Chapter 2 - The Woman Who Wasn't a Maid
By eight o'clock, the police had left.
By eight fifteen, Leo had locked down the estate.
Nobody went home.
Nobody made phone calls.
Nobody understood why.
Arthur stood inside the security room while Leo watched camera footage from the previous night.
“West Gate cameras glitched at 2:57,” Arthur explained.
Leo leaned against the desk.
“Glitched.”
“System fault.”
“For exactly eleven minutes?”
Arthur looked uncomfortable.
“Looks that way.”
Leo said nothing.
Arthur continued.
“Whoever called the cops probably scared off whoever was coming.”
“Who was coming?”
“I don't know.”
Leo smiled faintly.
“That's disappointing.”
Arthur looked at him.
“Why?”
“Because I pay you to know.”
The smile disappeared.
Arthur swallowed.
“I'll figure it out.”
Leo walked out.
He had known Arthur for nine years.
Arthur had stood beside him at funerals.
Taken a bullet during a warehouse ambush.
Held Leo's father's coffin.
Betrayal from an enemy was business.
Betrayal from family was surgery without anesthesia.
But Leo had learned young that emotions were expensive.
Proof first.
Punishment afterward.
He entered his private study and locked the door.
Then he called someone Arthur did not know existed.
“Nico.”
A sleepy voice answered.
“Leo?”
“I need a person found.”
“How fast?”
“Yesterday.”
Nico sighed.
“Name?”
“Clara Hayes.”
“Photo?”
“I'll send one.”
“Anything else?”
Leo looked at the note.
“She's smarter than she pretends to be.”
“That describes half the women you've dated.”
“I never dated her.”
“Then why do you sound worse?”
Leo hung up.
He searched Clara's employment file.
The agency had provided references.
Everything appeared clean.
Too clean.
Leo called the fixer who had placed her.
The man's confidence vanished when Leo mentioned Clara.
“I didn't know.”
“Know what?”
“Her paperwork came through one of my subcontractors.”
“You personally told me she'd been vetted.”
“She was.”
“Apparently not.”
“I'll check.”
“You have one hour.”
Leo ended the call.
Twenty-three minutes later, Nico called.
“You've got a problem.”
“I already know.”
“No, you don't.”
Leo sat forward.
“Talk.”
“Clara Hayes doesn't exist.”
Leo's eyes narrowed.
“The Social Security number belongs to a woman who died eleven years ago in Ohio.”
Leo remained silent.
“The address on her application is a vacant lot. Her references route through prepaid numbers. Her employment history was manufactured.”
“Who manufactured it?”
“Someone good.”
“How good?”
“Government good.”
Leo stood.
“Find her real identity.”
“Working on it.”
The call ended.
Leo looked around the study.
For six months, a woman with a fabricated identity had slept thirty yards from him.
She had access to his office.
His kitchen.
His schedule.
His conversations.
She could have killed him a hundred times.
Instead, she saved him.
Why?
Leo searched the room where Clara had cleaned almost every day.
He opened books.
Checked shelves.
Then he saw something beneath his desk.
A scratch in the wood.
He crouched.
A tiny black object had been taped beneath the desktop.
Leo removed it.
A microphone.
His blood went cold.
Clara had been listening.
He nearly crushed the device.
Then he stopped.
If Clara wanted evidence against him, why leave the microphone behind?
Unless it wasn't hers.
Leo called Nico.
“I'm sending you a photo.”
He photographed the device.
Nico responded almost immediately.
“That's not cheap.”
“Government?”
“Could be. Could also be professional surveillance.”
“Can you trace it?”
“Bring it to me.”
Leo placed it in his pocket.
A knock came at the door.
Arthur.
“Come in.”
Arthur entered.
“We found something.”
Leo watched him carefully.
“What?”
“Clara was seen at North Station around five this morning.”
“Camera?”
“Traffic feed.”
“Where was she going?”
“Bus terminal.”
Arthur placed a photograph on the desk.
Grainy.
Clara wearing a dark coat.
Her hair loose.
Carrying nothing.
Arthur tapped the picture.
“I can send men.”
Leo looked at him.
“No.”
Arthur frowned.
“Boss?”
“You stay here.”
“If she knows something—”
Leo's eyes rose.
“What would she know?”
Arthur froze.
Leo waited.
“Nothing,” Arthur said. “I'm saying if she saw whoever sabotaged the gate—”
“Then I'll talk to her.”
Arthur nodded slowly.
After he left, Leo examined the photograph.
Something was wrong.
Clara wasn't entering the terminal.
She was standing across the street.
Looking directly at the traffic camera.
Leo zoomed in.
Her left hand rested against her coat.
Two fingers extended.
Then one.
Then four.
214.
Leo stared.
Room 214?
Bus 214?
Address?
He remembered an evening months earlier.
Clara had been cleaning his library while Leo complained about coded communications.
“The best code,” she had said quietly, “isn't a code.”
Leo looked up.
“What does that mean?”
“Something only two people would think mattered.”
He had laughed.
“Give me an example.”
She pointed toward his bookshelf.
“Page numbers.”
Leo suddenly turned toward the shelves.
Book 214.
There were no numbered books.
But there were numbered wine bottles in the cellar.
Bottle 214.
Leo descended two floors.
The cellar contained hundreds of bottles cataloged by number.
He found 214.
Italian Barolo.
He removed it.
Behind it lay a small brass key.
Leo stared at it.
Clara had left him a trail.
He drove alone to North Station.
Locker 214 stood near the old platform.
The brass key fit.
Inside was a brown envelope.
Leo opened it.
Photographs spilled out.
Arthur meeting Moretti men.
Arthur entering warehouses.
Arthur handing security maps to someone.
But the final photograph was different.
It showed Clara.
Not as a maid.
Her hair was shorter.
She wore a navy suit.
A badge hung from her belt.
Beside her stood a man Leo recognized immediately.
Detective Samuel Hayes.
A police detective murdered three years earlier.
Leo remembered the case because the killing had nearly started a gang war.
Hayes had been investigating organized crime.
His body was found beneath a bridge.
The newspapers blamed the Rossi family.
Leo had always denied ordering it.
Now he turned the photograph over.
A handwritten sentence appeared on the back.
My father died because he trusted the wrong man.
Leo stared at Clara's face.
Hayes.
Her name was not entirely false.
Clara Hayes was the detective's daughter.
She had entered Leo's home because she believed someone inside his organization had murdered her father.
Leo understood now why she watched Arthur.
Why she read ledgers.
Why she planted—or searched for—surveillance.
She had come seeking the truth.
Yet when she discovered Leo was about to be murdered, she saved him.
A phone began vibrating inside the locker.
Leo froze.
An old prepaid phone lay beneath the photographs.
He answered.
No one spoke.
“Clara?”
Breathing.
Then her voice.
Quiet.
Terrified.
“Leo.”
He closed his eyes.
“Where are you?”
“You shouldn't have come.”
“Tell me where you are.”
“I can't.”
“I can protect you.”
“No.”
A pause.
Then Clara whispered:
“Arthur wasn't the one who killed my father.”
Leo's grip tightened.
“Who was?”
Silence.
Then a sound behind her.
A door opening.
Clara inhaled sharply.
“Leo…”
“What?”
Her voice became almost inaudible.
“There's someone in your family above Arthur.”
The line went dead.
Leo stared at the phone.
Only four people in the Rossi organization ranked above Arthur.
Three were blood relatives.
May you like
And one of them had been sitting beside Leo at dinner the night Samuel Hayes was murdered.
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