Chapter 2 - The Name on the Photograph
“Who sent it?” Adrian asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t answer.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
The photograph of my apartment door filled the screen.
My welcome mat was visible.
So was the brass number beside the frame.
Someone was there.
Right now.
My hands began shaking.
Adrian took the phone carefully.
“Marco.”
His bodyguard looked over.
“Trace it.”
“I can try.”
“Do more than try.”
Marco disappeared toward the terrace with my phone.
I stared at Adrian.
“You can’t just take my phone.”
“You want it back?”
“Yes.”
“So does whoever is standing outside your apartment.”
That stopped me.
Police officers were moving through the restaurant.
Paramedics worked on the poisoned waiter.
The shooter had been handcuffed.
Everything around us felt unreal.
Twenty minutes earlier, I had been thinking about whether I could afford to replace the brakes on my car.
Now a suspected crime boss was holding a photograph with my name written on it while someone watched my home.
“I need to call my sister.”
“Where is she?”
“Seattle.”
“Does anyone else live with you?”
“No.”
“Pets?”
“No.”
“Good.”
I frowned.
“Why is that good?”
“Because you’re not going home.”
I almost laughed.
“You don’t decide that.”
“No. The person waiting outside your apartment decided it.”
I hated that he was right.
A detective approached.
He introduced himself as Detective Harris and began asking questions.
I told him everything.
The gray-jacketed man.
The concealed weapon.
The champagne.
Carver.
The photograph.
When I mentioned the message, Harris asked to see my phone.
Marco returned.
“Number’s spoofed.”
He handed the phone to the detective.
Harris looked at the message.
“We’ll send officers.”
“Thank you.”
Adrian said nothing.
Harris looked at him.
“Mr. Vale, we’ll need you downtown.”
“I’ll cooperate.”
The detective seemed surprised.
“So will Ms. Marlowe.”
Adrian glanced at me.
“I’m sure she will.”
Two hours later, I sat beneath fluorescent lights in a police interview room.
I repeated the story.
Again.
And again.
By midnight, exhaustion had replaced fear.
Then Harris entered carrying a folder.
“We checked your apartment.”
My stomach tightened.
“And?”
“No one was there.”
I exhaled.
“But your lock had been picked.”
The relief disappeared.
“Was anything stolen?”
“We can’t tell.”
“I can.”
“You’re not going back tonight.”
Apparently everyone had decided that for me.
Harris opened the folder.
“Tell me about your father.”
The question surprised me.
“Why?”
“Just answer.”
“Daniel Marlowe. Police officer. He died when I was seventeen.”
“How?”
“Car accident.”
“You’re sure?”
I stared at him.
“What kind of question is that?”
Harris slid something across the table.
A copy of the photograph from Carver’s office.
He pointed to the older gray-haired man with the scar.
“Recognize him?”
“No.”
“He worked with your father.”
My chest tightened.
“That’s impossible.”
“His name is Victor Dane.”
I had never heard it.
“He and your father were part of a joint organized-crime task force.”
My mind struggled to catch up.
“My father was a patrol officer.”
“That’s what his public record says.”
“Public record?”
Harris leaned back.
“Your father worked undercover.”
The room seemed to tilt.
“No.”
“Elena—”
“No. My father wore a uniform. I went to the station.”
“That was part of the cover.”
I stood.
“I need some air.”
“There’s more.”
“I don’t want more.”
“You need it.”
I looked at the photograph.
My father had lied to me.
Or someone was lying now.
“What does this have to do with Adrian Vale?”
Harris hesitated.
“That’s what worries me.”
When I left the interview room, Adrian was waiting in the hallway.
Alone.
“Where are your bodyguards?”
“Nearby.”
“You always answer questions without actually answering them?”
“Usually.”
I walked past him.
He followed.
“Harris told you about your father.”
I stopped.
“How do you know?”
“Because he told me too.”
“And?”
Adrian looked toward the windows.
