Chapter 3 - A Name Buried in the Guest List
Emergency lighting returned three seconds later.
Three seconds was enough to change everything.
Dante positioned himself between Mara and the doorway.
Finn illuminated the room with his phone.
“No signal,” he said.
“Jammer,” Mara replied.
Dante looked at her.
“Elena Markovic.”
“Not here.”
“Here seems like exactly the place.”
“No.”
“That message said you were supposed to be dead.”
“I saw it.”
“Were you?”
Mara finally looked at him.
“Officially.”
Finn stared.
“That’s not an answer people usually give.”
“It’s the only one you’re getting until we leave this basement.”
Dante wanted to push.
Instead he listened to instinct.
Mara was frightened.
And if she was frightened, whatever waited beyond the archive door deserved attention.
“Service stairs,” he said.
“North side,” she replied automatically.
Dante noticed.
“Of course you know.”
They left the archive.
Nothing moved in the corridor.
At the stairwell, Finn checked the door.
Locked.
Mara inspected the electronic reader.
“Central override.”
“Can you bypass it?”
“With tools.”
“You don’t have tools?”
“I came to a charity gala, Dante.”
“You came to steal a file.”
“To locate one.”
“Comforting distinction.”
She looked at him.
“Do you flirt with everyone while trapped in basements?”
Finn turned away, hiding a smile.
Dante almost laughed.
Almost.
Then a faint ringing began.
Not a phone.
A fire alarm.
Finn frowned.
“No smoke.”
“Evacuation,” Mara said.
“They’re clearing the ballroom.”
Dante understood.
“Why?”
“To create movement.”
“For whom?”
“Someone who needs to leave without being noticed.”
The missing drive.
Dante pulled a small mechanical key from behind the emergency box.
Mara raised an eyebrow.
“You accuse my system of being old-fashioned, but old-fashioned opens doors when networks fail.”
The lock clicked.
They climbed.
On the main floor, staff were directing guests toward the hotel lobby.
The ballroom had transformed from controlled elegance into polite confusion.
Nobody panicked.
Yet.
Dante found his security chief.
“False alarm?”
“Appears so.”
“Seal service exits.”
“We’ve got hundreds of people moving.”
“Do it.”
The security chief left.
Mara watched the crowd.
Dante watched Mara.
“Elena.”
She ignored him.
“Elena.”
Her eyes snapped toward him.
“Not that name.”
“Then explain it.”
She surveyed the lobby.
“Northstar gave field employees operational identities.”
“Mara Vale?”
“That came later.”
“What was Elena Markovic?”
She hesitated.
“My real name.”
Dante had expected another lie.
Her answer unsettled him more.
“Why does the world think Elena is dead?”
“Because six people at Northstar died seven years ago.”
Finn became still.
“In the Prague fire.”
Mara looked at him.
“You remember it.”
“Office explosion. Electrical failure.”
“That was the public story.”
“And the private one?”
Mara watched guests file past.
“There was no electrical failure.”
Dante’s eyes hardened.
“Someone burned the office.”
“Yes.”
“To destroy your investigation into my father?”
“I don’t know.”
“Six people died.”
“Five.”
“You just said six.”
“Six were reported.”
Dante understood.
“You were number six.”
“Yes.”
Finn exhaled.
“So Elena Markovic died.”
“And Mara Vale appeared.”
“Eventually.”
Dante stepped closer.
“Did my father know?”
Mara looked at him.
“I don’t know.”
Before Dante could respond, she abruptly turned toward the lobby.
“What?”
“There.”
The woman in burgundy.
She was moving with evacuated guests.
No champagne glass now.
No bracelet.
Mara started forward.
Dante grabbed her arm.
“She wants you to follow.”
“I know.”
“And you’re doing it anyway?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because she knows I’m alive.”
“That’s not enough.”
“It is to me.”
Dante kept hold of her arm.
Mara looked down at his hand.
Then up at him.
“If you want answers, let go.”
He did.
They followed.
The woman in burgundy moved through a side entrance and toward the hotel’s enclosed parking structure.
Finn motioned two security men ahead.
Mara stopped him.
“No uniforms.”
“They’re plainclothes.”
“She already identified them upstairs.”
“How?”
“Their shoes.”
Finn looked down.
Mara almost smiled.
“You all wear the same shoes.”
Dante glanced at Finn’s black Italian loafers.
Then at his own.
