Chapter 5 - What Lucy Remembered
By six the next morning, Philadelphia looked washed clean and exhausted.
The rain had stopped.
Fog hovered around the tops of buildings.
Commuters moved through 30th Street Station carrying coffee and briefcases, unaware that a widow, a seven-year-old girl, and a man whose name frightened half the city's old criminal network were walking beneath the same enormous ceiling.
Sarah held Lucy's hand.
Gabriel walked beside them.
Adrian followed twenty feet back.
"No more men?" Sarah asked.
"They're here."
"Where?"
"You don't want to know."
Sarah glanced around.
"I very much want to know."
Gabriel almost smiled.
"They're where they need to be."
Lucy tugged Sarah's hand.
"Can we get hot chocolate?"
"After."
Gabriel said, "Before."
Sarah looked at him.
"She barely slept."
"Neither did you."
"Nobody asked you."
Gabriel stopped at a coffee kiosk.
"Three hot chocolates."
Sarah frowned.
"I'm not seven."
"Two hot chocolates and coffee?"
"That's better."
Lucy looked delighted.
For thirty seconds, standing beside the kiosk, they appeared almost normal.
Then Gabriel saw the lockers.
The old section of station storage had been renovated years earlier, but a smaller bank of legacy lockers remained near the luggage services corridor.
Number 311 existed.
Gabriel stared at it.
Sarah whispered, "This is insane."
He inserted the key.
It turned.
The locker opened.
Nothing happened.
Inside sat a plain cardboard box.
No name.
No markings.
Gabriel reached for it.
Sarah caught his wrist.
"Wait."
He looked at her hand.
She immediately released him.
"Could it be dangerous?"
"Daniel wouldn't leave something dangerous for you."
"You haven't seen him in eight years."
"Some things don't change."
Sarah looked unconvinced.
Gabriel lifted the box.
Inside were three objects.
A sealed envelope.
A small tape recorder.
And a photograph.
Sarah picked up the photograph first.
Daniel stood beside three men.
Gabriel was one of them.
Reynolds another.
The third man Sarah didn't recognize.
He was tall, blond, around thirty-five, with a narrow face and pale eyes.
Gabriel recognized him immediately.
"Victor Hale."
Sarah looked up.
"The man who called you?"
"Yes."
"Who is he?"
Gabriel's voice hardened.
"My father's accountant."
Sarah almost laughed.
"Your accountant threatens people?"
"He handled more than taxes."
Gabriel picked up the envelope.
Written across it:
IF SARAH IS HERE, TELL HER EVERYTHING.
Gabriel handed it to her.
Sarah opened it.
Inside were twenty pages of handwritten notes.
Dates.
Company names.
Payments.
Addresses.
Sarah skimmed the first page.
"I don't understand any of this."
Gabriel did.
His expression grew darker.
"Kestrel Storage."
"The warehouse?"
"Yes."
He pointed to several entries.
"These are payments to city officials. Inspectors. Contractors."
Sarah looked at the list.
"Why would Daniel keep these?"
"Leverage."
"For what?"
"To shut down my father's network."
Lucy sipped hot chocolate beside them.
"Was Grandpa bad?"
Sarah and Gabriel both froze.
Gabriel crouched.
"My father made bad choices."
Lucy considered this.
"Did Daddy?"
Gabriel looked at Sarah.
Then answered carefully.
"Your daddy tried very hard to make good ones."
Lucy nodded.
Children sometimes accept complicated truths more easily than adults.
Gabriel picked up the tape recorder.
Old.
Analog.
A cassette was already inside.
Daniel's handwriting covered the label.
PLAY LAST.
Gabriel set it down.
Sarah looked at the remaining envelope.
It was sealed separately.
Written on the front:
FOR LUCY WHEN SHE IS OLD ENOUGH.
Sarah's breath caught.
Lucy leaned closer.
"That's me."
Sarah pressed the envelope to her chest.
"Not yet, sweetheart."
"Why?"
"Because Daddy said when you're older."
Lucy frowned but accepted it.
Gabriel examined the box.
"There's something underneath."
A false cardboard bottom lifted away.
Beneath it sat a slim ledger.
Gabriel's face changed.
"What?"
He opened it.
Rows of numbers.
Names.
Dates.
Sarah saw one name repeated dozens of times.
Victor Hale.
Another appeared almost as often.
Thomas Reynolds.
Sarah looked at Gabriel.
"You said Reynolds helped Daniel."
"He did."
"Then why is he here?"
Gabriel didn't answer.
Lucy suddenly pointed at the photograph.
"I've seen him."
Sarah looked down.
"Who?"
Lucy tapped Victor Hale's face.
Gabriel went still.
"Where?"
Lucy thought.
"At our old house."
Sarah stared.
"What old house?"
"The one with the green door."
Sarah crouched.
"Lucy, you were two when we lived there."
"I know."
"You remember him?"
Lucy nodded.
"He gave me the rabbit."
Sarah looked at the stuffed toy beneath Lucy's arm.
The same rabbit that had contained the USB drive.
Gabriel took the photograph.
"You're sure?"
"He had yellow hair."