“Victor Dane wasn’t just a detective.”
“What was he?”
“My father’s enemy.”
There it was.
The connection.
“My father investigated yours?”
“Yes.”
“And now someone is trying to kill you and somehow using me.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“That’s what we need to find out.”
“We?”
He looked at me.
“You saved my life tonight.”
“That doesn’t make us partners.”
“No.”
“Good.”
“It makes you a target.”
I hated how calmly he said it.
Marco appeared at the end of the hallway.
“Sir.”
Adrian looked at him.
“What?”
“We found Carver’s car.”
“Where?”
“Three miles down the mountain.”
“And Carver?”
“Gone.”
Marco handed Adrian a plastic evidence sleeve.
Inside was a key.
Brass.
Old.
A number had been engraved into it.
I stared.
“I know that number.”
Both men looked at me.
“My father had a key exactly like that.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. When I was little, it was on his key ring. He told me it opened a locker.”
Adrian’s expression sharpened.
“Where?”
“He never said.”
Marco looked at Adrian.
“Train station?”
“Maybe.”
I suddenly remembered something.
Not a train station.
A bus terminal.
My father had taken me there once when I was nine.
He had opened a row of old storage lockers.
I remembered waiting beside a vending machine.
“Union Terminal,” I whispered.
Adrian heard me.
“What?”
“Locker 317 might be at Union Terminal.”
We went there before sunrise.
I knew going with Adrian was insane.
But waiting alone felt worse.
Union Terminal had been mostly abandoned for years.
Rows of metal lockers still lined the old lower corridor.
317 existed.
The brass key fit.
Adrian stood beside me.
Marco watched the corridor.
“Ready?” Adrian asked.
“No.”
I opened it anyway.
Inside was a small metal box.
No money.
No gun.
Just documents.
Photographs.
And a digital recorder.
My hands shook as I pressed PLAY.
Static.
Then my father’s voice.
Seventeen years disappeared in one second.
“Elena, if you’re hearing this, something went wrong.”
I covered my mouth.
Adrian went completely still.
My father continued.
“There are people inside the task force working for the organization we were investigating. I don’t know who I can trust anymore.”
Paper rustled on the recording.
“I found evidence of a planned transfer of leadership. Someone intends to destroy the Vale family from inside and replace it with something worse.”
Adrian’s eyes narrowed.
Then my father said his name.
“If Adrian Vale is alive when this recording is found, tell him his father did not betray mine.”
Adrian inhaled sharply.
The recording continued.
“The traitor is someone both families trusted.”
A noise sounded behind my father.
A door.
He lowered his voice.
“I have the proof, but I can’t keep it here. I gave it to—”
The recording stopped.
“No,” I whispered.
I pressed play again.
Nothing.
Marco examined the recorder.
“File ends there.”
Adrian opened the metal box.
There was a second compartment beneath the documents.
Inside lay a photograph of my father.
Beside him stood Adrian’s father.
They were shaking hands.
Friends.
Not enemies.
On the back, my father had written an address.
Adrian recognized it.
“That house belonged to my mother.”
“Belonged?”
“She died three years ago.”
“Is the house empty?”
“It should be.”
Marco’s phone rang.
He answered.
His face changed.
“What?”
Adrian stepped closer.
Marco lowered the phone.
“Someone just entered the house.”
Adrian looked at me.
“How do you know?”
“Security alarm.”
We drove there as the sun rose.
The house sat outside town behind iron gates.
The front door was open.
Marco drew his weapon.
Adrian told me to stay in the car.
I ignored him.
Inside, nothing moved.
We followed muddy footprints through the hallway.
They ended beside a study.
Adrian reached for the handle.
The door slowly opened from the other side.
A woman stood there.
She was holding another photograph of my father.
And when she saw me, she whispered my name.
“Elena?”
I stared at her.
She began crying.
May you like
Then she said the words that changed everything.
“Your father is alive.”
