Chapter 3 - The Woman in Yokohama
Claire slept for twenty-three minutes.
Not twenty-three minutes at once.
Seven minutes in Gabriel Mercer’s guest room.
Nine minutes sometime before dawn.
Another seven after sunlight began leaking through the curtains.
Gabriel’s penthouse occupied the top floor of a building overlooking the Chicago River.
Claire hated everything about it.
The security.
The locked elevator.
The men downstairs.
The knowledge that she had willingly entered the home of someone her mother had apparently warned her against.
But her apartment had been searched.
Someone had photographed her.
And a picture taken three months earlier suggested Margaret Bennett might still be alive.
Claire needed answers more than she needed comfort.
At seven in the morning, she found Gabriel in his kitchen.
He was making coffee himself.
That surprised her.
“You have employees for everything else.”
“I’m particular about coffee.”
Claire placed the photograph on the counter.
“Tell me why she warned me about you.”
“I don’t know.”
“Try harder.”
Gabriel turned.
“I was seventeen when your mother disappeared.”
“You were involved with the people who took her.”
“My stepfather was.”
“Difference?”
“A significant one.”
“To you.”
“Yes.”
Gabriel poured coffee.
“To me.”
Claire watched him.
“You expect me to believe you were innocent?”
“No.”
That answer stopped her.
Gabriel leaned against the counter.
“I did things at seventeen I regret at thirty-eight. Innocent is not a word I use for myself.”
“What things?”
“I delivered messages. Money. Packages. I kept quiet when I should have spoken.”
“Did you hurt my mother?”
“No.”
“Did you know she was going to be taken?”
“No.”
“Would you tell me if you did?”
Gabriel met her eyes.
“Probably not, if I were the man you currently believe I am.”
Claire almost smiled despite herself.
Almost.
Elias entered.
“We found Pike’s SUV.”
Gabriel’s expression changed instantly.
“Where?”
“Abandoned near the river.”
“Pike?”
“Missing.”
Claire folded her arms.
“Is that supposed to mean something to me?”
Elias looked at Gabriel.
“His people are blaming us.”
Gabriel swore quietly in Japanese.
Claire understood.
He noticed.
For the first time, the corner of his mouth moved.
“You really do understand everything.”
“My father was annoyingly thorough.”
The brief warmth disappeared when Elias placed a folder on the counter.
“There’s more.”
Inside were copies of financial transfers.
Claire scanned them.
A company named Hoshino Maritime had sent regular payments to Monarch Hospitality Group.
The company that owned the restaurant.
Claire looked up.
“Douglas?”
“Possibly,” Elias said.
Another page showed employee records.
Claire found her name.
Beside it was a notation.
BENNETT, CLAIRE — PRIVATE SERVICE ONLY.
Three years.
For three years Douglas had deliberately kept her in private rooms.
Not because of her body.
Not because she didn’t fit his image.
Because someone wanted her there.
Claire felt sick.
“My shifts were arranged.”
Gabriel nodded.
“Looks that way.”
“Why?”
“That’s what we need to learn.”
Claire suddenly remembered dozens of nights.
Japanese businessmen.
Shipping executives.
Private dinners.
People speaking freely around the overweight waitress they assumed understood nothing.
She had heard fragments for years.
Names.
Ports.
Numbers.
She had never connected them.
“My father used to bring me to translation conferences.”
Gabriel waited.
“Some of the men I served at the Monarch knew him.”
“Names?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Try.”
Claire closed her eyes.
Faces moved through her memory.
Then one appeared.
An older Japanese man with silver glasses.
He had stared at her for too long six months earlier.
When Claire refilled his tea, he had whispered one word.
Hana.
Flower.
She had assumed he meant the arrangement on the table.
Now she wasn’t sure.
Gabriel went still.
“What?”
“The man said hana?”
“Yes.”
“Describe him.”
She did.
Elias immediately pulled out his phone.
Gabriel walked toward the windows.