Victor's hair in the photograph was blond.
"What did he say?"
Lucy wrinkled her nose in concentration.
"He told Daddy they had to go."
Sarah's hands began shaking.
"Go where?"
"I don't remember."
Gabriel knelt beside her.
"Lucy, did your dad look scared?"
She shook her head.
"Mad."
"Did he say anything?"
Lucy stared at the floor.
Then her eyes widened.
"He said, 'Not my family.'"
Gabriel looked at Sarah.
"Anything else?"
Lucy whispered.
"The yellow-haired man said, 'Then finish what you started.'"
Sarah sat down hard on the bench.
Gabriel's jaw clenched.
Victor had found Daniel.
Before Daniel's second death.
Before the accident.
Before Sarah became a widow.
The USB suddenly felt heavier in Gabriel's pocket.
Sarah looked at him.
"Play it."
"Daniel marked it last."
"I don't care."
"We should understand the documents first."
"Gabriel."
It was the first time she had used his first name.
He heard it.
So did she.
"Five years," Sarah said.
"I buried my husband five years ago without seeing his face. I spent five years wondering why he left us with unpaid bills and unanswered questions. I am not waiting another hour because Daniel wrote 'play last' on a tape."
Gabriel looked at the recorder.
Then nodded.
He pressed play.
Static.
For several seconds, nothing.
Then Daniel's voice filled the small storage corridor.
Older than Gabriel remembered.
Tired.
But unmistakable.
"If you're hearing this, I'm assuming at least one plan failed."
Sarah covered her mouth.
Lucy looked confused.
"Daddy?"
Sarah pulled her close.
The recording continued.
"Gabriel, if you're there, I'm sorry."
Gabriel closed his eyes.
"I believed Victor when he told me you'd sold me out. That mistake cost us years."
Gabriel stared at the machine.
"Sarah, if you're listening, I'm sorry for every lie I told you. There was never a day I didn't love you. I thought hiding the truth kept you safe."
Sarah began crying silently.
"It didn't."
Daniel paused on the recording.
"You may have found my ledger. It proves Victor built his own network inside the Vale organization. Gabriel's father wasn't innocent, but Victor turned every secret into a weapon."
Gabriel looked at the names.
"Thomas Reynolds helped me disappear after the warehouse fire. He is not the enemy."
Sarah exhaled.
Gabriel kept listening.
"If Reynolds is missing, Victor has moved again."
Gabriel and Sarah exchanged a look.
Daniel had predicted it.
The tape crackled.
"Do not go to the police with the ledger yet. Victor owns people in places you wouldn't expect."
Sarah whispered, "Wonderful."
Then Daniel said something that made Gabriel stand perfectly still.
"Most importantly, Victor never wanted me dead."
Gabriel frowned.
"He wanted something I took."
A pause.
"The original Mercer file."
Gabriel whispered, "What file?"
Daniel continued.
"If he finds it, every person who tried to leave him becomes vulnerable."
Another pause.
"The file is not in locker 311."
Gabriel almost laughed despite himself.
Of course it wasn't.
Daniel's voice softened.
"Lucy knows where it is."
Sarah looked at her daughter.
Lucy blinked.
"I do?"
The recording ended.
Silence.
Sarah turned toward Lucy.
"Sweetheart, what did Daddy tell you?"
"I don't know."
"Think."
Lucy's lower lip trembled.
"I don't remember."
Gabriel crouched beside her.
"That's okay."
"But Daddy said I know."
"He said you know where it is. That doesn't mean you remember yet."
Lucy hugged the rabbit.
Gabriel's eyes moved to it.
"Did Daniel hide anything else in the rabbit?"
Sarah checked.
Nothing.
Then Lucy stared at the toy.
Slowly, her face changed.
"My song."
Sarah frowned.
"What song?"
"The one Daddy sang."
Sarah looked at Gabriel.
"He used to sing her ridiculous songs."
Lucy began humming.
A simple melody.
Then words emerged.
"Little Lucy, little star,
find the place where treasures are.
Past the books and under blue,
Daddy left the truth for you."
Sarah stopped breathing.
Gabriel stared.
"Past the books?"
Lucy nodded.
"He sang it all the time."
"Under blue?"
Sarah whispered.
Then she stood.
"Our old apartment."
Gabriel looked at her.
"What?"
"The nursery."
She grabbed her coat.
"We painted one wall blue."
"Sarah, that apartment belongs to someone else now."
"I know."
"Then where are you going?"
She looked at him.
"To find out whether Daniel hid something behind that wall."
Gabriel checked the station around them.
Adrian suddenly appeared.
"We have to leave."
"Why?"
Adrian handed him a phone.
Security camera still.
A man in a dark coat entering the station.
Victor Hale.
Taken four minutes earlier.
Gabriel looked toward the crowd.
"He's here."
Sarah tightened her grip on Lucy.
"How did he know?"
Gabriel looked at locker 311.
The answer was obvious.
"He was waiting for us to open it."
May you like
And somewhere among thousands of morning commuters, a man who had hunted Daniel Mercer for years was now watching his family finish the path Daniel had started.
---
