Chapter 5 - The People Inside the CaseDaniel Mercer looked like a man who had spent four years expecting every door behind him to open.
Nora recognized the condition.
She had lived her own version of it.
The difference was that her fear had been pointed at Luca Cayne.
Daniel’s seemed to have no single direction.
Mara kept the weapon trained on him.
Luca remained between Nora and the corridor.
“Start talking,” Nora said.
Daniel looked at her.
Not Luca.
That mattered.
“My partner was named Owen Beck.”
“The person who took the photograph?”
“Yes.”
“Where is he?”
“Dead.”
Nora’s jaw tightened.
“When?”
“Four days after your father.”
Luca said, “Car accident outside Joliet.”
Daniel nodded.
“Officially.”
“Not officially?”
“Someone loosened the steering assembly.”
Nora glanced at Luca.
He did not react.
Probably because he already knew.
She was getting tired of that.
Daniel continued.
“Owen realized something was wrong while we were still inside St. Agnes. We were told to leave your father and go.”
“By whom?”
“The physician who met the ambulance.”
“Name.”
“Dr. Ellis Hart.”
Luca’s head shifted.
That name meant something.
Nora noticed.
“Who is he?”
“Was,” Luca said. “Hart died two years ago.”
“Convenient.”
“He died of pancreatic cancer.”
“Less convenient.”
Daniel almost smiled.
It disappeared quickly.
“Hart worked with Voss for years,” Daniel said. “Not formally. He ran private medical arrangements. Things that needed no questions.”
Nora looked down at the recorder.
“My father was alive.”
“Yes.”
“How sick was he?”
Daniel hesitated.
Nora stepped forward.
“How sick?”
“Not sick enough to die that night.”
The words landed harder than anything else.
She had known.
Some part of her had already known.
But hearing it stated cleanly changed the weight.
“What happened?”
Daniel looked at Luca.
Luca said, “Answer her.”
Daniel did.
“Your father had been exposed to something.”
“Poison?”
“Medication. High dose. Something that triggered cardiac symptoms.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. We didn’t have full labs.”
“Could he have survived?”
“Yes.”
No hesitation.
Nora closed her eyes.
The corridor disappeared.
For one second she was twenty-seven again, sitting on the kitchen floor of her father’s house because she had arrived after the police and someone had made tea that nobody drank.
She remembered staring at his reading glasses on the side table.
She remembered thinking objects should know when the person who owned them was gone.
They should change somehow.
They did not.
She opened her eyes.
“Then why didn’t he?”
Daniel swallowed.
“Because we were told he had died before arrival.”
“But he hadn’t.”
“No.”
“What did they do?”
“I don’t know.”
Nora stepped toward him.
“You were there.”
“I was removed.”
“By whom?”
Daniel looked at the recorder.
“The man you heard.”
“The deputy director.”
“Yes.”
“Name.”
Daniel hesitated.
Luca answered.
“Gideon Shaw.”
Nora turned.
“He’s running the Voss investigation?”
“Operationally.”
“And you trusted him?”
“Not completely.”
“That answer is getting old.”
Luca met her eyes.
“I trusted the evidentiary structure around him.”
“Which is compromised.”
“Yes.”
Mara lowered her weapon slightly but did not holster it.
Daniel looked at Luca.
“You knew Shaw was dirty?”
“I knew he had unexplained contact with people adjacent to Voss. I didn’t know the depth.”
“You knew enough to keep the meeting compartmentalized.”
“Yes.”
Nora looked between them.
“What meeting?”
“The one in ten days,” Luca said.
“No. I understand that. What don’t I understand?”
Daniel breathed out.
“The meeting isn’t really about arresting Andreas.”
Silence.
Nora looked at Luca.
He did not deny it.
“What is it about?”
“Getting him to identify the network,” Luca said.
“The ledger already does.”
“Not completely.”
Nora looked down at the black book.
Luca opened it.
Pages of handwritten entries.
Initials.
Numbers.
Dates.
Some names written completely.
Others encoded.
“Your father found one layer,” Luca said. “Enough to prove payments. Not enough to prove what they purchased.”
Daniel nodded.
“Andreas never wrote crimes down. He wrote relationships.”
Nora frowned.
“Explain.”
“A payment to a judge doesn’t prove a ruling was bought. A payment to a police commander doesn’t prove evidence disappeared. A payment to someone in a federal office doesn’t prove an investigation was redirected.”
“But recorded conversations might.”
“Yes.”
The ten-day meeting.
Nora understood.
“You wanted Andreas to talk.”
Luca nodded.
“He believes two people attending are still loyal to him.”
“They aren’t.”
“Correct.”
“And Shaw?”
Luca’s expression darkened.
“Shaw designed the room.”
Nora almost laughed.
“Perfect.”
Daniel looked at her.
