Chapter 2 - The Woman Who Was Supposed to Be Dead
Roman stared at his sister's photograph as if looking too hard might erase her.
Lauren didn't touch the phone.
She didn't have to.
Elena had aged fourteen years.
The shape of her face had changed.
Fine lines framed her eyes.
Her dark hair was streaked with silver.
But Lauren knew those eyes.
She had seen them through smoke.
Through pain.
Through the last clear moments before her own life split into before and after.
"She's alive," Roman whispered.
Lauren wished she could tell him yes.
Instead she said, "We don't know when that picture was taken."
Roman looked at her sharply.
"The timestamp says tonight."
"Metadata can be changed."
"That's my sister."
"I know."
His eyes hardened.
"You know a great deal for someone who supposedly doesn't know anything."
Paramedics rolled Curtis toward the exit.
One of Roman's security men followed.
The bartender had locked the front doors while police units approached from several blocks away.
Lauren heard sirens.
Roman heard them too.
"We need to leave."
Lauren laughed once.
"You own this place, and you're suggesting we flee before the police arrive?"
"I'm suggesting whoever sent that image knows where you are."
"Which means running is exactly what they expect."
Roman looked at her.
"You really aren't what you look like."
Lauren's expression cooled.
"What exactly do I look like?"
Roman realized the mistake immediately.
"That's not what I meant."
"People rarely think it is."
"I meant you walked into my club alone, disarmed an armed man, recognized an overdose before my people did, and you're carrying my sister's bracelet."
"Better."
Roman almost smiled.
Almost.
Then the phone buzzed again.
A second message.
2:45. CAR OUTSIDE. NO POLICE.
Roman glanced at the clock.
2:24.
Twenty-one minutes.
"We go," he said.
"No."
"She's my sister."
"And whoever has her knows that."
"Lauren—"
"They're controlling the tempo."
Roman stared.
Lauren continued.
"They created a confrontation. They made sure your attention landed on me. They used Curtis as a disposable trigger. Then they showed us Elena."
"Us?"
"Yes. Us."
Roman's eyes narrowed.
"They wanted you to see my mark."
Silence settled between them.
Roman looked toward the sleeve covering Lauren's forearm.
"What does it mean?"
Lauren hesitated.
"The crescent and three dots."
"It's not a gang symbol."
"I figured that."
"It belonged to a rescue unit."
"You were military?"
"No."
"Police?"
"No."
"Federal?"
Lauren said nothing.
Roman's expression shifted.
That was answer enough.
Fourteen years earlier, Lauren Hayes had been twenty-two years old and fifty pounds lighter, though the number mattered less than everyone around her seemed to think it did.
She had been a trainee with the Federal Organized Crime Task Group.
Not an agent.
Not officially.
She worked as a language specialist and financial analyst.
Her mother had been Puerto Rican.
Her father Irish-American.
Lauren spoke English, Spanish, enough Italian to follow coded conversations, and the universal language of people who thought the woman in the room wasn't important enough to notice.
The task group had been tracking weapons moving through Harbor City's docks.
Pier Nine was supposed to be surveillance.
Nothing more.
Lauren had gone inside because she heard someone screaming.
That someone had been Elena Vescari.
Roman's nineteen-year-old sister.
Lauren had found Elena bound in an office above a warehouse containing illegal weapons and shipping records.
They nearly escaped.
Then someone ordered the warehouse burned.
Lauren woke three days later in a hospital.
Elena was missing.
Two agents were dead.
The task group collapsed under accusations of corruption.
Lauren became a protected witness.
And somebody inside the government ensured her testimony vanished.
She hadn't trusted a badge since.
Roman listened without interrupting.
When Lauren finished, he stood by the window overlooking the city.
"You were twenty-two."
"Yes."
"And you went back into a burning warehouse for Elena."
"I wasn't leaving her."
"My family was told she ran away."
Lauren looked at him.
Roman laughed bitterly.
"My father said she had embarrassed us. He said she stole money and disappeared with a man."
"That wasn't true."
"I know that now."
"You didn't then?"
"I was twenty-eight and stupid enough to believe my father knew everything."
Lauren folded her arms.
"Who was your father?"
Roman looked over his shoulder.
"Salvatore Vescari."
Lauren knew the name.
Everyone in Harbor City did.
Salvatore had built the Vescari organization into something between a criminal syndicate and an unofficial city government.
He had died six years ago.
Officially from heart failure.
Unofficially, rumors said his own organization had decided he was becoming unstable.
"Was he at Pier Nine?" Roman asked.
Lauren didn't answer.
"Lauren."
"I never saw him."
"But?"
"I heard a voice giving orders."
