Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN IN THE PHOTOGRAPH
Gabriel’s eyes never left Rachel.
Camille was still on speaker.
“You’re saying Rachel stole the Harbor Grand key card from you?” he asked.
“Yes.”
Rachel’s stomach tightened.
Camille continued quickly.
“She’s been acting strangely for weeks. I think she’s been going through our things.”
“Our things?”
A pause.
“Mine,” Camille corrected.
Gabriel picked up the card.
“Then tell me what was written on the back.”
Silence.
Rachel looked at him.
It was a trap.
Camille finally said, “How should I know?”
Gabriel’s expression hardened.
“You just told me it belonged to you.”
“I don’t memorize everything written on hotel keys.”
“You knew the room number.”
Another silence.
Then Camille whispered, “Gabriel, please come home.”
“I am home.”
The call ended.
Rachel stared at him.
“You think she knows we found the room?”
“She knows more than that.”
Gabriel slipped the card into his jacket.
“You’re leaving this estate tonight.”
Rachel’s face fell.
“I told you the truth.”
“That’s why you’re leaving.”
He motioned toward the hallway.
“Someone replaced that lock because you touched something they didn’t want touched. Until I know who, you don’t sleep in the staff wing.”
“I can go home.”
“No.”
The answer came too fast.
Rachel stiffened.
Gabriel softened his voice.
“If Michael is involved, and Camille knows you overheard them, your apartment is the first place they’ll look.”
Rachel hated that he was right.
She hated even more that she was frightened.
“My father is there sometimes.”
Gabriel’s head lifted.
“Where?”
She gave him the address.
Within minutes, one of Gabriel’s security men was sent to check on him.
Rachel folded her arms.
“I don’t want him frightened.”
“Neither do I.”
“You don’t even know him.”
Gabriel looked at her burned hand.
“I know someone used his daughter as a target in my house.”
Something about the sentence unsettled her.
Not because it sounded threatening.
Because it sounded personal.
Gabriel brought her to a small guest suite near the library rather than the staff quarters.
A medical kit waited on the dresser.
Rachel sat reluctantly while he applied burn gel to her hand.
“You have people for this,” she said.
“I know.”
“Then why are you doing it?”
His fingers paused.
“Because everybody watched.”
She looked at him.
“At dinner.”
His jaw tightened.
“Twenty people watched Camille pour boiling coffee over your hand, and nobody moved.”
“You did.”
“Eventually.”
There was anger in his voice.
But not at her.
Rachel looked down.
“My father always says rich rooms teach people when not to see things.”
Gabriel glanced up.
“What does your father do?”
“He used to be a carpenter.”
“For Romano Construction?”
Rachel shook her head.
“Independent. Mostly restoration work.”
“What’s his name?”
“Thomas Mercer.”
Gabriel became completely still.
Rachel noticed.
“What?”
He stood.
“Nothing.”
“That wasn’t nothing.”
Before he answered, his security chief appeared.
“Mr. Romano.”
Gabriel stepped into the hallway.
Rachel heard only pieces.
Apartment untouched.
Father safe.
And another phrase.
“Found in Room 814.”
Gabriel returned carrying a transparent evidence sleeve.
Inside was an old photograph.
He placed it on the dresser.
Rachel forgot about her burned hand.
The picture had been taken perhaps twenty-five years earlier at a construction site.
A much younger Michael Romano stood beside Gabriel’s late father, Anthony.
Three workers were behind them.
One was Rachel’s father.
Thomas Mercer.
Rachel picked up the photograph.
“No.”
Gabriel said nothing.
“My father never worked for your family.”
“Are you sure?”
“He would have told me.”
Gabriel turned the photograph over.
A date was written there.
October 18, 2001.
Below it were four words.
Pier Nine — final inspection.
Rachel’s throat tightened.
She remembered that date.
Not because of Romano Construction.
Because October 18 was the date her mother died.
Officially, Susan Mercer had been killed in a highway accident while driving home from an evening shift.
Rachel had been four.
She looked at Gabriel.
“My mother died that night.”
Gabriel’s expression changed.
“Where?”
“Interstate 95.”
He stared at the photograph again.
“Pier Nine was shut down the next morning.”
“Why?”
“Structural failure.”
Rachel suddenly felt cold.
“How many people were hurt?”
“Officially? Nobody.”
“Officially?”
Gabriel didn’t answer.
Rachel grabbed her phone.
Her father answered on the third ring.
“Rachel?”
“Dad, did you ever work for Romano Construction?”
Silence.
Her fingers tightened around the phone.
“Dad?”
“Who told you that?”
She looked at Gabriel.
“I found a photograph.”
Her father’s breathing changed.
“Come home.”
“I can’t.”
“Rachel.”
His voice cracked.
“Whatever they found, stay away from it.”
“You told me you never worked for them.”
“I told you what I needed you to believe.”
Gabriel stepped closer.
Rachel turned away.
“What happened at Pier Nine?”
Her father went silent again.
Then he said something she had never heard from him before.
“Put Gabriel Romano on the phone.”
Rachel handed it over.
Gabriel lifted it to his ear.
“Mr. Mercer.”
Thomas spoke for nearly thirty seconds.
Gabriel didn’t interrupt.
But the color slowly drained from his face.
When the call ended, Rachel stood.
“What did he say?”
Gabriel walked to the window.
“Your father says the six million dollars wasn’t stolen.”
“I already know that.”
“He says Michael was paying debts.”
“To whom?”
“To families whose names were removed from the Pier Nine accident report.”
Rachel stared at him.
“You said nobody was hurt.”
“That’s what I was told.”
“How many?”
Gabriel turned.
“Seventeen.”
The room seemed to tilt.
Rachel sat down.
“And my mother?”
Gabriel’s silence answered before his words did.
“Your father says she wasn’t on Interstate 95 when she died.”
Rachel stopped breathing.
“He says Susan Mercer was at Pier Nine.”
“No.”
“He says she saw what happened.”
“No.”
“And he says my father paid him to keep quiet.”
Rachel stood so quickly the chair scraped backward.
“My father wouldn’t take blood money.”
Gabriel didn’t argue.
That frightened her more.
She picked up the photograph again.
Something metallic slid from behind its cardboard backing and struck the floor.
A small silver St. Christopher medal.
Rachel stared at it.
She knew every scratch on its surface.
Her mother used to wear it around her neck.
Rachel had seen it in photographs all her life.
Her father told her it had been lost in the crash.
She bent down slowly.
On the back, beneath the saint, were two engraved initials.
S.M.
Rachel’s voice barely came out.
“This belonged to my mother.”
Gabriel crouched beside her.
Then he noticed something Rachel hadn’t.
A folded strip of paper had been hidden behind the medal.
He opened it.
Three lines were written in faded blue ink.
THOMAS KNOWS THE TRUTH.
MICHAEL TRIED TO STOP IT.
ANTHONY ORDERED THE POUR.
Rachel looked at Gabriel.
“What pour?”
Gabriel’s face had gone pale.
He knew.
“Concrete.”
Rachel’s stomach turned.
Gabriel looked again at the photograph of Pier Nine.
Then at the medal belonging to a woman supposedly killed miles away.
“The night your mother died,” he said quietly, “my father poured twelve feet of concrete beneath Pier Nine.”
And from the doorway behind them, Camille whispered:
May you like
“That’s why the ledger can never come out.”
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