Chapter 3 - The Photograph That Shouldn't Exist
The hatch opened three inches.
Mara aimed upward.
Gabriel caught her wrist.
"Wait."
"He's coming down."
"Exactly."
Dennis backed toward the tunnel.
Commissioner Voss's voice drifted through the opening.
"Mara, I know you're frightened."
Mara almost laughed.
Frightened was no longer the word.
Furious was closer.
"You ordered those men to shoot into my diner."
"No."
"You expect me to believe that?"
"I expect you to live long enough to understand what is happening."
Gabriel whispered, "He's stalling."
"For what?"
"More men."
Dennis pointed toward the tunnel.
"We move now."
Mara grabbed the metal box.
The hatch opened farther.
A hand appeared.
Gabriel fired once.
The hand disappeared.
Voss cursed.
They ran.
The tunnel was narrow, unfinished, and half flooded.
Gabriel stumbled after twenty yards.
Mara caught him.
His weight nearly took them both down.
"You can't keep moving."
"I can."
"That's not confidence. That's blood loss."
Dennis crouched.
"There's a medical clinic two blocks east."
Gabriel shook his head.
"Compromised."
"You don't know that."
"I assume everything is compromised until proven otherwise."
Mara looked at him.
"That sounds exhausting."
"It keeps me alive."
"Not doing a great job tonight."
Despite everything, Dennis gave a short laugh.
Gabriel didn't.
They reached a steel door beneath the abandoned pharmacy.
Dennis forced it open.
The alley beyond was empty.
For now.
Mara's car sat around the corner.
An eleven-year-old Ford with a cracked mirror.
Gabriel stared at it.
"This?"
"Sorry my getaway vehicle doesn't meet mafia standards."
Dennis climbed into the back.
Gabriel got into the passenger seat and nearly passed out.
Mara drove.
"Where?"
Gabriel gave an address.
Dennis immediately objected.
"No."
Gabriel turned.
"Why?"
"That house belongs to Elena Vale."
Mara glanced between them.
"Who's Elena?"
"My sister," Gabriel said.
Dennis leaned forward.
"His dead sister."
Mara's hands tightened on the wheel.
"Of course she is."
Gabriel stared out the windshield.
"She's not dead."
Dennis went silent.
Mara looked at Gabriel.
"Anything else impossible you'd like to mention before sunrise?"
"Probably."
The house stood beyond the city in a quiet residential neighborhood.
Not a mansion.
Not a fortress.
Just a plain two-story home with dark windows.
Gabriel knocked in a pattern.
Three quick.
Two slow.
The door opened.
A woman in her early forties stood holding a shotgun.
She had Gabriel's eyes.
"You look terrible," she said.
"Good morning to you too."
Then she saw Mara.
And the box.
Her face changed.
"Where did you get that?"
Mara walked inside.
"My father left it."
Elena lowered the shotgun.
"Robert Bell?"
Mara stopped.
"You knew him too?"
Elena looked at Gabriel.
"She doesn't know?"
"Tonight has been busy."
Elena closed the door.
"Then we'd better hurry."
They laid the contents of the box across a kitchen table.
The flash drive was encrypted.
The papers contained shipment numbers, initials, dates, bank accounts.
Mara recognized none of them.
Dennis did.
He pointed at several entries.
"These were transport contracts."
Elena sat opposite him.
"Not transport. Laundering."
Gabriel's face had become dangerously pale.
Elena opened a medical kit.
"Shirt off."
He looked at Mara.
"Try to control yourself."
"You're hilarious for a dying man."
Elena cut away his shirt.
The wound had passed through his side.
Another bullet was lodged near his shoulder.
Mara looked away only briefly.
There was more scar tissue across Gabriel's torso than she expected.
Old injuries.
A life written in violence.
Elena cleaned the wound.
Gabriel didn't make a sound.
Mara opened the photograph again.
Her father.
Gabriel.
Dennis.
Voss.
"Tell me about this."
Elena looked at it.
"That was taken after your father saved Gabriel."
"Saved him from whom?"
Dennis answered.
"Voss."
Mara stared at him.
"Commissioner Voss?"
"He wasn't commissioner then. He was a detective."
Gabriel spoke through clenched teeth as Elena worked.
"Voss arranged an ambush. My father had refused to use his shipping businesses for narcotics. Voss wanted leverage."
Mara frowned.
"You were already mafia."
Gabriel met her gaze.
"I won't pretend my family was innocent."
"Good."
"But there were lines my father wouldn't cross."
"And yours?"
Gabriel didn't answer immediately.
"There are lines I don't cross either."
Mara looked at the gun he had carried into her diner.
"Comforting."