"His voice?"
"No."
Roman stepped closer.
"Whose?"
"I don't know."
That was a lie.
Lauren had spent fourteen years trying not to say the name.
Roman seemed to recognize that.
"You do know."
"Knowing and proving aren't the same thing."
The police sirens became louder.
Roman checked the phone again.
2:28.
"We have seventeen minutes."
"We aren't going to Pier Nine."
"I am."
"Then you'll die."
"If Elena is there—"
"Think."
Roman's jaw flexed.
Lauren pointed at Curtis's phone.
"They didn't say bring Roman. They said bring Lauren."
He stared at her.
"Why?"
"That's what scares me."
A security man approached.
His name was Mateo Cruz.
Roman's head of security.
Forty-six.
Former Marine.
The kind of man who watched hands instead of faces.
"Police are thirty seconds out."
Roman nodded.
"Get the east elevator ready."
Mateo looked at Lauren.
"She's coming?"
"If she agrees."
Lauren appreciated the correction.
"I don't."
Roman took a breath.
"Then what do you propose?"
Lauren picked up Curtis's betting slip.
Something about it had bothered her.
Not the wager.
The paper.
Harbor City casinos used heat-print ticket stock.
This was different.
Thicker.
She unfolded it completely.
On the back was a handwritten number.
"What is that?" Roman asked.
Lauren turned it toward the light.
Below the number was a symbol.
A crescent.
Three dots.
Her mark.
But reversed.
Her skin prickled.
"Someone copied it."
"From where?"
Lauren didn't answer.
Only six people had known what the symbol meant.
Two died at Pier Nine.
One disappeared.
One resigned.
Lauren was another.
The sixth man had been the task group's director.
Special Agent Thomas Keene.
The man who had personally placed Lauren into witness protection.
The man who had hugged her in the hospital and promised that Elena's death would mean something.
Thomas Keene had retired ten years ago.
Or so Lauren had been told.
The police pounded at the locked entrance.
"Open up!"
Roman watched Lauren.
"Name."
She looked at him.
"What?"
"The person you're thinking about."
Lauren remembered Keene's voice through the warehouse radio.
Not giving the order.
Responding to it.
Copy that. Burn everything.
Her heart began pounding.
"Thomas Keene."
Roman's face emptied.
"You know him?"
Roman walked to the bar.
He poured two fingers of whiskey.
Then didn't drink.
"Thomas Keene attended my father's funeral."
Lauren felt cold.
Roman continued.
"He called himself an old friend."
The police hit the door again.
Mateo swore under his breath.
Roman looked at Lauren.
"What else haven't you told me?"
She stepped toward him.
"What hasn't your family told you?"
That landed.
Roman picked up his coat.
"Come with me."
"No."
"Not to Pier Nine."
"Where?"
"My house."
Lauren laughed.
"Absolutely not."
"There's something there."
"What?"
"My father kept records. Letters. Photographs. Things I never understood."
Police finally unlocked the outer doors with the bartender.
Roman's time was gone.
Lauren saw officers entering.
She had no reason to trust Roman.
Every reason not to.
But Elena's photograph had reached into a grave Lauren had spent fourteen years trying to close.
And Thomas Keene's name had cracked it open.
Lauren grabbed her purse.
"Your car. Not mine."
Roman nodded.
They exited through a service corridor as officers entered the lounge.
Mateo led them into a private elevator.
The doors closed.
Roman turned toward Lauren.
"One question."
"What?"
"If Elena died that night, why did someone keep her alive?"
Lauren met his eyes.
"Because Elena saw something."
"What?"
Lauren remembered the warehouse office.
The ledgers.
The photographs taped behind a false wall.
City officials.
Police officers.
Judges.
And one picture Lauren had never understood.
A picture of Salvatore Vescari shaking hands with Thomas Keene.
"She saw who owned Harbor City."
The elevator opened underground.
A black sedan waited.
They climbed inside.
Mateo drove.
Ten minutes later, Roman's phone rang.
Not Curtis's.
His personal number.
Roman answered.
No one spoke.
Then a woman's voice came through.
Weak.
Older.
But unmistakable.
"Roman?"
He stopped breathing.
"Elena?"
Lauren leaned forward.
The voice began crying.
"Roman, don't trust Dad's records."
Roman gripped the phone.
"Where are you?"
"Don't trust—"
Static.
Then Elena whispered four words.
"Lauren was betrayed first."
The call ended.
Roman and Lauren stared at each other.
Mateo slowed the car.
Ahead of them, iron gates opened onto Roman's estate.
The front doors were already standing wide open.
May you like
Roman had left them locked.
Someone was waiting inside.
