Chapter 4 - The Maid on the Security List
Bruno fired at the lock.
Nothing.
Smoke entered through the ventilation grate.
Elias grabbed a steel shelving unit and drove it into the old plaster wall.
Again.
Again.
The wall cracked.
Adeline found an emergency pipe and joined him.
Bruno struck the same point.
The plaster collapsed into an abandoned utility corridor.
They escaped seconds before B-19 erupted.
Outside Harbor Nine, Elias watched flames consume the evidence that might have explained his entire life.
But Adeline had saved one thing.
The photograph.
She had shoved it inside her uniform before the fire.
Elias stared at Rourke’s younger face beside his mother.
“He could be your father,” she said.
“Or Daniel wanted me to think that.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
Bruno approached.
“We have another problem.”
He handed Elias a tablet.
Security records showed Adeline entering restricted rooms six times.
Not twice.
And each entry used her fingerprint.
Adeline stared.
“I never went there.”
“The system says you did.”
Elias looked at Bruno.
“Can fingerprints be cloned?”
“With access.”
“Who has access?”
Bruno hesitated.
“Rourke.”
That evening Elias summoned Rourke.
He did not mention B-19.
Instead he asked about Adeline.
Rourke produced photographs.
Adeline near warehouse files.
Adeline beside a Haverin vehicle.
Adeline passing an envelope to an unidentified man.
She stared at them.
“That isn’t me.”
The woman looked exactly like her from behind.
Same uniform.
Same height.
But Elias noticed something.
“Her shoes.”
Adeline looked.
The woman wore black flats.
Adeline’s work shoes had rubber soles because of her limp.
Someone had constructed evidence.
Rourke watched Elias realize it.
“Convenient,” he said.
Elias turned.
“You seem disappointed.”
“I’m trying to keep you alive.”
“Are you?”
Rourke’s eyes hardened.
“For twenty years.”
Elias leaned closer.
“Was my mother one of those years?”
Silence.
Rourke’s face changed.
Barely.
But enough.
“Where did you hear that?”
Elias smiled.
Wrong answer.
Rourke knew.
That night, Adeline found Elias alone in the kitchen.
The same kitchen where he had watched her take bread.
She placed money on the counter.
“What’s that?”
“Bread.”
He looked at the coins.
“You’re serious?”
“Yes.”
“You nearly got shot today.”
“And I still stole from you.”
He pushed the money back.
She pushed it toward him again.
Finally he took one coin.
“Debt settled.”
She almost smiled.
“Your accounting system is terrible.”
“So I’m told.”
It was the first easy moment between them.
It lasted seven seconds.
Bruno entered holding Evan’s laptop.
“We found something.”
Evan had restored data from Daniel’s damaged phone.
One photograph survived.
Taken the night of Elias’s crash.
A man stood beside Elias’s sabotaged car.
His face was hidden.
But his hand was visible.
A distinctive ring.
Elias knew that ring.
Rourke had worn it every day for twenty-five years.
Adeline whispered, “That’s him.”
Elias stared.
Then Bruno enlarged the photograph.
Another figure appeared in the car window reflection.
Elias’s breath stopped.
Because the reflected face belonged to someone else.
May you like
Someone Elias trusted even more than Rourke.
Bruno.
