Chapter 5 - SOMEONE CAME FOR THE TWINS
The first person to notice the car was Dorene.
It appeared outside the Lake Forest property at 7:12 on Monday morning.
Black Toyota Camry.
Illinois plates.
Parked across the road.
Nothing unusual.
At 8:03, it remained.
At 9:41, it was still there.
Dorene wrote down the license plate.
At 10:17, the car left.
The following morning, another appeared.
Different make.
Different plates.
Same position.
Lucas increased security.
Bella decreased it.
They argued in the kitchen.
“You want six armed men around the children.”
“I want twelve.”
“They’re babies, Lucas. I’m not raising them inside a military checkpoint.”
“I’m not asking.”
“That sentence stopped working on me a long time ago.”
“I noticed.”
Bella placed a printed document on the counter.
A security plan.
Three rotating teams.
Background checks.
No visible weapons inside the family wing.
No employee permitted to work alone with either child.
All vehicle movements logged.
Emergency safe room accessible from the nursery.
Lucas read it.
“You made this?”
“I spent four years trying to convince banks I understood risk.”
“You understand spreadsheets.”
“I understand that your solution to every threat is adding more men.”
“It has worked.”
“You were nearly prosecuted by the federal government, your executive assistant was an informant, a woman impersonated your sister inside this house, and your grandmother ran a criminal organization behind your back.”
Bella folded her arms.
“How exactly are we defining ‘worked’?”
Lucas looked at the document again.
Then signed it.
Bella blinked.
“That’s it?”
“You expected an argument?”
“I prepared three additional pages.”
“Save them for our marriage.”
They discovered Samuel’s first company two days later.
Vey Maritime Holdings.
Closed in 2003.
Then another.
Ash Meridian Logistics.
Then six shell corporations.
Bella spent fourteen hours tracing transfers.
At 2:30 in the morning, Lucas found her asleep at the dining table with her cheek against an audit report.
He carried her upstairs.
Bella woke halfway.
“I can walk.”
“I know.”
“Then put me down.”
“No.”
“You’re controlling.”
“You’re exhausted.”
“You’re avoiding the accusation.”
“Yes.”
She rested her head against his shoulder.
Neither mentioned it.
Their marriage had become filled with moments neither knew how to name.
They shared a bedroom now.
That had happened after the twins came home from neonatal care.
At first, it had been practical.
Two babies.
Night feedings.
Exhaustion.
Lucas slept lightly.
Bella woke at every sound.
One night, both fell asleep on opposite sides of the same bed.
Neither moved out afterward.
Months passed.
They still had never discussed when the contractual marriage had become something else.
Perhaps because naming it would make it vulnerable.
On Friday, Bella found the first real connection.
A payment.
$600,000.
November 14, 2001.
Three days after the explosion.
Recipient:
M. HOWERIN SERVICES.
Bella stared at the name.
Howerin.
Her former landlord.
Miles Howerin.
She called Lucas.
He answered on the first ring.
“What?”
“I found something.”
Twenty minutes later, he was home.
Bella showed him.
Lucas read the record.
Then again.
“Miles would have been thirty-one.”
“He told me he’d owned that building since his father died.”
“His father?”
“Maybe.”
Lucas called someone.
Bella stopped him.
“No.”
“What?”
“No private investigators.”
“Bella.”
“We do this legally.”
“He sexually propositioned you for your security deposit.”
“And you destroyed twenty-seven of his contracts.”
“He deserved worse.”
“That isn’t the point.”
“It is to me.”
Bella touched the transaction.
“If Samuel is waiting for you to behave like the old Lucas, then every illegal shortcut is a gift.”
Lucas hated that she was right.
She could see it.
“What do you suggest?”
“We ask Agent Winslow.”
Lucas stared at her.
“The woman who tried to send me to federal prison.”
“The woman whose investigation helped dismantle the organization your grandmother built.”
“She locked Rianna in my office for nearly three years.”
“Rianna volunteered.”
“She nearly killed you.”
“That was Rianna’s choice.”
Lucas walked away.
Bella followed.
“You told me shame without change is self-pity.”
He stopped.
“That was cruel.”
“It was your sentence.”
“That makes it worse.”
Agent Theodora Winslow arrived that evening.
She wore jeans.
Bella had never seen her outside a suit.
Lucas clearly found this suspicious.
Winslow examined the transfer.
“Howerin Services received six payments between 2001 and 2004.”
“For what?”
“According to the federal archive, property acquisition.”
“What property?”
Winslow looked at Bella.
“Your childhood apartment building.”
Bella felt cold.
“No.”
“Yes.”
The building Helena had rented.
The building where Bella grew up.
The building where Miles later became landlord.
Samuel had known.
Not merely that Bella survived.
He had known exactly where she lived.
For years.
Lucas stood.
“Where is Howerin?”
Winslow held up a hand.
“Don’t.”
“I asked a question.”
“And I know what your questions used to mean.”
Bella stepped between them.
“Where is he?”
Winslow answered her.
“Missing.”
Since when?
Thirty-six hours.
His car had been found near Montrose Harbor.
Wallet inside.
Phone gone.
No blood.
No body.
Bella sat down.
Samuel was moving pieces.
The archive.
Howerin.
The surveillance outside the house.
“What did Howerin know?”
Winslow shook her head.
“We don’t know.”
Lucas looked at Bella.
“We’re leaving.”
“Where?”
“Somewhere no one knows.”
“That’s running.”
“That’s protecting our children.”
“And then what? We spend the next eighteen years changing houses whenever someone parks across the street?”
Lucas’s jaw tightened.
Bella lowered her voice.
