Chapter 2 - The Dead Man in the Photograph
Elias crossed the room in two strides.
He pulled the door open.
The hallway was empty.
Footsteps hammered down the stairs.
Elias ran after them.
By the third-floor landing, he caught a glimpse of a gray jacket.
By the second, the stranger shoved through the exit.
Elias reached the street seconds later.
A motorcycle accelerated away.
No plate.
Black helmet.
Nothing identifiable.
His phone rang.
Bruno.
Elias answered.
“Where are you?”
“Chelsea.”
A pause.
“Why?”
“Someone knows.”
Bruno’s voice changed immediately.
“Address.”
Elias gave it.
“Stay inside. I’m coming.”
Elias returned upstairs.
Adeline was packing.
Not clothes.
Medicine.
Documents.
Evan’s laptop.
“What are you doing?”
“Leaving.”
“You’re safer if you stay.”
Adeline stared at him.
“Someone photographed you outside my apartment thirty seconds after you arrived. Explain which part of that sounds safe.”
Elias could not.
Evan held the photograph.
“Dad knew this would happen.”
Adeline turned sharply.
“Stop.”
“No.”
“Evan.”
“He died because everyone kept stopping.”
That silenced her.
Elias sat opposite him.
“What did your father know?”
Evan glanced at Adeline.
She looked defeated.
Finally she pulled out a chair.
“Three years ago, Dad worked maintenance at Harbor Nine.”
Elias knew the name.
One of his warehouses.
“He wasn’t supposed to be there the night of your crash,” she continued. “Someone called him in.”
“Who?”
“He never told us.”
“Why?”
“He thought our phones were being monitored.”
Elias remembered Daniel dragging him through shattered glass.
Smoke.
Blood.
A second car disappearing from the scene.
He had always assumed it belonged to Haverin’s men.
“What did Daniel see?”
Adeline’s answer was quiet.
“Someone sabotaging your car.”
Elias did not move.
“Before the crash?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t he tell police?”
“He tried.”
“What happened?”
“He came home terrified. Two days later, someone broke into our apartment. Nothing valuable was taken.”
Evan lifted the photograph.
“Only Dad’s work notebook.”
Adeline continued.
“After that, Dad stopped talking. He said there were people around you who needed you to believe Haverin ordered the attack.”
Elias’s jaw tightened.
Rourke had been the person who convinced him Haverin was responsible.
“What happened after Daniel saved me?”
“He survived the fire,” Adeline said.
Elias stared at her.
“What?”
“For nine hours.”
Elias had been told Daniel died at the scene.
“He was taken to St. Vincent’s under the wrong name,” she said. “Dad called me from the hospital.”
Elias felt something inside him go cold.
“What did he say?”
“That the man responsible would come looking for us. He told me to take Evan and disappear.”
“And then?”
“By the time I reached the hospital, he was dead.”
“Cause?”
“Complications from smoke inhalation.”
Evan gave a bitter laugh.
“That’s what the paperwork said.”
Elias understood.
“You don’t believe it.”
Adeline looked directly at him.
“There were bruises around his throat.”
Bruno arrived eleven minutes later with two men.
Elias ordered the men downstairs.
Bruno entered alone.
He saw Adeline.
Then Evan.
Then Daniel’s photograph.
His face changed.
Elias noticed.
“You recognize him.”
Bruno did not answer quickly enough.
“Bruno.”
“Yes.”
Adeline stood.
“How?”
Bruno looked at Elias.
“Daniel Hayes worked Harbor Nine.”
“You knew that?”
“Yes.”
“And you knew he survived the crash?”
Bruno’s silence became an answer.
Elias stepped toward him.
“You told me he died at the scene.”
“I told you what I was told.”
“By whom?”
Bruno’s eyes hardened.
“Rourke.”
The room became silent.
Adeline whispered, “Of course.”
Elias turned.
“What does that mean?”
“My father wrote two names before he died.”
“One was mine?”
“No.”
She looked at Bruno.
“His.”
Bruno went rigid.
Elias moved between them.
“What was the other?”
Adeline opened her mouth.
A violent crash sounded from the bedroom window.
Glass exploded inward.
Bruno tackled Elias.
Adeline dropped.
Evan screamed.
A bullet buried itself in the wall where Adeline had been standing.
Bruno drew his weapon and fired toward the opposite rooftop.
Elias crawled to Adeline.
“You hit?”
“No.”
“Evan?”
“I’m okay.”
Bruno shouted, “Move!”
They escaped through the rear stairs.
Two armored vehicles arrived within minutes.
Elias put Adeline and Evan into the first.
She resisted.
“I’m not going to your house.”
“You’re not staying here.”
“Someone inside your organization is trying to kill us.”
“Which is why you stay where I can see everyone who approaches you.”
She stared at him.
“That’s supposed to reassure me?”
“No.”
Elias opened the vehicle door.
“It’s supposed to keep your brother alive.”
That worked.
At Baron House, Evan was taken to a guest suite and examined by Elias’s private physician.
Malnutrition.
A chronic blood disorder.
Treatable, the doctor said, but neglected because proper treatment had been unaffordable.
Elias said only four words.
“Give him whatever works.”
Adeline heard.
“I can’t pay you back.”
“I didn’t ask you to.”
“That makes it worse.”
Elias studied her.
“You hate owing people.”
“I hate powerful people making debts they can collect later.”
He understood why.
That night, Elias gathered Bruno and Rourke in his study.
Adeline listened from the adjoining room through an audio feed Elias had deliberately activated for her.
Rourke arrived smiling.
Then Elias placed Daniel Hayes’s photograph on the desk.
The smile vanished.
“Where did you get that?”
Elias leaned back.
“Interesting first question.”
Rourke recovered.
“He worked for us.”
“You told me he died at the crash.”
“That was the report.”
“He survived nine hours.”
Rourke looked at Bruno.
Bruno looked back.
Neither spoke.
Elias placed his phone on the desk.
“And someone tried to shoot his daughter this morning.”
Rourke’s face remained calm.
“You think that has something to do with us?”
“I think someone knew exactly where I was.”
“Bruno tracks your vehicles.”
Bruno stepped forward.
“Careful.”
Elias raised a hand.
“Enough.”
He watched Rourke.
“Daniel left a message.”
For the first time, Rourke blinked.
“What message?”
Elias smiled without warmth.
“I didn’t say it was written.”
Rourke realized the trap.
Too late.
“You thought it was?”
“No.”
“You looked at the photograph before I mentioned one.”
Rourke stood.
“I’ve seen photographs of Daniel before.”
“Sit.”
Rourke did.
Later, after he left, Elias went to check on Evan.
The boy was asleep.
Adeline sat beside the window.
“You baited him.”
“Yes.”
“Did it work?”
“I don’t know.”
She handed him Daniel’s photograph.
“I lied earlier.”
“About?”
“There weren’t two names.”
Elias waited.
“There were three.”
She removed the cardboard backing completely.
A narrow strip of paper fell out.
Elias unfolded it.
Three initials.
B.M.
R.D.
And E.B.
His own.
Beneath them Daniel had written one final instruction:
ONE OF THESE MEN DOESN’T KNOW WHO HE REALLY IS.
Elias read it twice.
Then someone knocked on the locked bedroom door.
Three slow knocks.
Adeline went pale.
May you like
Because Evan was suddenly awake.
And he whispered, “That’s the knock Dad used.”
