”
Damiano glanced at the pistol held against Maeve.
