Chapter 4 - The Call Damian Was Never Supposed to Receive
Morrow Storage owned seven properties.
Only one had a basement.
An abandoned records warehouse in Queens, closed after flooding eighteen months earlier.
Damian sent Bruno to verify the exterior before anyone approached.
“No lights,” Bruno reported. “One van behind the building.”
“Black?”
“Yeah.”
Damian checked his watch.
2:11 p.m.
Ten hours before the demanded exchange.
Whoever held Khloe believed they had until midnight.
Damian intended to change that.
Leo loaded equipment into the SUV.
“We go quiet.”
“No shooting unless necessary,” Damian said.
Leo glanced at him.
“That because Khloe’s inside?”
“Yes.”
“Thought so.”
They approached through an adjoining lot.
Rain muffled their footsteps.
A side door showed fresh scratches around the lock.
Leo forced it open.
The interior smelled of wet cardboard and mold.
No voices.
No footsteps.
Only water dripping somewhere below them.
Damian found the basement stairs.
At the bottom was a steel door.
Locked.
He touched the handle.
Cold.
From somewhere behind it came a faint sound.
Three knocks.
Pause.
Three more.
The sound from the first phone call.
“Khloe?”
Nothing.
Damian stepped back.
Leo raised the pry bar.
Before he could use it, Damian’s phone vibrated.
Unknown caller.
He answered.
“You’re early.”
The distorted voice.
Damian’s eyes moved through the hallway.
“You watching?”
“Always.”
“You wanted the ledger.”
“I want what belongs to me.”
“I don’t have it.”
“You will.”
“I want proof she’s alive.”
Silence.
Then a scream echoed from behind the basement door.
Damian lunged for it.
“Khloe!”
The caller laughed.
“Midnight, Russo.”
The line disconnected.
Damian slammed his shoulder against the door.
Nothing.
Leo forced the bar into the frame.
Together they tore the lock plate loose.
The door opened.
Damian ran inside.
A chair stood in the center of the room.
Empty.
A phone sat on it, playing an audio recording.
Khloe’s scream repeated.
Damian stopped.
“No.”
Leo checked the adjoining rooms.
“Gone!”
A rear basement exit stood open.
Rainwater tracked across the floor.
They had moved her minutes earlier.
Damian stared at the chair.
His hands curled into fists.
Someone had anticipated him.
Not approximately.
Exactly.
They knew when Bruno reached the building.
They knew Damian had arrived.
That meant surveillance.
Or an informant.
Leo removed a small camera from a shelf.
“Found this.”
The indicator glowed.
Live feed.
Damian crushed it beneath his shoe.
Then he noticed something scratched into the chair.
Not words.
Three numbers.
Again.
Khloe’s message.
“She did this,” Damian said.
Leo touched the scratches.
“They’re fresh.”
Damian searched the floor.
Near the chair leg, caught in a crack in the concrete, was a tiny gold object.
A button.
He recognized it instantly.
It had come from Khloe’s cream blouse.
She had worn that blouse Monday.
She was leaving clues.
Alive.
Thinking.
Fighting.
Damian closed his hand around the button.
Leo’s phone buzzed.
His expression changed.
“What?”
“Bruno.”
“What about him?”
“He disappeared.”
Damian turned.
“What do you mean disappeared?”
“His car is still outside. Phone’s off.”
Damian headed upstairs.
Bruno’s SUV sat where they had left it.
Driver door open.
A black phone lay on the seat.
Not Bruno’s regular phone.
Nicolas’s.
The one Bruno had confiscated.
Its screen was illuminated.
One unread message.
Leo opened it.
MOVE HER NOW. RUSSO FOUND MORROW.
Sent twelve minutes earlier.
The contact name was only an initial.
B.
Leo stared at Damian.
“Message came to Nicolas’s phone.”
“Which Bruno had.”
“Could have been intended for Nicolas.”
“Or Bruno.”
Damian looked toward the warehouse.
They had two compromised men.
One was family.
One had protected Damian for eight years.
And Khloe was moving farther away every minute.
Then Nicolas’s phone rang.
Same contact.
B.
Damian answered but said nothing.
A man spoke immediately.
“Where are you? Walsh is furious. She found the second ledger.”
Damian’s eyes narrowed.
The caller had no idea who was listening.
“Bruno?”
Damian ended the call.
Leo stared at him.
“Recognize the voice?”
“No.”
But Damian had heard something in the background.
A bell.
Deep.
Repeated every few seconds.
Then a ship horn.
Waterfront.
Damian checked the map.
The nearest active bell tower to the river stood beside St. Gabriel’s church in Red Hook.
Three blocks from an old Russo-owned property.
A house Damian’s father had purchased twenty-five years earlier and never sold.
Damian looked at Leo.
“The house on Van Brunt.”
May you like
Leo understood.
They ran.
