Chapter 10 - What Octavio Heard While He Slept
Octavio remembered voices.
At first he had assumed they were dreams.
Heaven.
Hell.
Childhood.
Music.
People talking far away.
But after waking, pieces began fitting into real events.
Mina sat beside him each evening with a recorder.
Not an interrogation.
A memory journal.
“When something comes,” she told him, “say it. Don't decide whether it matters.”
On the fifth evening he remembered Victor.
Not before the crash.
During the coma.
Octavio had been trapped beneath darkness.
He could hear a monitor.
Footsteps.
A chair moving.
Then Victor’s voice.
“You always had to control everything.”
Octavio told Mina the memory slowly.
“He was beside the bed.”
“You're sure?”
“Yes.”
“What else?”
“He said…”
Octavio closed his eyes.
“‘Look what control bought you.’”
Mina wrote nothing until he finished.
“He spoke about Sofia.”
“What did he say?”
“That she was stubborn like me.”
Gabriel stood nearby.
“He knew where she was?”
“Maybe.”
Octavio continued.
“Victor said Daniel should have died in the crash.”
Gabriel’s expression sharpened.
“Daniel wasn't in the car.”
“Victor thought he was supposed to be.”
That changed everything.
The attack on Lake Shore Drive had been designed to kill both Octavio and Daniel Kessler.
Daniel altered plans at the last minute.
Victor did not know.
So Daniel survived.
Then disappeared.
Another memory came.
A female voice.
Lauren Pike.
She had whispered beside Octavio’s bed.
“I’m sorry.”
Mina looked up.
“Lauren?”
“Yes.”
“She came into your room?”
“She changed something.”
“Medication?”
“Maybe.”
“Did she hurt you?”
“No.”
Octavio thought.
“She reduced it.”
Mina understood.
Lauren had been forced to manipulate records, but perhaps she secretly reduced sedation.
Maybe she had helped him regain consciousness.
Then came the most important memory.
A man.
Elias North.
He stood near the bed speaking to someone on a telephone.
Octavio remembered only one sentence.
“The sister gave the key to the nurse.”
Mina's pen stopped.
“The nurse?”
Octavio opened his eyes.
They looked at each other.
“No,” Mina said immediately. “Sofia never met me.”
Gabriel stepped forward.
“Maybe they meant another nurse.”
“Who?”
Nobody knew.
Then Mina remembered something.
“When you arrived after the crash, who treated you first?”
Gabriel pulled the admission records.
Trauma surgeon.
Residents.
Emergency nurses.
One name jumped out.
Nurse Evelyn Strand.
Mina stopped breathing.
Gabriel looked at her.
“Strand?”
Mina took the tablet.
“My mother.”
Silence filled the room.
Octavio stared.
“Your mother treated me?”
“She worked trauma nights here before retirement.”
Mina called her.
No answer.
Again.
No answer.
Her heart began pounding.
Gabriel immediately dispatched security.
Forty minutes later her mother finally called.
“Mina? Why are two enormous men standing outside my house?”
Mina almost cried from relief.
“Mom, listen carefully. Did you treat Octavio Rain after his crash?”
A pause.
“Yes.”
“Did a woman named Sofia Rain contact you?”
Longer pause.
“Mina, what is this about?”
“Please.”
Her mother exhaled.
“She came to the hospital the next morning.”
“What happened?”
“She gave me something.”
Octavio sat upright.
“What?”
Mina's mother continued.
“A small brass key.”
Mina closed her eyes.
“Do you still have it?”
“No.”
Everyone froze.
“What did you do with it?”
“She told me if anyone asked, I never saw her. She said someone was trying to kill her brother.”
“Mom, where is the key?”
“I put it someplace safe.”
“Where?”
Her mother hesitated.
Then laughed nervously.
“You're going to think I'm ridiculous.”
“Mom.”
“Your father’s old tackle box.”
Mina stared.
Her father had died eleven years earlier.
His fishing equipment remained in a storage unit in Evanston.
A place no one connected to Octavio Rain.
No corporate security.
No digital records.
No conspiracy.
Just an old green tackle box belonging to a dead firefighter who loved fishing.
Octavio looked at Mina.
“You had the key.”
“My family did.”
For seven months Victor had been searching for Sofia.
Searching hospitals.
Searching Rain properties.
Searching accounts.
He never considered a retired trauma nurse’s dead husband’s fishing equipment.
Gabriel almost smiled.
“We have the advantage.”
Octavio shook his head.
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because North said ‘the nurse.’”
Meaning Victor knew.
Maybe not which nurse.
But he knew a nurse possessed the key.
Mina stood.
“We need to get it tonight.”
Gabriel nodded.
“No digital communication. No phones.”
Octavio reached for his cane.
Mina stared at him.
“No.”
“I'm going.”
“You can barely cross the room.”
“I'm going.”
“No.”
“It’s my key.”
“It’s my father’s tackle box.”
Gabriel looked between them.
“I am staying completely out of this argument.”
Two hours later, despite Mina’s objections, Octavio sat in the rear of an armored SUV.
He looked pale.
Exhausted.
But determined.
They drove north through Chicago without phones.
No convoy.
No obvious security.
Only Gabriel driving, Mina beside Octavio and one follow vehicle kept several blocks behind.
The storage facility appeared untouched.
Mina entered the code.
They reached unit 318.
The lock was intact.
Inside stood furniture, boxes and memories.
Mina found the tackle box beneath an old camping chair.
Her hands shook as she opened it.
Hooks.
Fishing line.
Rusty pliers.
Photographs.
At the bottom, beneath a faded map of Lake Michigan, lay a small brass key.
Octavio stared at it.
Seven months.
Assassinations.
Disappearances.
Betrayals.
All for something small enough to fit in Mina’s palm.
Gabriel exhaled.
“We found it.”
Then the storage facility lights went out.
Mina froze.
Octavio whispered,
“No.”
A vehicle engine started outside.
Gabriel pulled his weapon.
Someone had followed them.
May you like
And this time, they had nowhere to run except deeper into the dark.
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