Chapter 2 - The Name in the Old File
Gabriel didn't speak for several seconds.
Norah watched his face change.
“What?”
He ended the call.
“Nothing.”
Her expression hardened instantly.
“Don't.”
“Norah—”
“Don't do that.”
“Do what?”
“Ask me for the truth and then lie to my face five minutes later.”
Gabriel looked at her.
She was right.
That irritated him more than it should have.
He walked to the office door and locked it.
Norah's eyes followed him.
“What did Elias say?”
“The driver who hit Leo had a connection to Costa Enterprises.”
All color drained from her face.
“What kind of connection?”
“I don't know yet.”
“You know something.”
“He worked for a company we used.”
“For what?”
“Transportation.”
“Legal transportation?”
Gabriel didn't answer quickly enough.
Norah understood.
She backed away.
“My brother nearly died because of someone working for you?”
“I didn't say that.”
“You didn't have to.”
Gabriel moved toward her.
She raised one hand.
“Don't.”
He stopped.
“I didn't know Leo.”
“But you knew the driver?”
“No.”
“Then who was he?”
Gabriel called Elias back.
“Bring me everything.”
Fifteen minutes later, Elias entered carrying a thin paper file.
The driver's name was Victor Dane.
Thirty-seven at the time of the accident.
A contract driver for a freight company secretly controlled through one of Gabriel's former dock operations.
Victor had been drinking.
He had also been transporting cash.
That changed everything.
Gabriel read the police report twice.
Victor had lost control at 11:43 p.m.
Leo Hayes had simply been walking home.
The official investigation classified it as drunk driving.
Victor served eighteen months.
Then disappeared.
Norah stood across the desk.
“You knew?”
“No.”
“Your organization knew.”
“Possibly.”
“That isn't an answer.”
“It's the only answer I have.”
Gabriel opened another document.
Something was wrong.
The freight company had paid Victor's legal fees.
That alone wasn't unusual.
What disturbed Gabriel was the signature authorizing the payment.
Marco Bellini.
Gabriel's former chief financial officer.
Dead for two years.
Gabriel remembered Bellini as careful and humorless, a man who never spent a dollar without documenting why.
Yet there was no explanation attached to this payment.
“Elias.”
“Boss?”
“Find Victor Dane.”
Elias hesitated.
“He vanished after parole.”
“People don't vanish.”
“Some do.”
“Not from me.”
Norah looked disgusted.
“You're going after him?”
“I'm going to ask questions.”
“I don't want revenge.”
“Neither do I.”
She laughed bitterly.
“Forgive me if that isn't reassuring.”
Gabriel closed the file.
“You should go home.”
Her eyes sharpened.
“To my Honda?”
The words struck harder than she intended.
Gabriel looked away.
Norah immediately regretted them, but pride prevented an apology.
“There's an apartment upstairs.”
She blinked.
“What?”
“Forty-seventh floor. Corporate residence. Furnished. Nobody uses it.”
“No.”
“You're not sleeping downstairs.”
“You don't get to decide that.”
“Actually, it's my garage.”
“Then I'll park somewhere else.”
Gabriel stared at her.
Norah stared back.
Two stubborn people.
Neither moved.
Finally Gabriel sighed.
“Rent it.”
“What?”
“One dollar a month.”
“That's ridiculous.”
“Then two.”
She almost smiled.
Almost.
“Market value.”
“Eight thousand.”
Her eyes widened.
“You're impossible.”
“So I've been told.”
“I can't afford it.”
“Then we're negotiating.”
For the next ten minutes they argued as seriously as if discussing a multimillion-dollar shipping contract.
Eventually they agreed that Norah would temporarily occupy the apartment and pay a modest amount deducted from her salary.
She insisted on a written lease.
Gabriel had legal draft one before sunset.
That evening, Norah stood inside an apartment overlooking Manhattan.
She had arrived carrying everything she owned.
Two suitcases.
One cardboard box.
Gabriel saw them.
He pretended not to.
“You can change anything you want,” he said.
“I won't be here long.”
“Fine.”
“There are boundaries.”
“Of course.”
“You don't come in without permission.”
“Agreed.”
“You don't pay Leo's bills.”
Gabriel's jaw tightened.
“Agreed.”
“And you stop investigating my personal life.”
Silence.
“Gabriel.”
It was the first time she had called him by his first name.
He noticed.
So did she.
“I'll respect your privacy,” he said.
That wasn't exactly the promise she'd requested.
Norah was too exhausted to argue.
The following morning, Gabriel disappeared for three hours.
Norah discovered where he'd gone when she called Elias.
“Where is Mr. Costa?”
“Queens.”
Her stomach dropped.
“Where in Queens?”
Elias hesitated.
“The rehabilitation center.”
Norah stood so quickly her chair rolled backward.
“What?”
“He wanted to see Leo.”
She hung up.
Twenty-seven minutes later, Norah stormed through the entrance of St. Catherine's Neurological Rehabilitation Center.
She found Gabriel in Leo's room.
He wasn't speaking.
He was sitting beside the bed.
Leo Hayes was thin.
Much thinner than Gabriel expected.
His body had changed after years of immobility, but his eyes were alert.
Painfully alert.
Gabriel understood immediately.
Leo was trapped inside a body that could no longer obey him.
On the bedside table stood a photograph.
Norah and Leo before the accident.
She was laughing.
Leo had one arm around her shoulders.
Gabriel had never seen Norah look so free.
Then she entered.
“What are you doing here?”
Gabriel stood.
“I wanted to meet him.”
“You had no right.”
“I know.”
That stopped her.
Gabriel looked at Leo.
“I know.”
Norah moved beside her brother.
Leo's eyes immediately shifted toward her.
She touched his forehead.
“Hey, kid.”
Her voice softened in a way Gabriel had never heard.
Leo blinked twice.
Norah smiled.
“Yeah, I'm okay.”
Gabriel noticed.
“Two blinks means yes?”
She looked at him.
“Yes.”
“One means no?”
“Yes.”
Gabriel turned toward Leo.
“Do you understand everything we're saying?”
Two blinks.
Something tightened in Gabriel's chest.
“Were you conscious after the accident?”
Norah stiffened.
Leo's eyes changed.
Two blinks.
“Gabriel, stop.”
But Leo suddenly began moving his right hand.
Barely.
His index finger dragged across the blanket.
Again.
Again.
Norah leaned closer.
“What is it?”
Leo struggled.
His finger traced shapes.
Letters.
Norah grabbed a communication board.
“Show me.”
His finger moved painfully toward the alphabet.
V.
Then I.
Then C.
Norah's breathing stopped.
Victor.
Leo continued.
N.
O.
T.
D.
R.
U.
N.
K.
Norah stared at the letters.
Gabriel felt cold.
“Victor wasn't drunk?”
Leo blinked twice.
Then his finger moved again.
He spelled two more words.
SAW.
ME.
Gabriel leaned forward.
“What did you see?”
Leo's heart monitor began accelerating.
“Stop,” Norah said.
But Leo fought to continue.
His trembling finger moved across the board.
B.
E.
L.
L.
I.
N.
I.
Gabriel's dead CFO.
Then Leo's finger slipped.
His eyes closed from exhaustion.
Norah stared at Gabriel.
Three years earlier, her brother hadn't simply been hit by a drunk driver.
He had seen something.
May you like
And someone had tried to make sure he could never tell anyone.
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