Chương 7
Adrian said nothing.
Lydia turned toward the detective.
“I will answer your questions. I want counsel present.”
“That is your right.”
As they walked away, the pearls on Lydia’s ring clicked again.
Mara shut her good eye.
“It was louder on the phone,” she said.
“Phones change sounds,” Dr. Singh told her.
Adrian sat beside the examination table.
“You don’t have to decide what it means.”
“What if I’m wrong?”
“Then you’re wrong.”
“What happens to her?”
“Nothing should happen because of one sound.”
“Things happen because of your face.”
Adrian looked at her.
“You make people think you’ve already decided.”
He took a breath.
“I haven’t.”
Victor’s phone vibrated. He read the screen.
“The Red Hook archive reports a fire alarm,” he said.
Park, halfway down the corridor with Lydia, stopped.
“Is there a fire?”
“Alarm company shows one sensor in the loading bay. Fire department dispatched.”
Lydia turned.
“That building has no active staff at night.”
Victor looked at Adrian.
“Item four-seventeen is stored there.”
Park swore under her breath and called her team.
Lydia’s expression remained controlled, but the color had left her face.
“What is item four-seventeen?” she asked.
No one answered.
The fire at the Red Hook archive did not consume the building. Sprinklers activated in the loading bay and damaged a row of crated furniture, several files, and two electrical panels. Firefighters found a plastic container of solvent near the alarm sensor and signs that someone had forced a rear window.
Item 417 was a blue-wrapped mahogany chair from the Vale family’s former house in Newport.
Beneath the conservation wrap, taped to the chair’s underside, police found two disposable masks, a roll of medical tape, and a bloodstained section of rope.
The discovery should have made the case simpler.
It did the opposite.
The warehouse access log showed Victor Dane entering at four forty-eight that afternoon.
Victor had been standing behind Adrian at a shareholder conference in Midtown at four forty-eight. Hundreds of people had seen him. Cameras had recorded him. His credential, however, had opened the Red Hook door.
Someone had cloned it.
The system recorded a second entry at six twenty-three under Lydia Crane’s credential. Lydia had been photographed at a foundation reception in Brooklyn Heights from six until seven fifteen.
Her credential had been cloned too.
The only access that appeared legitimate belonged to Owen Mercer.
He claimed he had gone to the warehouse at noon to review archived legal files and left before one.
There was no exit record.
By ten thirty that night, the emergency board meeting had been postponed, the kidnapping image had appeared on two news sites, and reporters were gathering outside both hospitals.
Celia remained unconscious but stable. Blood tests suggested a sedative commonly prescribed for insomnia, though no doctor would say whether she had taken it willingly until she woke.
Jonas Bell was transferred from Jersey City under police guard. He had lost enough blood to require surgery, but he told detectives the man who attacked him had known the private route he used from Mara’s school to Celia’s apartment.
Nolan stopped speaking after his attorney arrived.
Lydia answered basic questions but denied involvement. She acknowledged that her ring might have produced the sound Mara heard. She also pointed out that she wore it almost every day and had spoken with dozens of employees while wearing it. She said North Quay’s name had been appropriated by someone trying to implicate her.
Owen’s attorney advised him not to consent to a search of his devices.
At midnight, Adrian stood in a small family waiting room at St. Catherine’s while Mara slept down the hall.
Victor entered carrying two coffees. He set one near Adrian, who did not touch it.
“You should rest,” Victor said.
“I dislike useless suggestions.”
“I know.”
“Then stop making them.”
Victor sat. He removed his earpiece and placed it on the table. Without it, he looked less like a security chief and more like a tired man with a shaved head and a deep crease between his eyes.
“I failed her,” he said.
Adrian stared through the dark window.
“You failed me.”
Victor accepted the correction.
Adrian turned.
“That should make you feel better.”
“It doesn’t.”
“No.”
The refrigerator in the corner made a rattling sound. Victor stood, opened its door, shifted a bottle of water away from the rear panel, and closed it. The noise stopped.
“My credential was copied three weeks ago,” he said.
“How?”
“I don’t know. We use encrypted chips with rotating validation.”
“Nolan?”
“He had physical proximity, but he didn’t have the equipment.”
“Who did?”
“Corporate security engineering. Four people. Two are in California. One is on parental leave in Queens. The fourth resigned last month.”
“Name.”
“Leah Soren.”
“Why did she resign?”
“She said Lydia bypassed security review on a fleet-tracking contract.”
Adrian looked at him.
“Did you investigate?”
“I asked Lydia. She said the contract was temporary and approved by Owen.”
“And you accepted that.”
“I checked the document.”
“Did you check the approval?”
Victor’s silence answered.
Adrian laughed once without humor.
“You trusted paper.”
“I trusted Owen’s signature.”
“So did my father.”
Victor looked down at the coffee.
“Leah has not answered calls. Her apartment is empty.”
“Find her.”
“Police are already looking.”
“I didn’t tell you to interfere.”
“That is new.”
Adrian turned back to the window.
Below them, an ambulance arrived without its siren. Two nurses rolled an empty stretcher through the entrance.
“Park was right,” he said.
Victor waited.
“I created weather.”
“That sounds like something a detective says when she wants a rich man to confess to being rich.”
“I didn’t ask for your opinion.”
“You rarely have to.”
Adrian looked at him. Victor’s mouth had moved slightly. It might have been a smile.
The waiting-room door opened.
May you like
Mara stood there in hospital socks, her cream dress replaced by blue scrubs. Her hair had been washed and loosely braided by a nurse, though several strands had already escaped.
“You’re supposed to be asleep,” Adrian said.
