Chapter 3 - What Greg Stole Before He Died
By sunrise, New York looked washed clean.
Declan knew better.
Cities did not become clean.
They merely learned how to hide their stains in daylight.
Sadie had not slept.
Neither had he.
At 6:20 a.m., Leo arrived at the penthouse with two encrypted laptops, Greg Mercer’s burner phone, the recovered office drive, and an expression Declan had seen only twice in fifteen years.
Concern.
Not fear.
Leo Mercer did not scare easily.
He was forty-two, broad-shouldered, silver beginning at his temples, and had served Declan since the year Declan inherited Hayes Logistics from his father.
If Declan trusted anyone completely, it was Leo.
Which was precisely why he now trusted him slightly less.
Everyone had become a question.
Leo noticed Sadie immediately.
She sat at the dining table wearing Declan’s shirt beneath the gray cardigan he had found drying near the heater.
“You all right?” Leo asked.
Sadie nodded.
“Fine.”
“She needs stitches,” Declan said.
“I called Dr. Alvarez. He’s coming privately.”
Sadie opened her mouth.
Declan gave her a look.
She closed it.
Leo placed the recovered drive on the table.
“This is what Greg was copying.”
“Did you open it?”
“Not yet.”
“Why?”
“It’s rigged.”
Sadie leaned forward.
“How?”
“Software trap. Wrong password wipes the contents.”
Declan glanced at her father’s drive.
“And that one?”
“Different encryption. Older.”
Leo connected Greg’s device to an isolated machine.
“Whoever built this expected somebody to recover it.”
“A decoy?” Sadie asked.
“Maybe.”
“What about Greg’s burner?”
Leo slid it toward Declan.
“Mostly calls from blocked numbers. But one message wasn’t deleted.”
Declan opened it.
Four words.
MIDNIGHT. ARCHIVE. FINISH IT.
Sent at 11:42 p.m.
“Finish what?” Sadie whispered.
Leo looked at her.
“That’s what we need to learn.”
Dr. Alvarez arrived fifteen minutes later.
He stitched Sadie’s arm at the dining table while she refused pain medication stronger than ibuprofen.
“You’re stubborn,” he said.
“She is,” Declan replied.
Sadie glared.
“I’m sitting right here.”
“Exactly.”
For one brief second, something almost normal passed between them.
Then Leo’s laptop chimed.
Everyone turned.
“We got through the first layer.”
The screen displayed folders.
PAYROLL.
PORT ACCESS.
HAYES SUCCESSION.
CARVER.
COLLINS.
Sadie’s face tightened.
“Open Collins.”
Leo clicked.
Password request.
Below it appeared a security question.
WHAT DID MICHAEL REFUSE TO SELL?
Sadie stared.
“I know.”
Declan looked at her.
“What?”
“His integrity.”
She typed INTEGRITY.
The folder opened.
Inside were scanned manifests, photographs, audio files, and one video.
The oldest document was dated nine years earlier.
Michael Collins’s original investigation.
The newest was less than six months old.
Sadie touched the screen as though the date might disappear.
“He was working on this after he vanished.”
Declan’s jaw tightened.
Leo opened an audio recording.
Static.
Then Michael Collins’s voice filled the room.
Sadie stopped breathing.
“If you’re hearing this, the chain has survived longer than I expected.”
Her hand went to her mouth.
The recording continued.
“The corruption does not begin with Carver. Carver is an opportunist. He is buying access from someone already inside New York.”
Declan exchanged a glance with Leo.
Michael’s voice continued.
“I made the mistake of assuming the Hayes organization was the source. It isn’t. Someone is using Hayes routes, Hayes credentials, and Hayes employees without full authorization.”
Declan leaned closer.
“Who?”
As though answering him from nine years ago, Michael said:
“I don’t yet have the name.”
The audio ended.
Sadie’s eyes were wet.
“He knew you weren’t responsible.”
“Yes.”
“He knew.”
Declan wanted to tell her that Michael had tried to contact him again.
That Declan had missed the call because he was in a meeting.
That he had replayed the voicemail hundreds of times after Michael disappeared.
But guilt had its own selfishness.
Sometimes confession existed only to transfer pain.
He said nothing.
Leo opened another file.
A photograph appeared.
Patrick Hayes.
Declan’s older brother.
Alive, smiling, standing beside Thomas Carver at a charity dinner eleven years earlier.
Sadie looked at Declan.
“You knew they met?”
“Everyone met Carver then. He wasn’t openly an enemy.”
Another photograph.
Patrick entering a warehouse at 3:11 a.m.
Another.
Patrick with Greg Mercer.
The timestamp was seven years ago.
Greg had worked for Hayes Logistics only five years.
“That’s impossible,” Leo said.
Declan’s voice went flat.
“Apparently not.”
Sadie examined the image.
“Maybe Greg worked for Patrick before Hayes hired him.”
Leo swore quietly.
A spreadsheet revealed payments.
Not from Hayes Logistics.
From a shell company called Northstar Maritime Consulting.
Declan recognized the address.
“That company belongs to my family trust.”
Leo frowned.
“No, it doesn’t.”
