Chapter 3 - The Woman in the Red File
Victor closed the door behind him.
Dominic remained standing beside Meline.
“Say it.”
Victor looked older than he had an hour earlier.
“Thomas knew he was going to die.”
Meline stared at him.
“He asked me to help stage the crash.”
“What?”
“The crash was real. His death wasn’t supposed to be.”
Dominic stepped forward.
“Thomas survived?”
“For forty-three minutes.”
Meline’s breath caught.
Victor continued.
“I pulled him from the car. He was badly injured. He refused the hospital because he believed your father’s people controlled the emergency rooms.”
Dominic’s jaw tightened.
“Mine?”
“Your father’s.”
“What did Thomas say?”
Victor looked at Meline.
“He gave me a key.”
“To B-17?”
“No. To you.”
Meline frowned.
Victor pointed toward the bracelet on her wrist.
The thin gold bracelet she had worn since childhood.
Her mother had told her it belonged to her grandmother.
Meline touched it.
“No.”
Victor nodded.
“Thomas designed the clasp.”
Dominic examined it.
There was a nearly invisible seam.
Meline pressed it.
The bracelet separated.
Inside was a tiny metal strip engraved with coordinates.
And one word.
EVELYN.
“My mother.”
Victor shook his head.
“No.”
Meline’s blood went cold.
“Then who is Evelyn?”
Victor walked to the desk and opened Dominic’s secure laptop.
“Someone your father died protecting.”
A database appeared.
Dominic entered credentials.
Victor searched.
One file emerged.
Red classification.
EVELYN HAYES.
Meline stared.
The photograph showed a woman who looked almost exactly like her.
Not her mother.
Not anyone she knew.
The birth date was twenty-seven years earlier than Meline’s.
“Who is she?”
Victor answered quietly.
“Your father’s sister.”
Meline had never known he had one.
The file said Evelyn disappeared in 1998.
The same year B-17 had supposedly been filled with concrete.
Dominic read further.
Then stopped.
“What?”
He rotated the screen.
STATUS: PROTECTED WITNESS.
LAST KNOWN HANDLER: ARTHUR COSTELLO.
Dominic’s father.
Meline looked at him.
“You said your father was a criminal.”
“He was.”
“Then why was he protecting my aunt?”
“I don’t know.”
The mystery deepened.
By dawn, Dominic’s people had traced the kidnapping photograph to an abandoned printing warehouse in Queens.
Meline insisted on going.
Dominic refused.
She went anyway.
He discovered her hiding in the back of Victor’s SUV.
For five full seconds he simply stared at her.
“You climbed into an armored vehicle?”
“Yes.”
“After I specifically told you to stay?”
“Yes.”
“Do you ever listen?”
“When people say intelligent things.”
Victor coughed to hide another laugh.
Dominic glared at him.
At the warehouse, they found the chair.
The newspaper.
Blood.
But no mother.
Meline searched the floor.
Architects learned to see disturbances.
A clean rectangle on a dusty surface.
Something had been removed.
She crouched.
“What?”
“There was a cabinet here.”
Dominic joined her.
Scratches led toward the wall.
Meline pushed a loose panel.
A hidden room opened.
Inside stood shelves of files.
Hundreds.
One red folder waited on a desk.
Her name was written across it.
MELINE HAYES.
She opened it.
Photographs.
School.
College.
First job.
Her apartment.
Harper.
Every year of her life had been documented.
Dominic’s expression became murderous.
“Someone has watched you since you were twelve.”
Meline turned another page.
There was a photograph from Belladonna.
Taken three weeks earlier.
Dominic sat at table seventeen.
Same booth.
Same seat.
“They knew you would be there.”
“No,” Dominic said. “I change restaurants constantly.”
“Then someone close to you told them.”
He looked at Victor.
Victor’s face hardened.
“Not me.”
Meline found another page.
A list of dates.
At the bottom:
PHASE TWO: CONTACT ESTABLISHED.
Date: tonight.
“They wanted us to meet,” she whispered.
Dominic looked at her.
The entire blind-date mistake had been engineered.
Harper.
Greg.
Table seventeen.
Everything.
Then they heard a phone ringing.
Inside the hidden room.
Dominic found it beneath the desk.
One incoming call.
UNKNOWN.
He answered.
A distorted voice said, “You brought her exactly where we needed her.”
Dominic looked at Meline.
A red light began blinking above the door.
Victor shouted.
“Move!”
The steel door slammed shut.
Gas hissed from the ceiling.
Meline covered her mouth.
Dominic fired at the lock.
Nothing.
Victor searched the walls.
Meline looked at the floor plan in her mind.
Old industrial buildings.
Service ducts.
Load-bearing walls.
“Behind the shelves!”
They shoved them aside.
A maintenance hatch.
Victor kicked it open.
They crawled through seconds before the gas filled the room.
Outside, Meline collapsed coughing.
Dominic knelt beside her.
His hand touched her cheek.
“Look at me.”
She did.
For once there was nothing intimidating in his face.
Only fear.
For her.
“I’m okay.”
His hand remained there a second too long.
Victor politely looked away.
Then Dominic’s phone rang.
Harper.
He answered.
Her voice was frantic.
“Meline’s mother just called me.”
Meline grabbed the phone.
“Mom?”
Harper interrupted.
“No. Listen. She gave me an address and said Meline must come alone.”
“Where?”
Harper told her.
Meline recognized it.
Hawthorne Exchange.
Then Harper added, “And she said something else.”
“What?”
“She said your father didn’t build B-17 to hide Costello secrets.”
Meline’s heartbeat slowed.
“What did he build it for?”
Harper took a breath.
“To expose the person who actually controlled the Costello family.”
A noise came from behind Harper.
She stopped speaking.
“Harper?”
Nothing.
Then a man’s voice replaced hers.
“Hello, Meline.”
Meline gripped the phone.
She knew that voice.
She had heard it less than twelve hours earlier.
May you like
At Belladonna.
Greg Higgins whispered, “I think it’s time you learned who arranged our blind date...”
