Chapter 3 - The Job Derek Was Paid For
Derek Lawson stopped smiling the moment Detective Lena Ward placed the photograph on the interview table.
The room was small.
Gray walls.
Metal chair.
Fluorescent light.
Derek had spent the first hour acting offended.
The second acting confused.
By the third, he wanted a lawyer.
Now he stared at the photo of himself beside Raymond Fletcher.
Detective Ward leaned back.
“You said you didn’t know him.”
Derek looked at the photograph again.
“I don’t.”
“That’s you.”
“No comment.”
“You were standing beside him less than three hours before you assaulted Amelia Hayes.”
Derek’s mouth tightened.
“I want my lawyer.”
Ward slid another photograph across the table.
This one showed Derek accepting an envelope.
His confidence collapsed.
At the hospital, Amelia was watching the same images on Vincent’s phone.
Marco had obtained them from a private camera across the street from the warehouse.
The sequence was clear.
Raymond arrived at 9:57.
Derek arrived at 10:02.
They spoke for seventeen minutes.
Raymond handed him an envelope.
Derek left.
At 10:43, Amelia was unconscious on the diner floor.
Amelia sat very still.
“He paid Derek to attack me.”
Vincent stood beside the window.
“We don’t know that.”
“What else?”
“There are possibilities.”
“Name one.”
Vincent did not.
Amelia looked at him.
“Exactly.”
The doctor had cleared her for discharge at four in the morning under instructions that someone stay with her.
Angela had volunteered.
Then Vincent explained somebody who had spent three years searching for Amelia might know her address.
Angela stopped arguing.
Now they sat in Vincent’s private office above the diner.
Amelia had refused to go to his house.
He had accepted that immediately.
The office smelled faintly of old wood and coffee.
Tony had brought soup.
Angela sat beside Amelia like an armed grandmother.
Marco stood by the desk.
Nikki had also returned.
She was the reason they knew Derek had received money.
“I saw the envelope before we went to the diner,” Nikki said.
Amelia looked at her.
“Why didn’t you say something?”
“I didn’t know what it was for.”
“You watched him grab me.”
Nikki’s eyes filled.
“I was scared.”
“So was I.”
“I know.”
Amelia’s anger rose.
Then faded.
Because Nikki did know.
Fear had a recognizable face.
Amelia had worn it for years.
She looked away.
Nikki wiped her cheek.
“He told me he had to scare somebody.”
Vincent’s attention sharpened.
“Those exact words?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“He didn’t say.”
Amelia’s stomach tightened.
“Scare me into what?”
Nobody answered.
Marco placed another file on the desk.
“I checked Fletcher.”
Amelia looked at him.
“Current address?”
“None confirmed.”
“He had an apartment outside Philadelphia.”
“Not anymore.”
“When did he leave?”
“Eight months ago.”
Amelia frowned.
“Why eight months?”
Marco opened the folder.
“Because eight months ago, he started working for a company called North Harbor Recovery.”
Vincent’s expression changed.
Angela noticed.
“What?”
Vincent said, “North Harbor is a debt collection front.”
“For who?”
“Different people.”
Marco added, “Sometimes legal. Sometimes not.”
Amelia looked at Vincent.
“You know them?”
“I know of them.”
“Connected to your world?”
Vincent did not like the phrasing.
But he nodded.
“Yes.”
Angela stood.
“Okay. I’m officially too old for this.”
Tony entered with coffee.
“You were too old ten years ago.”
“Not helping.”
Amelia stared at Raymond’s employment record.
“What would he be collecting?”
Marco flipped a page.
“That’s the problem.”
“What?”
“He wasn’t hired as a collector.”
“Then what?”
“Locator.”
Silence.
Amelia felt cold.
“A locator finds people,” Vincent said.
“I know what a locator does.”
Her voice barely worked.
Marco continued.
“He accessed commercial databases. Old leases. Work records. Utility connections.”
Angela cursed.
Amelia’s hands shook.
Vincent noticed.
“How long?”
