Chapter 112
Seat 9.
“Anthony bought two.”
“For whom?”
“Frank was in Seat 8.”
She tapped Seat 9.
“This one was never scanned.”
Anthony had intended to meet someone beside Frank.
Someone who never entered through the public gate.
Elias said, “Staff entrance?”
Claire nodded.
“The arena kept employee logs.”
She had gotten them months earlier.
Only three people entered after the doors opened without scanning a ticket.
A paramedic.
A concessions supervisor.
And a private security consultant.
Vincent stared at the last name.
Emily read it.
Gerald Pike.
Charles’s face darkened.
“Pike handled warehouse security before the explosion.”
The same system that had accepted Charles’s cloned credentials.
The same security department that controlled cameras.
Emily said, “Where is he now?”
Claire answered.
“He works for Frank.”
That seemed almost too easy.
Then Claire added:
“But he started working for Frank after Anthony died.”
Another complication.
Pike could have been the traitor.
Or Frank could have hired him to discover what happened.
Vincent typed.
WE TALK TO PIKE FIRST.
Claire shook her head.
“He won’t talk.”
Vincent’s expression suggested that was not a permanent condition.
Emily said, “Maybe he already did.”
Everyone looked at her.
She pointed to Anthony’s photograph.
“The face is scratched out.”
Charles nodded.
“So?”
“Anthony wrote that the bracelet mattered more than the face.”
Emily looked at the damaged area.
“Maybe he scratched the face himself because he didn’t want anyone identifying the man if the photograph was found.”
Claire stepped closer.
Emily continued.
“If the man was Pike, why protect his identity?”
Silence.
Vincent took the photograph beneath the overhead light.
The scratches were deep.
Intentional.
But along one edge, part of an ear remained.
And something black sat inside it.
A second receiver.
Elias grabbed the picture.
“That’s prototype two.”
Anthony had not given the second receiver to Claire.
He had given it to the unknown man whose face he later destroyed.
The man had been working with Anthony.
Not necessarily against him.
Claire whispered, “Pike.”
Charles said, “You don’t know that.”
“We can.”
Elias pulled up old personnel photographs.
Gerald Pike had a distinctive notch in his left ear from an old injury.
The ear in Anthony’s photograph had the same notch.
Pike was the third man.
Pike had secretly helped Anthony.
Vincent’s supposed security traitor had actually been part of Anthony’s investigation.
The case turned again.
At dawn, they found Pike at Frank Delaney’s estate.
Not hiding.
Working in the greenhouse.
Gerald Pike was sixty-one, broad and weathered, with gray through his beard.
When Vincent entered, Pike looked at Anthony’s pocket watch.
Then the rosary.
He did not pretend ignorance.
“So the kid finally got you there.”
Vincent froze.
Emily stared.
“What kid?”
Pike glanced at her.
“Anthony used to call the emergency receiver ‘the kid.’”
Emily exhaled.
For one strange second, she had thought he meant Noah.
Vincent held up the photograph.
Pike’s face tightened.
“Anthony was supposed to destroy that.”
Charles said, “Why did he hide your face?”
“Because if Frank found out I was helping him, I was useless.”
“Was Frank behind the explosives?”
Pike looked toward the main house.
“No.”
Vincent signed.
Pike understood.
“He knew?”
“Yes.”
The answer landed heavily.
Frank knew restricted explosives were moving through Caruso Maritime.
But Pike insisted Frank had been trying to stop it too.
“Anthony came to both of us separately,” Pike said. “He didn’t realize we were comparing notes.”
Emily asked, “Then who were you investigating?”
Pike looked at Vincent.
“Your father’s old partnership.”
Vincent’s father had been dead nearly a decade.
Charles frowned.
“That partnership dissolved.”
“On paper.”
Pike walked to a workbench and removed an old ledger.
Inside were handwritten initials connected to port payments.
Anthony had circled one repeatedly.
R.M.
Emily waited for another unfamiliar man.
Instead Vincent’s face went completely still.
Charles whispered,
“No.”
Claire looked at her father.
“Who?”
Charles answered slowly.
“Rosemary Caruso.”
Vincent’s mother.
Emily stared.
“But she’s—”
“Dead,” Charles said.
There would be no fake resurrection.
Rosemary had died six years earlier.
Pike nodded.
“Anthony knew that.”
“Then why circle her initials?” Emily asked.
“Because somebody had been authorizing shipments under Rosemary’s charitable foundation three years after her death.”
Vincent looked down at the white rosary.
His mother’s name had been used to move explosives.
Her rosary had been taken from his car.
Her old foundation had been turned into a channel for illegal freight.
The murder plot was built out of family memories.
Pike reached for a folder.
“Anthony finally identified the account receiving the payments.”
Vincent stepped forward.
Pike opened it.
The account belonged to a company Emily had never heard of.
Charles had.
So had Claire.
Their reactions were immediate.
Vincent looked at Charles.
May you like
Charles whispered,
“That company owns the land under your estate.”
