Chapter 6 - THE WOMAN WHO HAD WAITED THIRTEEN YEARS
I did not tell Dominic where I was going.
That decision lasted eleven minutes.
Then he caught me slipping out of Bianca’s building through the underground garage.
“You are terrible at disappearing.”
I stopped beside my car.
“I was getting coffee.”
“At two thirty in the morning?”
“I have unusual habits.”
“So did your father. It got him killed.”
The words landed between us.
Dominic regretted them instantly.
I could see it.
“Move.”
“Elena.”
“I said move.”
He stepped aside.
Then opened the passenger door.
“What are you doing?”
“Coming with you.”
“She specifically said without Rinaldi.”
“And I specifically don’t care.”
“If she sees you—”
“She won’t.”
“You’re not as invisible as you think.”
“Neither are you.”
I stared at him.
“Why are you doing this?”
His answer came too quickly.
“Because I owe David.”
“No.”
He looked away.
“That was true thirteen years ago. It isn’t the reason anymore.”
The garage suddenly seemed too quiet.
I should have asked what he meant.
Instead, I got into the car.
Maya Chen had chosen an all-night church on the south side.
No security cameras.
Multiple exits.
The kind of place where desperate people came and nobody asked why.
I entered alone.
Dominic stayed somewhere outside.
At least, that was the arrangement.
Maya sat in the last pew.
She looked older than her federal ID photograph but instantly recognizable.
Short dark hair.
Gray wool coat.
No weapon visible.
“You look like David.”
Everyone kept saying that.
Tonight, it no longer hurt quite as much.
“You knew my father?”
“I worked for the man he trusted.”
“The prosecutor who died.”
“Daniel Hargrove.”
She nodded.
“Daniel wasn’t killed because of your father’s case. He was killed because he decided to believe it.”
I sat several feet away.
“Why did you disappear?”
“I didn’t. Keene moved me.”
“Where?”
“Chicago. Then Seattle. Then internal compliance. He kept me employed because firing me would have raised questions.”
“And you spent thirteen years doing nothing?”
Her face hardened.
“You think I did nothing?”
“I think my father was murdered.”
“So was my mentor.”
“Then why didn’t you expose Keene?”
“With what?”
She leaned closer.
“The Orpheus Circle survived because it never existed on paper. Every time we identified one account, another disappeared. Every witness recanted. Every officer who pushed too far was discredited, reassigned, bought, or buried.”
“You sent the text?”
“No.”
That surprised me.
“You didn’t tell me to go to the cemetery?”
“No.”
“Then who did?”
Maya looked toward the altar.
“I believe your father did.”
I stared at her.
“He’s dead.”
“He arranged delayed triggers.”
“What?”
“David was a forensic accountant. He understood systems better than anyone I ever met. He created dormant email accounts, scheduled transfers, dead-man protocols. Some were designed to activate if specific financial accounts moved.”
“The account moved?”
“Three nights ago.”
My blood chilled.
“Which account?”
“An offshore trust your father had flagged thirteen years ago.”
“Who touched it?”
“Senator Malcolm Vale.”
I knew the name.
Every American did.
Malcolm Vale had spent twenty-six years in Washington.
Former governor.
Current chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
A man widely discussed as a future presidential candidate.
I almost laughed.
“That’s impossible.”
Maya’s expression did not change.
“Your father circled his name in red, didn’t he?”
My smile disappeared.
He had.
Several times.
“What does Vale have to do with trafficking?”
“He didn’t run the girls. He ran the protection.”
“Meaning?”
“Judges. Border officials. federal investigators. politicians. He made problems disappear.”
“And Keene?”
“Keene protected the network from inside federal law enforcement.”
“Why is Vale moving money now?”
“Because one of the old Orpheus accounts was reactivated.”
“By whom?”
Maya looked at me.
“Dominic Rinaldi.”
I stood.
“No.”
“Sit down.”
“No.”
“Elena.”
“You’re telling me Dominic is involved?”
“I’m telling you that four days ago, Rinaldi transferred twelve million dollars into an account connected to the original network.”
I felt sick.
“That could be anything.”
“It could.”
“You don’t sound convinced.”
“I’m not paid to be convinced. I’m paid to follow money.”
Exactly what Dad used to say.
I sat again.
“What is the third ledger?”
Maya reached into her coat.
I tensed.
She removed a photograph.
My childhood home.
“The third ledger was never a book.”
“What?”
“Your father called them ledgers because he knew intercepted conversations would make people imagine paper.”
“Then what are they?”
“The first was a financial database.”
“Where?”
“Unknown.”
“The second?”
“Crash evidence Raymond Alvarez collected.”
“And the third?”
Maya slid the photograph toward me.
“David said the final proof was something only you could access.”
I looked at my old house.
We had sold it two months after Dad died.
Another family lived there now.
“What am I looking for?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s not useful.”
“Your father told Hargrove one sentence before Hargrove disappeared.”
“What sentence?”
Maya looked straight at me.
“She already knows the combination.”
My heart stopped.
A combination.
I thought about birthdays.
Addresses.
Lockers.
My father’s safe.
Then I remembered something I hadn’t thought about in years.
Dad had built a wooden model lighthouse for my fifteenth birthday.
At the base was a tiny combination lock.
He told me the combination was the date Mom first kissed him.
My mother had died when I was eight.
The lighthouse was one of the few things I kept after Dad’s death.
It was still in storage.
I stood.
Maya grabbed my wrist.
“There’s more.”
I looked down.
“Rinaldi cannot know you have the third ledger.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t know whose side he’s on.”
“He saved me twice tonight.”
“Men like Dominic Rinaldi rarely do anything for one reason.”
“You don’t know him.”
“Neither do you.”
A door opened behind us.
I turned.
Dominic stood at the back of the church.
So much for remaining outside.
“You’re right,” he said to Maya.
She went still.
Dominic walked down the aisle.
“Elena doesn’t know me.”
I looked at him.
“But she should.”
He stopped beside our pew.
“The twelve million dollars was mine.”
Maya’s hand moved toward her coat.
Dominic ignored it.
“I reactivated the account to flush Vale out.”
“You could have told me,” I said.
“I could have.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because there is something else I haven’t told you.”
My stomach dropped.
“What?”
He looked suddenly older.
“The night your father died, I wasn’t waiting somewhere safe.”
His voice lowered.
“I was on Route Nine.”
I could barely breathe.
“What are you saying?”
“I reached his car before Keene did.”
Every sound in the church disappeared.
“You were there?”
“Yes.”
“Then why didn’t you save him?”
Pain crossed Dominic’s face.
“Because David ordered me to leave.”
I stared at him.
“That makes no sense.”
“It will.”
He reached into his coat.
Maya drew her gun.
“Hands where I can see them.”
Dominic slowly removed a small digital recorder.
“My men intercepted this an hour ago from Michael Trent’s phone.”
He pressed play.
Trent’s voice filled the church.
“Keene doesn’t care about Rinaldi anymore. Ward’s daughter is the target. Vale wants her alive until she opens the third ledger.”
A second voice replied.
“And after?”
Trent laughed.
May you like
“After that, she dies exactly like her father.”
Then the church windows shattered.