Finn muttered, “I hate her.”
“No, you don’t,” Dante said.
They entered the garage.
The woman in burgundy had disappeared.
Mara slowed.
Rows of luxury vehicles sat under fluorescent lighting.
A black sedan started two aisles away.
Dante recognized the driver.
“Wexler.”
Mara looked at him.
“Who?”
“Graham Wexler.”
Chairman of Wexler Meridian.
The company listed on Mara’s invitation.
The sedan moved toward the exit.
Dante pulled out his phone.
Signal restored.
“Follow that car.”
Finn made the call.
Mara stared after it.
“Was he at the gala?”
“Yes.”
“I never saw him.”
“Why does that matter?”
“He invited me.”
“So?”
“So if he invited me because someone asked him to, he should have watched for my arrival.”
Dante considered it.
“Unless he didn’t know.”
Mara nodded.
“Someone used Wexler.”
A phone rang.
Not Dante’s.
Not Finn’s.
Mara slowly reached into a hidden pocket in her gown.
She removed a small phone.
Dante stared.
“You came prepared.”
“I said I came to a gala. I didn’t say I came unprepared.”
Unknown number.
She answered.
Silence.
Then a distorted voice.
“Hello, Elena.”
Mara’s face became unreadable.
“Who is this?”
“You know.”
“No.”
“Your memory was always selective.”
Dante moved closer, trying to hear.
The voice continued.
“You should have left Chicago when you realized the drive was gone.”
Mara’s grip tightened.
“What do you want?”
“To finish what started in Prague.”
The call ended.
Mara stared at the phone.
Dante held out his hand.
“Give it to me.”
“Why?”
“Because whoever called thinks they control tonight.”
“And?”
“They’re wrong.”
For the first time since the basement, Mara looked almost amused.
“That confidence must be exhausting.”
“It’s served me well.”
She handed him the phone.
Finn’s cell rang.
He listened.
Then looked at Dante.
“We caught Wexler’s car.”
“And?”
“He wasn’t inside.”
“Driver?”
“Hotel employee.”
Mara closed her eyes.
“A decoy.”
Finn continued.
“But they found something in the back seat.”
“What?”
“An invitation.”
“To tonight?”
“Yes.”
“Name?”
Finn’s face changed.
Dante noticed immediately.
“Whose name?”
Finn held up the phone as if the answer itself were dangerous.
“Alessandro Cavalari.”
Dante went silent.
His father had been dead for eight years.
Mara stared at Finn.
“You’re sure?”
“Security sent a photo.”
He showed them.
An ivory invitation identical to every other invitation used for the benefit.
HALCYON CHILDREN’S WINTER BENEFIT.
Guest:
ALESSANDRO CAVALARI.
Seat assignment:
TABLE ONE.
Dante felt something old and buried open inside him.
“This isn’t a threat,” Mara whispered.
“What is it?”
“A message.”
“To me?”
“No.”
She looked at the invitation.
“To both of us.”
Dante turned.
“Why both?”
“Because whoever did this knows your father hired Northstar.”
“And knows you survived Prague.”
“Yes.”
“Which means?”
Mara’s gray-green eyes lifted to his.
“Whatever your father discovered connected our lives before we ever met.”
That should have sounded impossible.
Instead it sounded like the first honest thing anyone had said all night.
Dante’s phone vibrated.
A message from hotel security.
GUEST MANIFEST UPDATED.
He opened the attachment.
Someone had altered the digital guest list.
One additional name had appeared under Table One.
Not Alessandro.
Not Mara.
A third name.
ADRIAN MARKOVIC.
Mara saw it.
Her entire body went rigid.
Dante looked at her.
“Who is Adrian?”
For several seconds she did not answer.
Then she whispered:
“My brother.”
Finn frowned.
“I thought Northstar lost five people in Prague.”
Mara’s eyes never left the screen.
“They did.”
Dante suddenly knew what she was about to say.
“Your brother was one of them.”
“Yes.”
“You saw him die?”
Mara swallowed.
“No.”
And that one word was enough.
Someone had stolen the missing Cavalari drive.
Someone knew Mara’s real identity.
Someone was using Dante’s dead father’s name.
And now someone had placed Mara’s dead brother on the guest list.
For seven years, Mara had believed Adrian Markovic died in Prague.
May you like
By midnight, she would begin to wonder whether the person hunting them was not connected to her brother at all.
But Adrian himself.