“I lived my first twenty-five years because Helena refused to live afraid of a phone call that never came. I won’t raise Hen and Connie waiting for Samuel Vey to decide when they’re allowed to have a normal life.”
Winslow watched them.
Then her phone rang.
She answered.
Her expression changed.
“What?”
She listened.
Then looked at Bella.
“We found Howerin.”
Alive.
He had walked into an FBI field office in Milwaukee.
He wanted immunity.
And he would only speak to Bella.
They met the following afternoon.
Howerin looked twenty years older.
No expensive jacket.
No oily confidence.
His hands trembled.
When Bella entered the interview room, he could not meet her eyes.
“You remember me.”
“Yes.”
“You remember what you said when I asked for my security deposit.”
“Yes.”
“I’d like to apologize.”
“I don’t care.”
He flinched.
Bella sat.
“Tell me about Samuel.”
Howerin looked at the camera in the corner.
“He paid my father.”
“For what?”
“To watch you.”
Bella’s stomach tightened.
“From when?”
“2002.”
She had been four.
“My father owned the building. Samuel paid him to report anything unusual. Anyone asking questions. Police. Detectives. People from newspapers.”
“Did my mother know?”
“No.”
“Did you?”
“Not until I was nineteen.”
“And then?”
“My father died. I took over.”
“You continued.”
Howerin nodded.
“For how long?”
“Until you left.”
Twenty-three years.
Bella looked through the glass.
She knew Lucas stood on the other side.
She could almost feel his anger.
“Why?”
“Money.”
“That’s not enough.”
“It was for me.”
Bella absorbed that.
Sometimes evil did not arrive with ideology.
Sometimes it arrived because rent was due and someone offered cash.
“What was Samuel afraid of?”
Howerin swallowed.
“You remembering.”
“Remembering what?”
“The man at the car.”
Bella went still.
“What man?”
Howerin looked at her.
“You told your mother about him when you were six.”
Bella’s heart began pounding.
“I don’t remember.”
“Your mother did.”
“What did I say?”
Howerin closed his eyes.
“You said before the fire, a man opened the back door and took you out.”
Bella could hear nothing except her pulse.
“You weren’t thrown from the vehicle. You didn’t wander away after the explosion.”
Howerin’s voice shook.
“Someone removed you before the bomb went off.”
Bella stood.
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who?”
“Your mother thought you were remembering a nightmare.”
“Who was the man?”
“I don’t know!”
Lucas entered.
Winslow shouted from behind him.
He ignored her.
He stood beside Bella.
Not in front.
Beside.
“Did Samuel know she remembered?”
“Yes.”
“Is that why he watched her?”
“Yes.”
“What else?”
Howerin looked terrified.
“Samuel didn’t order the bombing.”
“We know.”
“He was supposed to stop it.”
Lucas froze.
Howerin continued.
“Someone warned him. He knew a device had been placed in the car. He had fifteen minutes.”
Bella whispered.
“And he saved me.”
“Yes.”
“Why only me?”
“I don’t know.”
Lucas understood first.
His face changed.
“He chose.”
Howerin began crying.
“I don’t know.”
“He had time to save one person,” Lucas said.
“And he chose Bella.”
The room went silent.
Bella remembered Samuel’s words.
Children make adults predictable.
He had saved her.
Then hidden her.
Why?
Howerin had one final piece.
Samuel had contacted him six months earlier.
Before Constance died.
Before Unit 614.
He wanted Howerin to begin watching Bella again.
“Why?”
“He said something was coming.”
“What?”
“He didn’t tell me.”
“When?”
Howerin looked at Bella.
“After the twins were born.”
Lucas turned toward the door.
Bella caught his arm.
“Where are you going?”
“Home.”
The word struck her.
Home.
Not the house.
Not Lake Forest.
Home.
They drove back immediately.
At 6:14 p.m., the security gate was open.
Lucas accelerated.
Bella called Dorene.
No answer.
Again.
Nothing.
The front door stood ajar.
Lucas stopped the car before it fully reached the steps.
Bella grabbed his arm.
“Don’t go in alone.”
“My children are inside.”
“Our children.”
They entered together.
The kitchen was empty.
A broken cup lay on the floor.
Bella saw blood near the hallway.
“Dorene!”
A sound came from the pantry.
Lucas opened it.
Dorene lay inside.
Alive.
A cut above her eyebrow.
“Children,” she gasped.
Bella dropped beside her.
“Where are they?”
“They took—”
Her voice broke.
Lucas went white.
“They took who?”
Dorene grabbed Bella’s wrist.
“Connie.”
Only Connie.
Hen had been asleep upstairs with a security officer who had barricaded the nursery when the alarm failed.
Connie had been downstairs.
A woman dressed as an emergency medical technician had arrived claiming there had been a gas leak.
Dorene opened the door.
Three people entered.
The entire operation lasted ninety seconds.
Lucas stood in the center of the kitchen.
For twenty-five years, he had believed the worst thing that could happen to a person was being trapped behind a door.
He had been wrong.
The worst thing was standing in a room where your child should be and finding only empty air.
Bella walked toward him.
“Look at me.”
He did not.
“Lucas.”
His hands were shaking.
“Look at me.”
He did.
“We are getting her back.”
He whispered, “Bella—”
“No.”
She placed both hands against his face.
“You don’t get to become twelve years old right now.”
His eyes closed.
“Our daughter needs the thirty-eight-year-old man standing in front of me.”
He opened them.
The telephone rang.
An old landline.
No one used it anymore.
Lucas answered.
May you like
Samuel Vey’s voice filled the kitchen.
“Now,” he said, “we can finally discuss what Bella saw beside that car.”
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