“Kurohana,” he said.
Black flower.
Claire understood.
“The Circle.”
Gabriel nodded.
“That man may have been testing whether you understood him.”
“And because I didn’t react?”
“They assumed you didn’t.”
Claire thought of the message in her apartment.
The daughter finally spoke.
Her silence had protected her.
Speaking Japanese had exposed her.
Her phone rang.
Unknown number.
Gabriel said, “Don’t answer.”
Claire answered.
A woman spoke.
Japanese.
“Claire?”
Her knees nearly collapsed.
She knew that voice.
Older.
Weaker.
But she knew.
“Mom?”
Gabriel crossed the room.
Claire raised a hand, stopping him.
The voice on the phone began crying.
“My beautiful girl.”
Claire couldn’t breathe.
“Where are you?”
“I don’t have much time.”
“Mom, please.”
“You need to listen.”
Claire switched the phone to speaker.
Gabriel heard.
Margaret continued.
“Thomas hid something before he died.”
“The archive?”
Silence.
“How do you know that word?”
“Gabriel told me.”
Margaret inhaled sharply.
“You’re with him?”
“Yes.”
“Get away from him.”
Gabriel’s face showed nothing.
Claire said, “Why?”
“Because Gabriel’s family destroyed ours.”
“That isn’t the same as Gabriel.”
“You don’t know him.”
“Then tell me.”
Silence again.
Finally Margaret whispered, “Ask him what happened to Kenji Sato.”
Gabriel went pale.
Claire saw it.
“Who is Kenji?”
Margaret didn’t answer.
“Mom?”
A noise sounded through the phone.
A door.
Margaret whispered quickly.
“Your father left the real archive somewhere only you can find. Remember the story he told you every birthday.”
“What story?”
“The crane that forgot how to fly.”
Claire’s chest tightened.
Her father had invented that story when she was six.
A paper crane traveled across the ocean trying to remember where home was.
“Mom, where are you?”
“I love you.”
“Please don’t hang up.”
“I never left you willingly.”
Claire began crying.
“I know.”
“I tried to come home.”
“Then come home now.”
Another noise.
Margaret gasped.
“Mom?”
The call ended.
Claire immediately tried redialing.
Nothing.
Again.
Nothing.
She looked at Gabriel.
“Kenji Sato.”
Gabriel remained silent.
“Who was he?”
“A friend.”
“My mother thinks his name will make me distrust you.”
“He was more than a friend.”
“Then talk.”
Gabriel stared out over the city.
“Kenji was Thomas Bennett’s research assistant.”
Claire remembered him.
A young man who used to bring her strawberry candy.
“What happened?”
“He discovered who intercepted your mother.”
“And?”
“He came to me.”
“How old were you?”
“Eighteen.”
“What did he tell you?”
“That someone inside my stepfather’s organization had ordered Margaret taken.”
“Who?”
Gabriel turned.
“He never got to tell me.”
“Why?”
“Because he died that night.”
Claire felt cold.
“How?”
“A warehouse fire.”
“And you were there.”
Gabriel said nothing.
That was enough.
Claire stepped backward.
“My mother was right.”
“No.”
“You knew him. He came to you. Then he died.”
“Claire—”
“Did you kill him?”
“No.”
“Did your family?”
“I believed so.”
“Believed?”
Gabriel’s eyes changed.
“Until this morning.”
Elias placed something on the counter.
A surveillance photograph.
The silver-haired Japanese man Claire remembered from the Monarch.
Claire looked closer.
Beside him stood another man.
Older now.
But unmistakable.
Gabriel pointed at him.
“That photograph was taken forty-eight hours ago.”
Claire stared.
“Who is he?”
Gabriel answered quietly.
“Kenji Sato.”
Claire’s heart stopped.
The man whose death had kept her mother’s disappearance secret for twenty years…
was alive.
May you like
And according to the photograph, he had been sitting across the table from Warren Pike.
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