Chapter 6 - THE LOCKER THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN EMPTY
“Six o'clock tomorrow morning?”
Alistair looked at the demolition permit.
“Gideon knows someone might find that locker.”
Detective Alvarez folded her arms.
“Then we move quickly, and we do it properly.”
“What does properly mean?”
“It means you don't send twenty armed men into a warehouse and destroy whatever case we're building.”
Alistair gave her a hard look.
“You seem to have a very specific opinion of me.”
“I've read your file.”
Eveina almost smiled.
Alvarez continued.
“We have a witness reporting a threatened school pickup, evidence of a possible break-in, and records suggesting someone has been monitoring a mother and child. I'll take this to the duty judge and request authorization to secure the warehouse evidence.”
“And if Gideon gets there first?” Alistair asked.
“Then we'll have to prove what he did.”
For a moment, Eveina expected him to explode.
Instead, Alistair nodded.
“Tell me what you need.”
Alvarez looked faintly surprised.
Eveina wasn't.
She remembered the man she'd treated six years earlier.
He'd been stubborn, frightening, and clearly accustomed to being obeyed.
But when she'd told him to hold pressure against his wound, he'd listened.
When she'd ordered him to stop moving, he'd stopped.
He knew how to surrender control when someone's life depended on it.
He had simply forgotten how to do it afterward.
At three in the morning, Alvarez called.
A judge had authorized an urgent search of the storage area identified in the evidence.
Officers would secure it before the demolition crew arrived.
Alistair wasn't permitted to lead the search.
He could wait nearby with Eveina and identify any records investigators needed help understanding.
At five forty, they stood outside the old river warehouse.
The building leaned toward the gray Chicago morning like an exhausted animal.
Its windows were boarded.
Its loading doors rusted.
A faded Blackthorn Shipping sign still hung above the entrance.
Alistair stared at it.
“My father used to bring me here on Saturdays.”
Eveina stood beside him.
“To work?”
“To make sure I understood what the men did.”
He pointed toward the loading dock.
“He said if I wanted to run the company someday, I'd better learn the names of the people who carried the boxes.”
“Did you?”
“For a while.”
“What happened?”
“I got busy learning how to frighten them instead.”
Eveina didn't answer.
But she reached for his hand.
Only for a moment.
Then she let go.
At six fifteen, Alvarez emerged with a sealed evidence bag.
Inside was a tarnished metal plate marked 417.
“Locker was still there,” she said.
Alistair stepped forward.
“And?”
“It had been opened recently. The original lock was gone.”
His heart sank.
“But whoever searched it missed something.”
She held up a second bag.
A narrow carbon-copy ledger had been hidden beneath a loose metal shelf.
Its pages contained dates, vehicle numbers, security assignments, and payments going back nearly nine years.
Several entries matched the list hidden in Alistair's coat.
Alvarez pointed to one.
“This company paid surveillance teams to watch a residential address six years ago.”
Eveina read the address.
Her old apartment.
The place where two strangers had handed her fifty thousand dollars and a plane ticket.
She looked at the amount beside it.
Eight thousand dollars.
Eight thousand dollars to watch a terrified pregnant woman.
Another entry showed a payment two weeks later.
Transport and documentation.
Twenty-two thousand dollars.
Alistair stared.
“That was after she left.”
Alvarez nodded.
“We'll need bank records to establish exactly what these payments covered.”
Eveina turned another page.
There was a payment for a funeral service.
Another for vehicle disposal.
The dates matched the week Alistair had been told she died.
He sat down on an old concrete loading block.
“I paid for her funeral.”
Eveina looked at him.
He spoke without lifting his head.
“I chose the flowers. I stood beside the coffin. I told myself she would have hated the music.”
“You couldn't have known.”
“I should have questioned why I couldn't see her.”
Alvarez gently took the ledger back.
“Someone constructed a convincing story, Mr. Blackthorn. We still need evidence of who directed it.”
A shout came from inside.
An officer had found a locked file cabinet behind the old dispatch desk.
It contained employee records.
Security schedules.
And a folder labeled Hart, E.
Eveina recognized her own student identification photograph on the first page.
It had been taken the week she began nursing school.
She had been nineteen.
Her hair was longer.
She was smiling.
She stared at that younger version of herself.
Someone had turned her entire life into a file.
There were photographs from outside her school.
Notes about her pregnancy.
Copies of apartment lease applications.
Even a record of Theo's enrollment in kindergarten.
“Six years,” she whispered.
Alistair looked at the dates.
The reports had continued long after Gideon claimed she was dead.
The last entry was only eleven days old.
Alvarez studied the signature at the bottom.
“Who is Dorian Blackthorn?”
Alistair's face hardened.
“My cousin.”
The handwriting matched the authorization Dorian had presented at Theo's school.
And beside his name was an updated surveillance instruction.
Subject's residence confirmed. School collection approved.
Eveina stepped backward.
“Dorian has been watching us?”
Alvarez didn't answer until she'd examined the preceding pages.
“His name appears only on the recent entries. Most of the older reports came from another contractor.”
Then an officer approached.
“Detective, there's a gentleman asking to speak with you.”
Dorian Blackthorn stood near the warehouse entrance.
He wore a dark coat.
His black hair was neatly combed.
And on his wrist was the cracked silver watch.
Alistair crossed the distance between them before anyone could stop him.
“You went to my son's school.”
Dorian didn't deny it.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Gideon told me you wanted to meet the boy before involving his mother.”
Alistair stared at him.
“Do I look like someone who would ask you to impersonate me?”
Dorian swallowed.
“He said the arrangement had to be private.”
“You knew it was wrong.”
“Yes.”
“Then why did you do it?”
Dorian looked toward the river.
“My wife had a stroke last year. The rehabilitation bills took everything we had. Gideon offered to cover the treatment if I handled one visit.”
Alistair's anger didn't disappear.
But he saw the shame in Dorian's face.
“You could have asked me.”
Dorian laughed without humor.
“The last time I asked you for help, your office told me you were unavailable.”
Alistair remembered.
A message he'd never personally received.
Another relationship Gideon had been allowed to control.
“I thought the boy was being brought somewhere his father would meet him,” Dorian said. “When I heard what was happening today, I came here.”
Alvarez approached.
“Then you can give us a statement.”
Dorian nodded.
“I'll tell you everything I know.”
Before anyone moved, he caught Alistair's sleeve.
“There's something else. Gideon asked me to destroy the school visitor photograph yesterday.”
“Why?”
“Because the picture showed the watch.”
Alistair frowned.
Dorian turned his wrist.
“The glass cracked six years ago. Gideon borrowed it from me the night someone tried to kill you.”
Alistair went completely still.
“He borrowed my father's watch?”
“He said he needed it for a meeting. He returned it the next morning with the glass broken.”
Alistair remembered the shining object in the man's hand beside the truck.
The silver watch.
The broad case.
A terrible possibility began to take shape.
Then Alvarez's radio crackled.
One of the officers had found a current operational schedule mixed with the old records.
The schedule listed several properties.
The Blackthorn mansion.
The river warehouse.
And the Lincoln Park townhouse.
Eveina saw the last address.
Her stomach turned.
Beside it was an instruction:
Collection contingency. Friday, 6:30 a.m.
She checked the time.
6:27.
Theo was still at that townhouse with Lena.
Alistair was already moving toward the car.
May you like
And for the first time in six years, Eveina heard genuine terror in his voice.
“Lena has three minutes. Tell her not to open that door.”
