Chương 7
“No.”
“Could refer to the order you forgot at work.”
Lena looked at her.
“Table twelve’s card,” Chen said. “You told me.”
“You think someone at the restaurant did this?”
“I think whoever sent it knows where you work and where you live.”
Daniel spoke from the window. “That information is in a dozen commercial databases.”
Chen gave him a thin smile. “Good afternoon, Mr. Mercer.”
“Detective.”
“You tell your employer not to move evidence?”
“I told her to call you.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“I told her to leave it.”
Lena crossed her arms. “Are you two going to continue flirting, or can someone explain how bad this is?”
Neither smiled.
Chen sealed the cash and box in separate bags.
“If this money can be connected to Rosetti accounts, it makes you look involved.”
“Dominic said he didn’t send it.”
“Dominic says many things.”
“He sounded surprised.”
“People can practice that.”
Daniel’s jaw shifted.
Lena said, “Vincent knew my name before Dominic introduced us.”
Chen stopped labeling the bag.
“When?”
“At the hospital. He said he saw me online.”
“Your name wasn’t public until noon.”
“He arrived before noon.”
Daniel turned from the window.
“What time?” Chen asked.
“About eleven forty.”
She wrote it down.
“Did Lily react to him?”
“She grabbed my hand.”
“Anything else?”
“She had said the man in the car smelled like lemons. Vincent had lemon lozenges.”
Daniel said, “Vincent always has them. Acid reflux.”
Chen looked at him. “Useful.”
“I didn’t say it was evidence.”
“No. You said it before considering whether you were allowed to.”
Daniel’s face became unreadable.
Lena sat down at the table. “Why would he take Lily?”
No one answered.
Chen removed her gloves.
“Because children are leverage,” she said. “Against parents, families, organizations, and witnesses. The difficult part is determining what someone wanted the leverage to move.”
Dominic came to Lena’s apartment that evening without his security team.
At least, without one she could see.
She opened the door but did not invite him in.
He looked past her at the empty place where the evidence box had been.
“Chen took it?”
“Yes.”
“You should have called me first.”
“You told me you didn’t send it.”
“I would have contained the situation.”
“That phrase is why people think you’re a criminal.”
His gaze hardened. “People think I’m a criminal because I am one.”
The hallway went quiet.
Mrs. Patel’s television murmured behind her door.
Lena lowered her voice. “You say things like that because you know no one can prove the exact part that matters.”
“Probably.”
“Did Vincent take Lily?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you suspect him?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Dominic glanced down the stairwell. “May I come inside?”
“No.”
“Lena.”
“You researched my rent, my work history, and probably every stupid thing I did before I was twenty-five. You can stand in the hall.”
He looked tired for the first time. Not physically tired. Worn at the edges in a way expensive tailoring could not hide.
“Over the last two years,” he said, “I’ve been closing parts of my business.”
“Illegal parts.”
“Yes.”
“And Vincent doesn’t approve.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because legitimate companies require patience. They produce less money and more paperwork. Vincent considers paperwork an insult.”
“Did he threaten you?”
“Not directly.”
“What would taking Lily accomplish?”
Dominic looked at Mrs. Patel’s door, then at Lena.
“My wife died three years ago.”
Lena remembered the florist receipt.
“Bianca?”
His eyes narrowed slightly.
“The coat pocket,” she said. “I wasn’t searching. There was a receipt.”
He nodded once.
“Her car went through a guardrail near Lake Geneva. The police called it mechanical failure. I believed a rival organization arranged it.”
“Did Vincent agree?”
“He encouraged that belief.”
“Was he right?”
“I no longer think so.”
Lena waited.
“Bianca had been trying to persuade me to leave everything that could reach Lily,” Dominic said. “After her death, I expanded instead. Vincent said retreat would look weak.”
“And now you’re trying to leave.”
“As much as men like me are permitted to leave.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means there are people whose income depends on my sins remaining profitable.”
The directness should have made him sound monstrous. Instead, it made him sound like a man who had finally stopped using respectable nouns.
“Vincent wanted you frightened,” Lena said.
“Possibly.”
“He wanted you angry.”
“Yes.”
“At whom?”
Dominic’s face closed again.
“A group on the South Side has been pressuring one of our freight companies. If Lily had disappeared permanently, or if I believed they had taken her, I would have responded.”
“With what?”
“You don’t need that answer.”
“You came to my apartment.”
“To warn you.”
“About Vincent?”
“About everyone.”
“Very useful.”
Dominic looked at her for a long moment.
“The five thousand dollars was not meant to buy you,” he said. “It was meant to make the police believe you had already been bought.”
“And if they believe that?”
“They stop seeing you as a witness and start seeing you as a participant.”
Lena folded her arms tighter.
“Can you keep me safe?”
The question seemed to offend him, though not because he lacked an answer.
“Yes.”
“Could you keep Lily safe?”
His expression went still.
“No,” he said.
The admission changed the air between them.
“Then don’t promise me things,” Lena said.
“I can put you somewhere secure.”
“I have a rent problem, not a bunker problem.”
“You have both now.”
She looked past him toward the broken hallway light.
“Who knew I used that alley?”
“Your coworkers. Anyone who watched you leave. Anyone who accessed your phone location. Anyone who followed you.”
“My location is off.”
“That does not mean what people think it means.”
“Did Vincent know where Lily would be left?”
“If he planned it.”
“You think someone meant for me to find her.”
“I think the location was chosen.”
“Why me?”
May you like
Dominic’s gaze dropped to the LENA tag still stitched onto the damp work shirt visible through her partly open bedroom door.
“Because you look ordinary,” he said. “Because you have debt. Because you had no known connection to me. Because if you called emergency services, the police would have a clean witness. If you called the number on the phone first, I would know Lily was alive.”
