Chapter 3 - THE WATCH THAT DISAPPEARED
“You ordered the warehouse closed?”
Norah held Sam against her chest as though Ethan might somehow take him away.
“My father died inside that building.”
“I know.”
“You knew he was there?”
Ethan looked at the photograph in his hand.
“Not when I gave the order.”
“Then explain it.”
He drew a slow breath.
“Fifteen years ago, shipments started disappearing from my father's company. He believed someone inside the warehouse was stealing from him.”
“My father?”
“That was what we were told.”
Norah shook her head.
“Daniel Davis never stole anything.”
“I don't know what happened to those shipments.”
“But you believed he was responsible.”
Ethan didn't answer immediately.
His silence was enough.
Norah's eyes filled.
“My mother spent years trying to clear his name. She died believing everyone still thought her husband was a thief.”
Sam touched her cheek.
“Mommy sad?”
She kissed his hand.
“Just tired, sweetheart.”
Ethan placed the photograph on the dresser.
“I was twenty-five. My father put me in charge of investigating the missing cargo.”
“And my father ended up dead.”
“Yes.”
The word hung between them.
Norah turned away.
“I want you to leave.”
Ethan looked at Sam, then at the empty green tin.
“Someone entered your home tonight.”
“I know.”
“Whoever took that watch may come back.”
“Then I'll call the police.”
“You should. And I'll tell them everything I know.”
She faced him again.
“Everything?”
Ethan held her gaze.
“Everything I can prove.”
Mara Ellis was still downstairs speaking to Mrs. Higgins when Ethan emerged.
He explained the suspected burglary and offered to provide a statement.
Mara listened carefully.
“Ms. Davis is frightened,” she said. “The last thing she needs is someone using this situation to pressure her.”
“I understand.”
“Does she have somewhere safe to stay?”
Ethan hesitated.
He owned several properties across Boston.
Any one of them would be warmer and safer than the apartment upstairs.
But offering Norah a room in his home could look like something else.
Especially with a child welfare investigation underway.
“I can pay for a hotel,” he said.
“Then let her choose the location. She needs control over what happens next.”
Ethan nodded.
Mara examined the report on her clipboard.
“One more thing. The caller said he was concerned about his great-nephew.”
“Gregory Davis?”
“Yes.”
“Did he explain why?”
“He claimed Norah had become unstable after recently finding something belonging to her father.”
Ethan went still.
“What something?”
Mara checked the original intake notes.
“A watch.”
Upstairs, Norah was helping Sam eat warm soup when Ethan returned.
She noticed his expression immediately.
“What?”
“Gregory mentioned your father's watch when he made the report.”
Her spoon stopped moving.
“How would he know I still had it?”
“Did he ever ask you about it?”
Norah thought back.
Three weeks earlier, while she was cleaning L'Osteria's walk-in freezer, Gregory had appeared behind her.
He had asked whether she still kept Daniel's old belongings.
She'd said she had a few things.
Then he asked specifically about the watch.
“I told him it was broken,” she remembered.
“What did he say?”
“He offered me five hundred dollars for it.”
Ethan frowned.
“Did he explain why?”
“He said it reminded him of his brother.”
“Did you believe him?”
Norah looked down.
“I wanted to.”
That was the painful part.
For all Gregory's cruelty, he was one of the last people alive who had known her father.
When Norah's mother died six years earlier, Gregory had attended the funeral.
He'd stood beside her at the cemetery.
For five minutes, he'd seemed like family.
Then he'd disappeared again.
Months ago, when Norah needed work, she had gone to his restaurant.
He hired her to clean the worst areas of the kitchen.
She thought it might be the beginning of forgiveness.
Now she wondered whether he had wanted something from her all along.
By eight o'clock, Norah agreed to go to the hospital.
Not because Ethan insisted.
Because Mara had explained that documenting her medical condition would help establish what had happened at the restaurant.
Mrs. Higgins stayed with Sam while Norah changed into clean clothes.
Ethan waited downstairs.
At the emergency department, a physician examined Norah and ordered blood tests.
She was dehydrated, exhausted, and dangerously undernourished.
There were also irritated patches across her forearms.
The doctor gently examined them.
“Chemical exposure?”
