Chương 6
“Which building?”
Sophia hesitated.
Julian’s voice dropped slightly. “Marcus sent a recording to a minor. He knows the drive is missing. If it remains where you left it, anyone near it may be at risk.”
“It isn’t near anyone.”
“Where?”
“Your office.”
For the first time that night, Julian’s control showed a crack.
Not in his face. In his right hand. His thumb stopped moving against the side of his signet ring.
Elena turned toward Sophia. “You put stolen evidence in a mafia boss’s office?”
“It was the next job on my schedule.”
“That is the worst plan I’ve ever heard.”
“I had fractured ribs before you started criticizing me.”
“You didn’t when you made the plan.”
“It seemed temporary.”
“Temporary until what?”
“Until I figured something out.”
Elena stood and walked to the fireplace, arms folded. “You always say that right before not telling me anything.”
Sophia watched her sister’s narrow shoulders rise beneath the green sweatshirt. Elena was angry because anger gave her somewhere to stand. Sophia recognized the habit. She had taught it to her.
Julian leaned back in the chair. “Where in my office?”
“You have a filing cabinet behind the conference room.”
“It is locked.”
“The bottom drawer sticks if you pull it left before you pull it out.”
Something passed across Julian’s expression. Not outrage. Irritation at a flaw in the physical world.
“I taped the case underneath the drawer.”
“Who else knows?”
“Nobody.”
“Marcus knew you entered my building after leaving the warehouse.”
“He showed me a traffic camera image.”
Julian looked toward the doorway Thomas had used.
“It showed my cleaning van near your building,” Sophia continued. “He guessed. I denied it. Then he started asking about your office.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That I emptied wastebaskets and cleaned bathrooms.”
“Did he believe you?”
“He broke two ribs before he asked a second time.”
Elena turned from the fireplace. Her face lost its anger so quickly that she looked younger.
Sophia wished she had chosen different words.
Julian rose.
“Where are you going?” Sophia asked.
“To retrieve the drive.”
“No.”
He stopped.
“If you send somebody, Marcus will know.”
“He already believes it is there.”
“He said if I gave it to you, he would go after Elena.”
“Elena is here.”
“He may have other people.”
“He does.”
“Then you can’t just take it.”
Julian’s eyes darkened. “Leaving it in an office accessed by employees is not protection.”
“No one uses that drawer.”
“That is not the point.”
“It is my evidence.”
“You do not know what it is.”
“Neither do you.”
“I know Marcus Lane beat you for it.”
“And I know he wanted me to fear you more than him.”
The sentence held Julian in place.
Elena looked between them. Naomi quietly gathered the blood-pressure cuff and medication wrappers from the coffee table, then left the room without being dismissed.
Sophia breathed through the pain. “He kept saying you would kill me once you had it. He said you couldn’t let a cleaner see your books.”
“My books are not in a plastic case beneath a broken cabinet.”
“How would I know?”
“You wouldn’t.”
“That’s the problem.”
Julian’s jaw tightened.
Elena returned to the sofa and sat beside Sophia. “Couldn’t someone copy it before moving it?”
“No,” Sophia said. “No computers. No networks. He might track when it’s opened.”
Julian looked at her with something new, not respect exactly, but an adjustment.
“You thought about that.”
“I spent two years cleaning an insurance company’s cybersecurity floor. People talk in restrooms.”
Elena touched the torn edge of Sophia’s hospital wristband. “That is not how cybersecurity works.”
“It was enough to make me paranoid.”
Julian took out his phone.
Sophia caught his sleeve. Her hand had less strength now, but he stopped anyway.
“Do not send men into that office,” she said.
“I’m closing the building.”
“Marcus may be watching.”
“He is watching.”
“Then what?”
Julian looked at the rain sliding down the front windows.
“We let him see what he expects.”
At two in the morning, a cleaning van from Sophia’s company parked behind Julian’s office building.
The woman who climbed out wore a company jacket, carried a plastic bucket, and complained loudly into her phone about a boyfriend named Travis. Cameras recorded her at the loading entrance. A doorman signed her in. She rode the service elevator to the upper floors, cleaned two vacant offices, and left forty-three minutes later with the same bucket.
The woman was one of Thomas’s former federal agents. There was no Travis.
While she created the visible visit, Julian entered through a passage connecting the building’s underground garage to a neighboring property. Thomas went with him. They left both phones in the SUV and carried no electronic equipment beyond a small flashlight.
Sophia remained at the safe house with Elena and Naomi.
She did not sleep.
Medication softened the edges of the room but failed to quiet her thoughts. Each time headlights passed through the trees outside, she expected Marcus. Each time a guard’s radio clicked in the hallway, she imagined a gunshot following it.
Elena sat at the kitchen table with a mug of instant cocoa. She had changed into borrowed pajamas printed with tiny sailboats. Thomas’s sister, apparently, collected clothing for grandchildren who rarely visited.
“You should lie down,” Sophia said.
“So should you.”
“I’m sitting.”
“That is not the same.”
“Neither is drinking powdered sugar at two in the morning.”
Elena stirred the cocoa. “You never told me your hours were cut.”
“I fixed it.”
“You used the credit card.”
“I fixed it temporarily.”
“You paid rent with cash from Aunt Rosa.”
Sophia looked at her. “How do you know?”
“I’m not blind.”
“No one said you were.”
“You act like it.”
May you like
The refrigerator motor came on again. Sophia stared at the magnets on the door: a plumber’s number, a faded calendar, a photograph turned facedown beneath a clip. The detail reminded her of Julian’s desk.
She wondered what kind of family made a habit of hiding faces.