“It did.”
“When?”
“Before Patrick died.”
The room went silent.
Patrick had been the heir.
The golden son.
The older brother who could charm a senator, terrify a thief, and make their father believe the Hayes name would survive another generation.
Six years earlier, Patrick died when his car went through a guardrail during a storm.
The police called it an accident.
Declan inherited everything.
He had never wanted everything.
Sadie opened another document.
“Look.”
A transfer list.
Dozens of payments.
Greg Mercer.
A customs supervisor.
Two port security officers.
A state investigator.
And one line labeled simply:
L.M.
Leo went still.
Sadie looked at him.
Declan did not.
“Leo,” he said.
Leo’s face darkened.
“That isn’t me.”
“I didn’t say it was.”
“You thought it.”
“I think everything today.”
Leo stepped back from the table.
“I’ve been with you twenty years.”
“Which means someone framing you would know your initials matter.”
Sadie looked between them.
“Could L.M. be someone else?”
“Yes,” Declan said.
“Who?”
He hesitated.
“Lucia Moretti.”
Sadie knew the name.
Everyone in the organization did.
Lucia was Declan’s attorney.
Brilliant.
Precise.
Untouchable.
She handled every legitimate corporate structure and knew enough about the illegitimate ones to destroy half the waterfront.
She had also been Patrick’s fiancée.
Sadie’s eyes widened.
“Patrick’s fiancée was L.M.”
“Yes.”
“Where is she?”
“At eight this morning, she’s supposed to be meeting me in this penthouse.”
Leo checked the time.
7:11.
Sadie sat back.
“Do we cancel?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because if Lucia is involved, I want to see her face when she realizes I’m alive.”
Leo’s phone buzzed.
He read the message.
His expression changed.
“What?”
“It’s office security.”
Declan waited.
“They found something in Greg’s locker.”
Leo turned the phone around.
A photograph.
Sadie standing outside Hayes Logistics.
Taken three months earlier.
Another.
Sadie entering her apartment.
Another.
Sadie meeting an elderly man in Central Park.
“Who is that?” Declan asked.
Sadie went pale.
“Nathan Burke.”
“Who’s Nathan Burke?”
“The retired federal investigator who taught me surveillance.”
Leo swiped.
Last photograph.
Nathan Burke unconscious in the driver’s seat of a car.
Timestamp: yesterday afternoon.
Sadie stood so quickly the chair scraped backward.
“No.”
“Sit down,” Declan said.
“No. Call him.”
Sadie grabbed her phone.
No answer.
Again.
Voicemail.
“He always answers.”
Declan looked at Leo.
“Find him.”
Leo was already typing.
Sadie stared at the photographs.
“They were watching me.”
“For months,” Declan said.
“Why?”
“Because they knew what you were doing.”
“But if they knew, why leave me inside the company?”
Declan’s eyes moved toward Michael Collins’s files.
“Maybe they wanted you to find something.”
Sadie looked up.
“What?”
“That.”
The drive.
Her father’s investigation.
Sadie shook her head.
“That makes no sense.”
“Unless somebody wanted Michael’s evidence resurfaced now.”
Leo stopped typing.
“Declan.”
“What?”
“We found Burke.”
Sadie gripped the table.
“Where?”
“Bellevue.”
“Is he alive?”
“Yes.”
She closed her eyes.
“What happened?”
“Car accident yesterday. According to intake, he was hit at an intersection.”
Sadie exhaled.
Leo continued.
“But there’s something else.”
Declan waited.
“The car that hit him was stolen.”
A knock sounded at the penthouse door.
Three slow taps.
Everyone froze.
Lucia Moretti was forty-nine minutes early.
Declan looked toward the entrance.
Leo’s hand moved beneath his jacket.
Sadie stared at the door.
Then another knock came.
A woman’s voice from outside.
“Declan? It’s Lucia.”
He walked toward the door but stopped before opening it.
“Why are you early?”
Silence.
Then Lucia answered.
“Because Patrick is alive.”
Declan felt the world narrow.
Behind him, Sadie inhaled sharply.
Leo swore.
Declan opened the door.
Lucia Moretti stood there in a cream coat, rain in her dark hair.
Her face looked ten years older than it had yesterday.
In her hands she held an envelope.
She walked inside without waiting to be invited.
Then she looked at Sadie.
“You found Michael’s drive.”
Sadie stiffened.
“How do you know?”
Lucia ignored the question.
She looked at Declan.
“You need to leave Manhattan.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“If you stay here, you won’t live until midnight.”
“Who’s coming?”
Lucia’s eyes filled with something Declan had never expected to see in them.
Fear.
“Your brother.”
No one spoke.
Declan stared at the woman who had once planned to marry Patrick Hayes.
“Patrick died six years ago.”
Lucia shook her head.
“No.”
She placed the envelope on the table.
Inside was a photograph taken forty-eight hours earlier.
Patrick Hayes.
Older.
Scar across one side of his face.
Standing beside Thomas Carver.
Alive.
And written beneath the photograph in Patrick’s own handwriting were five words.
May you like
TELL MY BROTHER I’M COMING HOME.
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