Norah nodded.
“Industrial degreaser. The kind we used under the restaurant's freezer units.”
“Were you given gloves?”
“Sometimes.”
“Protective sleeves?”
“No.”
Ethan stood beside the examination curtain.
His expression hardened.
Norah noticed.
“Don't look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like I'm somebody you need to rescue.”
He said nothing.
“I worked because Sam needed diapers. I cleaned what they told me to clean because I couldn't afford to get fired.”
She looked away.
“And then they fired me anyway.”
Ethan pulled up a chair.
“My father used to say a man who can't pay his employees has no business employing them.”
Norah gave a bitter laugh.
“Did he follow his own advice?”
Ethan accepted the question.
“Not always.”
For the first time, she saw something other than power in his eyes.
Regret.
Across town, Gregory Davis sat alone in L'Osteria's private dining room.
The restaurant had closed early.
A crystal glass stood untouched beside his hand.
Across from him sat Leon Mercer, Ethan Hayes's longtime operations director.
Leon was sixty-one, with silver hair and the patient manner of a man who had survived by letting other people make mistakes.
“Hayes took her to the hospital,” Gregory said.
Leon barely reacted.
“Then your little performance accomplished nothing.”
“You told me the watch was in her apartment.”
“It was.”
“Our man searched the drawer. It wasn't there.”
Gregory rubbed his forehead.
“He took the watch?”
“No. He took the tin's contents out to look through them. Someone interrupted him. He left with nothing.”
Gregory's face tightened.
“Then why did the child say otherwise?”
Leon finally looked up.
“What child?”
“The boy told them a gray man took the watch.”
Leon considered that.
“Maybe your niece moved it.”
Gregory stared at the table.
“Daniel would never have hidden it without a reason.”
“That reason died with him.”
“Then why are we still looking?”
Leon leaned forward.
“Because somebody is paying very good money to make sure what Daniel knew stays buried.”
Gregory looked sick.
“You promised nobody would touch Norah.”
“I promised you could keep your restaurant.”
“And the boy?”
Leon rose.
“Do what you were paid to do.”
At the hospital, Finn returned with information about the intruder.
He had spoken to the apartment superintendent and obtained a copy of the building's hallway camera footage.
It was grainy.
But at 6:07, a man in a gray work coat entered the third-floor hallway.
He wore a cap low over his face.
At 6:11, he left empty-handed.
Except for one detail.
Finn enlarged the image.
A silver triangle was stitched onto the man's coat.
Ethan recognized it.
“Atlantic Harbor Maintenance,” he said.
Norah looked confused.
“Who are they?”
“A contracting company.”
“Owned by Gregory?”
“No.”
Ethan studied the image.
“They have a long-term contract with my shipping company.”
Norah stared at him.
“You mean someone who works for you broke into my home?”
“Someone connected to my business.”
“That's not better.”
“No,” Ethan admitted. “It isn't.”
Finn looked uncomfortable.
“There is something else, Boss.”
He placed another photograph on the table.
It had been taken earlier that day outside the apartment building.
Gregory stood beside the gray-coated man.
And behind them, partially hidden by a parked truck, was Leon Mercer.
Norah studied the older man's face.
“Who is he?”
Ethan answered quietly.
“The man who has managed my shipping operations for twenty years.”
Norah looked back at the photograph.
Then her eyes widened.
She reached into her purse and removed the old warehouse photograph.
Leon was standing in the background, near the loading dock.
His face was younger.
But unmistakable.
“He was there,” she whispered.
Ethan compared the pictures.
“Yes.”
Norah pointed to something above the old loading dock.
A large blue door bore the number B-17.
Her father had written those exact characters on the back of the photograph.
B-17.
Beneath them were five words in his familiar handwriting.
Ask Ethan about the lock.
Ethan read the message twice.
Then he looked at Norah.
“Your father knew something I didn't.”
Norah's voice trembled.
“Or something you haven't told me.”
Ethan turned the photograph toward the light.
Below her father's words was a second line, almost invisible beneath a brown stain.
If the doors close again, people will die.
May you like
And suddenly Ethan remembered the one detail missing from every official report of the warehouse fire.
The emergency exits had been locked from the outside.
