Chương 10
“You knew who she was.”
“I knew she was someone Dane watched.”
Elena stepped forward.
“Why my apartment?”
Eddie looked at Lucian.
Then at her.
“Adrian ordered me to take him somewhere controllable if the hit failed.”
“You knew he was going to be shot?”
“Yes.”
Lucian’s voice became very quiet.
“How long?”
“Three days.”
Marco shifted beside him.
Lucian said, “You drove my father for twenty years.”
Eddie flinched.
“That’s why I’m telling you.”
“No. You’re telling me because Adrian turned on you.”
Eddie looked away.
Lucian’s jaw tightened.
Elena watched the betrayal become personal.
Not business.
A child remembering who once drove him to school, perhaps.
Who waited outside funerals.
Who knew birthdays.
Eddie said, “Adrian has my son.”
Marco stopped smiling.
Lucian’s anger did not disappear.
It changed shape.
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
“How long?”
“Since Tuesday.”
“And you still brought me to that meeting.”
“He said he’d kill Peter.”
Lucian stared at him.
Eddie’s eyes filled, but he did not cry.
“I chose my boy.”
Lucian said nothing.
Elena understood before he did.
Of course Eddie had.
Not nobly.
Not cleanly.
He had traded another man’s life for his son’s.
Humans did worse things for smaller reasons.
“What about me?” Elena asked.
Eddie looked at her.
“I was told the nurse was protected.”
“By whom?”
“Dane.”
The absurdity struck her.
Garrett considered surveillance protection.
Eddie continued, “Adrian said Dane had history with you but wouldn’t let anyone touch you.”
Elena almost laughed.
“That sounds like him.”
“What?”
“Ownership.”
A car engine echoed somewhere below.
Marco moved toward the ramp.
Lucian said, “Talk faster.”
Eddie reached inside his coat.
Marco raised a gun.
Elena stepped back.
Eddie froze.
“Phone.”
“Slowly.”
He removed it.
“Adrian’s location schedule. Vault address. Everything I could copy.”
Lucian took the phone.
“Where’s Garrett?”
“I don’t know.”
Elena watched Eddie’s face.
“You do.”
“No.”
“You looked left before answering.”
Eddie blinked.
Lucian glanced at her.
Elena stepped closer.
“Garrett used to do that when he decided whether a lie needed details.”
Eddie exhaled.
“Dane has an office at the lake shipping yards. Building C.”
“Is he there now?”
“I don’t know.”
“Better.”
Lucian scrolled through the phone.
His expression hardened.
“Adrian’s meeting Dane at ten.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re alive,” Eddie said. “And because she got away.”
Headlights swept the concrete wall.
Eddie turned.
“Go.”
A black SUV came around the ramp.
Marco fired first.
The windshield starred.
Elena dropped behind a concrete barrier.
Lucian pulled her down as bullets struck the pillar.
The sound was enormous.
Not cinematic.
Not clean.
Concrete dust filled her mouth.
Eddie shouted.
Marco returned fire.
Lucian had somehow acquired a handgun from Eddie.
Elena grabbed his sleeve.
“You cannot—”
“I know.”
He leaned around the pillar and fired twice.
A tire blew.
The SUV swerved into a parked maintenance cart.
Silence followed.
Then a door opened.
Someone groaned.
Elena stayed down.
Every instinct from work screamed to move toward injury.
Every survival instinct screamed not to.
Eddie lay ten feet away.
Blood spread beneath his shoulder.
“Elena,” Lucian said.
She was already moving.
She crawled to Eddie.
Entry wound high chest.
Breathing shallow.
Bad.
Very bad.
Eddie caught her wrist.
“Peter.”
“I know.”
“Don’t let—”
“Save your breath.”
She pressed fabric against the wound.
Eddie looked at Lucian.
“South dock.”
Lucian leaned close.
“What?”
“Peter. South dock warehouse.”
“How do you know?”
“I heard one of them say it.”
Elena said, “We need an ambulance.”
Eddie gripped her harder.
“No police.”
“You don’t get to choose.”
“Elena,” Lucian said.
She looked at him.
He knew.
Eddie knew.
The injury was not survivable without immediate surgery, maybe not with it.
Elena hated them both for knowing.
She called 911 anyway.
Eddie was still breathing when sirens became audible.
Lucian and Marco left before responders arrived.
Elena stayed.
That was her choice.
A paramedic team rushed in.
Elena identified herself as a trauma nurse and gave them everything she had observed.
She did not mention Lucian.
Not yet.
Police arrived thirty seconds later.
Real ones.
Body cameras activated.
Questions.
Names.
One officer recognized her hospital badge.
Elena gave her current legal name: Elena Marsh.
She gave no false statement.
She said she had been brought to the garage by a man named Eddie whom she knew only briefly.
That was true.
She said armed men attacked.
True.
She said she could not identify every person involved.
Also true.
By nine thirty, she was sitting in the back of an ambulance with dried blood on her hands.
Eddie died before reaching surgery.
A detective named Lena Ortiz took Elena’s statement.
Ortiz was forty-something, tired-eyed, with a habit of tapping her pen against her thumb.
“Why were you at Belmont?”
Elena looked at the wet pavement.
This was the moment.
Seven years of avoiding police narrowed into one decision.
Garrett counted on her fear of systems.
Lucian counted on secrecy.
Elena had spent her adult life becoming useful during emergencies because usefulness created rules.
Pressure this wound.
Start that line.
Give this medication.
Do not leave the room.
Outside the hospital, life had never been so clear.
She looked at Ortiz.
“My ex-husband is stalking me.”
Ortiz stopped tapping the pen.
“Name?”
“Garrett Dane.”
Something in Ortiz’s expression changed.
“You know him?”
“I know the name.”
Elena waited.
Ortiz said, “Former Lakehurst officer?”
“Yes.”
“He’s been mentioned in another investigation.”
“What investigation?”
“I can’t discuss that yet.”
The familiar institutional wall went up.
Elena almost withdrew.
Almost.
Then she took out the clean burner phone.
“I have messages.”
Ortiz looked at it.
“From Dane?”
“Forwarded through a hospital employee he paid to track me.”
Ortiz became very still.
“That employee willing to say so?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can I have the phone?”
Elena’s hand closed around it.
Trust did not return because one detective asked correctly.
May you like
Ortiz saw the hesitation.
“You don’t have to give it to me now. I can photograph what you show me and we can arrange a formal extraction with your consent.”