Elena finished bandaging him.
Dennis began sorting documents.
"Robert found proof Voss was working with three criminal organizations at once. He wasn't taking bribes. He was controlling the competition."
Mara stared at her father's handwriting.
"So my dad tried to expose him."
"Yes."
"And Voss killed him."
Dennis hesitated.
Mara noticed.
"You keep doing that."
"Doing what?"
"Pausing right before the truth."
Dennis looked down.
Gabriel watched him.
"Tell her."
Dennis's face tightened.
"Robert called me the night he died."
Mara stopped moving.
"He said someone had followed him from the federal building. He believed the evidence was compromised."
"Why didn't you help him?"
"I tried."
"Did you?"
Dennis looked ashamed.
"I told him to meet me at a warehouse."
Mara felt cold.
"Where he died."
Dennis nodded.
Her chair scraped backward.
"You sent him there."
"I thought it was secure."
"You sent my father to the place where he was murdered."
"Mara—"
She slapped him.
Hard.
Dennis accepted it.
She wanted to hit him again.
Instead, she backed away.
"Who else knew?"
Dennis looked at Gabriel.
Gabriel's eyes narrowed.
"Don't."
Mara turned.
"What?"
Gabriel stood despite Elena's warning.
"Your father contacted my father that night."
Mara stared.
"And?"
"My father sent men to protect him."
"Did they?"
"No."
"Why?"
Gabriel said nothing.
Dennis whispered, "Because someone changed the order."
The room became silent.
Mara looked from one face to another.
"Who?"
Elena leaned back.
"We never proved it."
"Try me."
Gabriel's jaw tightened.
"My uncle."
"Name."
"Victor Vale."
Mara laughed once, bitterly.
"Another mafia man."
"My father's younger brother."
"And where is Victor now?"
Gabriel looked toward the dark window.
"Running half the organization."
Mara understood.
"You think your uncle killed my father."
"I think he helped Voss."
Dennis corrected him.
"He didn't help Voss. They were partners."
Mara picked up the flash drive.
"Then this proves it."
"If we can decrypt it," Elena said.
Mara looked at the papers.
Her father's handwriting filled the margins.
He had always written small.
Precise.
Near the bottom of one page, a sequence caught her eye.
M.B. 8-12-09.
Her initials.
Her birthday.
"What is this?"
Dennis leaned over.
His expression changed.
Gabriel noticed.
"What?"
Dennis took the page.
"This isn't a shipment log."
"What is it?"
"A custody record."
Mara frowned.
"For money?"
Dennis didn't answer.
Elena took the page from him.
Her face went pale.
"Mara."
"What?"
Elena slowly turned the page around.
Beside Mara's initials was another entry.
SUBJECT TRANSFERRED.
Mara stared.
"I don't understand."
Dennis sat down.
"Your father wasn't your biological father."
The words didn't make sense at first.
Mara actually smiled because her brain rejected them.
"What?"
Dennis looked devastated.
"Robert Bell adopted you."
"No."
"Mara—"
"No."
She stepped back.
"My mother died when I was six. My father raised me."
"Robert raised you."
"He was my father."
"Yes."
"But not by blood."
Mara looked at Gabriel.
He appeared as shocked as she was.
"You didn't know?"
"No."
Dennis rubbed his face.
"Robert promised never to tell you unless the people looking for you returned."
"Who was looking for me?"
Dennis said nothing.
Mara slammed the table.
"Who?"
Before he could answer, the laptop beside Elena beeped.
The encrypted flash drive had unlocked automatically.
A video file appeared.
One file.
Dated seventeen years earlier.
The thumbnail showed Robert Bell sitting in the Blue Lantern Diner.
Mara couldn't breathe.
She clicked play.
Her father's face filled the screen.
Older than she remembered him at her earliest birthday.
Tired.
Terrified.
He looked directly into the camera.
"If Mara is watching this, then I failed."
Mara covered her mouth.
Robert continued.
"Sweetheart, there is something you need to know about the night I found you."
The video suddenly froze.
A warning appeared.
REMOTE CONNECTION DETECTED.
Elena lunged for the laptop.
Too late.
The screen went black.
Then another image appeared.
Live video.
The camera showed the outside of Elena's house.
Someone was standing beneath a streetlight.
A tall older man in an expensive coat.
Gabriel whispered one name.
"Victor."
The man looked directly into the camera.
Then Mara's phone rang.
UNKNOWN CALLER.
She answered.
Victor Vale's voice was calm.
"Mara Bell."
She couldn't speak.
He continued.
May you like
"Before Gabriel tells you another lie, ask him why your real mother had the last name Vale."
Then every light in the house went out.