Marco looked at the page.
“His account started searching your name seven months ago.”
Seven months.
Amelia stared at nothing.
Seven months of safety she had not actually possessed.
Seven months of Raymond knowing she existed somewhere.
Maybe knowing where.
Maybe watching.
Vincent spoke.
“Why didn’t he approach her?”
Marco shook his head.
“That’s what bothers me.”
Amelia looked up.
“What do you mean?”
“If Fletcher wanted revenge, he had months.”
Vincent understood immediately.
“He wanted something else.”
Marco nodded.
Angela sat again.
“What does Amelia have?”
Amelia almost laughed.
“Debt.”
Nobody smiled.
Vincent leaned against the desk.
“Did Raymond ever give you anything? Documents? Keys? Jewelry? Storage?”
“No.”
“Bank account?”
“No.”
“Did he ever use your name for something?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Think.”
Amelia’s eyes flashed.
“I lived with an abusive man, Vincent. I wasn’t auditing him.”
He accepted that.
“Fair.”
She closed her eyes.
Memories surfaced.
Raymond at the kitchen table.
Stacks of paper.
Phone calls he ended when she entered.
A locked metal box beneath the bed.
Once, he had accused her of moving it.
He beat her that night.
Amelia opened her eyes.
“There was a box.”
Vincent straightened.
“What box?”
“Metal. Gray. About this big.”
She showed the dimensions with her hands.
“He kept it under the bed.”
“What was inside?”
“I never saw.”
“Did you take it?”
“No.”
She paused.
The room seemed to shrink.
“The night I left…”
Everyone waited.
“I packed while he was gone.”
Her breathing changed.
“I took my duffel from under the bed.”
“Was the box there?” Vincent asked.
“I don’t remember.”
“Try.”
Amelia saw the room again.
The cracked bedroom mirror.
The duffel zipper.
Her hands trembling.
Shoes.
Two shirts.
Cash.
Bus schedule.
Something blocking the bag.
Something heavy.
“I moved it.”
“The box?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“I put it on the bed.”
“What happened after that?”
“I left.”
Vincent and Marco exchanged a look.
Amelia saw it.
“What?”
Marco said, “If the box disappeared afterward, Raymond may believe you took it.”
“I didn’t.”
“That doesn’t matter if he thinks you did.”
Amelia leaned back.
“So he spent three years looking for me because of a box?”
“Maybe.”
Nikki suddenly spoke.
“Derek said something.”
Everyone turned.
“When?”
“Last week.”
“What?”
“He was drunk. He said the job wasn’t about money. He said it was about a ledger.”
Vincent’s expression sharpened.
“A ledger?”
Nikki nodded.
“He said once Raymond got it back, ‘everybody’s debt gets erased.’”
Marco muttered something under his breath.
Vincent looked at him.
“You know what that means?”
“Maybe.”
Amelia stood too quickly.
“What?”
Marco hesitated.
Vincent answered.
“A ledger can mean records.”
“Of what?”
“Payments. Names. Favors.”
“Crimes?”
Vincent looked directly at her.
“Yes.”
Angela whispered, “Jesus.”
Amelia stared at Raymond’s photo.
“If he thought I had it, why attack me?”
“To scare you,” Vincent said.
“Into doing what?”
A vibration sounded.
Amelia’s phone.
Unknown number.
Everyone looked at it.
She picked it up.
One message.
YOU LEFT WITH SOMETHING THAT BELONGS TO ME.
Her pulse jumped.
A second message arrived.
YOU HAVE UNTIL SUNRISE.
Vincent took one step closer.
Amelia stared at the screen.
Then a photograph loaded.
Her rented Brooklyn room.
Taken from outside her bedroom window.
Tonight.
Angela whispered, “He knows where you live.”
Amelia’s phone vibrated one final time.
A video file appeared.
She pressed play.
The camera showed her bedroom.
Not from outside.
From inside.
Someone walked toward the closet.
Opened it.
May you like
Reached behind the back panel.
And pulled out a gray metal box.