“That’s why I came.”
“You could have come four years ago.”
His face changed.
“I know.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because Owen did.”
Nora stared.
“What?”
“My partner tried to contact you.”
“When?”
“The day after your father died.”
“He never did.”
“He was intercepted.”
“By Voss?”
Daniel looked at Luca.
“No.”
Nora’s stomach tightened.
“Then by whom?”
“Someone attached to Cayne.”
The corridor went silent.
Mara’s eyes moved to Luca.
Nora slowly turned.
Luca’s face revealed nothing.
“Is that true?”
“I don’t know.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It is the only accurate one.”
“You had people watching me.”
“Yes.”
“Could one of them have stopped Owen Beck?”
“Yes.”
“On your instructions?”
“No.”
Nora studied him.
She had spent four years believing Luca was responsible for her father.
She had been wrong.
Now her father’s own letter told her Luca might be the only man she could trust.
But Marcus had also written that before whatever happened at St. Agnes fully ended.
Trust, Nora was learning, was not a destination.
It was an instrument.
It needed constant calibration.
“Who ran surveillance on me then?”
Luca answered without hesitation.
“Elias Rowe.”
Mara’s expression changed.
Nora caught it.
“Who is Elias Rowe?”
“My former security director.”
“Former why?”
“He disappeared eighteen months ago.”
Of course he had.
“Dead?”
“Unknown.”
Daniel shook his head.
“Not dead.”
Everyone looked at him.
“You’ve seen him?” Luca asked.
“Three weeks ago.”
“Where?”
“Washington.”
Mara swore quietly.
Luca’s voice became very calm.
“What was he doing?”
“Meeting Gideon Shaw.”
Nora looked at Luca.
There it was.
A crack.
Very small.
But real.
Betrayal.
Luca Cayne did not appear to be a man easily surprised by people.
Elias Rowe had surprised him.
“Your man,” Nora said.
“Was my man.”
“And then he moved to Shaw.”
“Apparently.”
Daniel shook his head.
“No. You’re still thinking too small.”
Luca’s eyes hardened.
“Then correct me.”
“Rowe didn’t move to Shaw. Shaw didn’t move to Voss. They all moved around the same thing.”
“What thing?” Nora asked.
Daniel looked at the ledger.
“Control.”
Nobody spoke.
He continued.
“Andreas built a network over forty years. Police, judges, licensing boards, unions, federal offices. But networks don’t stay owned forever. People inside them realize the network itself is more valuable than the man who built it.”
Nora understood.
“They’re replacing him.”
“Yes.”
“And the meeting in ten days?”
“Succession.”
Luca’s jaw tightened.
Daniel looked directly at him.
“You thought you were helping federal investigators collapse Voss’s structure.”
“I am.”
“No. You’re helping Shaw identify who stays loyal when Andreas falls.”
Mara moved closer.
“That doesn’t make sense. If Voss is arrested, the network becomes evidence.”
“Only the pieces investigators see.”
Daniel pointed at the ledger.
“Marcus found the old network. Andreas knows that. Shaw wants the updated one. He wants Andreas frightened enough to reveal it.”
“And then?” Nora asked.
“And then Andreas disappears into prison, dies, cooperates, doesn’t cooperate—it won’t matter. Shaw keeps the structure.”
Nora’s mind moved quickly.
Carl Reis.
Elias Rowe.
Gideon Shaw.
The sedan outside her apartment.
Daniel’s staged arrival.
“Who sent you to me?”
“No one.”
“Then how did you know I had the key?”
“I didn’t.”
“Someone texted me seconds after I found it.”
“That wasn’t me.”
Luca looked at Mara.
“Trace?”
“Burner. Dead already.”
Nora looked at Daniel.
“You said you put the marker on B17.”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Yesterday.”
“Why yesterday?”
“Because Elias Rowe returned to Chicago.”
Luca became still.
“You’re certain.”
“I watched him get off a private flight at Midway.”
“What does he want?”
Daniel looked at Nora.
“Probably this.”
The recorder.
Nora picked it up.
“Why?”
“Because Marcus recorded Shaw at St. Agnes.”
“And Shaw doesn’t know?”
“He thinks the recording was destroyed.”
“Why?”
Daniel gave a bitter smile.
“Because I told him I destroyed it.”
Silence.
Nora stared.
“You worked for Shaw.”
“No.”
“You lied to him.”
“Yes.”
“Why would he believe you?”
“Because for the first two years after your father died, I gave him reasons to.”
Nora felt something cold move through her.
“You became an informant.”
“I became useful.”
“To stay alive?”
“To stay close.”
“That sounds like something people say when they want their compromises to sound strategic.”
Daniel flinched.
Good.
He deserved to.
“Yes,” he said. “It does.”
The answer disarmed her more than denial would have.
“What did you give him?”
“Locations. Names. Small things.”
“People got hurt because of you?”
A pause.
“Yes.”
Nora looked away.
There it was.
Nobody in this story was clean.
Perhaps her father had understood that earlier than she had.
The point was not cleanliness.
It was direction.
What people did with the damage they had already caused.
Luca closed the ledger.
“We leave.”
Nora looked at him.
“Where?”
“Not your apartment.”
“Harrow House?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“If Rowe worked inside my security for twelve years, Harrow House is mapped in his head.”
Mara nodded.
“He knows redundancies.”
Daniel said, “He designed half of them.”
Nora looked at Luca.
“You employed a very inconvenient traitor.”
“Yes.”
There was no defensiveness.
Just fact.
“Where then?”
Luca considered.
“My father’s house.”
Nora blinked.
“You have a father?”
Mara actually looked amused.
Luca gave Nora a flat look.
“He’s dead.”
“Oh.”
“The house isn’t.”
“Where?”
“Wisconsin.”
Daniel shook his head.
“Too far. Shaw may move after the recording immediately.”
“He doesn’t know we have it.”
“He’ll know I survived Lower Wacker.”
Nora looked at the blood on Daniel’s collar.
“What happened there?”
“Two men tried to put me in a car.”
“Whose?”
“Rowe’s.”
Luca’s eyes sharpened.
“You saw him?”
“No. One of the men said his name.”
“Convenient.”
“I know.”
Nora picked up the envelope from Marcus.
“What if we don’t run?”
Everyone looked at her.
“What if we change the meeting?”
Luca’s gaze narrowed.
“How?”
“The operation assumes Andreas believes the meeting is controlled by him.”
“Yes.”
“It also assumes Shaw believes he controls the federal side.”
“Yes.”
“What does Elias Rowe believe?”
Daniel answered.
“That Luca still trusts the operation.”
Nora looked at Luca.
“Then let him.”
Mara frowned.
“You want to continue?”
“I want everyone to believe we’re continuing.”
Luca studied her.
“And meanwhile?”
Nora tapped the recorder.
“We find out who else heard what happened at St. Agnes.”
Daniel shook his head.
“There were only six people.”
“You. Owen. Hart. Shaw. Andreas. Luca.”
“Yes.”
“Owen is dead. Hart is dead.”
“Yes.”
“Andreas won’t help us.”
“Correct.”
Nora looked at Luca.
“So there are three.”
Daniel understood.
“Me.”
“Shaw.”
“And?”
Nora looked at Luca.
“You.”
Luca did not move.
Nora held his eyes.
“You saw my father alive. You heard him say B17. You were inside St. Agnes. And I still don’t know why you left without him.”
The silence changed.
Mara looked at Luca.
Daniel looked away.
Nora’s heart started beating harder.
“Luca.”
He said nothing.
“You told me you saw him for thirty seconds.”
“Yes.”
“Then what?”
“They removed me.”
“How?”
“Security.”
“Whose?”
“Hospital.”
“Lie.”
His gaze snapped to hers.
It was the first time she had accused him of that directly.
“Hospital security does not remove Luca Cayne from a corridor if Luca Cayne doesn’t want to be removed.”
Daniel’s eyes flicked toward her.
Mara became very interested in the floor.
Nora stepped closer.
“You left.”
Luca’s jaw tightened.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
For several seconds she thought he would refuse.
Then he looked at the recorder.
“Because your father told me to.”
Nora stopped.
“What?”
“He looked at me on that stretcher and told me to leave.”
“Why?”
“He said Andreas needed to believe no one had understood what he was doing.”
“That makes no sense.”
“It did at the time.”
“How?”
Luca’s expression was unreadable.
“Because Marcus believed Andreas wasn’t trying to kill him.”
Nora’s blood went cold.
“Then what was he trying to do?”
Luca looked at Daniel.
Daniel looked horrified.
“You never told me that.”
“No.”
Nora’s voice dropped.
“What was Andreas trying to do to my father?”
Luca answered.
“Make him disappear.”
Nora stared.
Then Daniel whispered, “No.”
Luca looked at him.
Daniel stepped backward.
“No, no, that changes everything.”
“What?”
Daniel’s face had gone white.
“Owen said something before he died.”
Nora’s pulse accelerated.
“What did he say?”
Daniel swallowed.
“He said we transported two patients out of St. Agnes that night.”
Silence.
Nora felt the floor disappear beneath her.
“Two?”
“One was declared deceased.”
“And the other?”
Daniel looked directly at her.
“The other had no name.”
Nora’s hands went cold.
Luca understood before she did.
“No,” he said.
Daniel nodded slowly.
“I think Marcus Vale didn’t die at St. Agnes.”
May you like
Nora could barely speak.
“Then where is my father?”
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