Chapter 2 - The Blue Paper
The townhouse did not look like a criminal hideout.
That bothered Chloe.
She had expected armed men, security monitors, locked rooms, perhaps a basement nobody mentioned.
Instead she found old oak floors, shelves filled with books, framed black-and-white photographs of New York, and a kitchen that smelled faintly of coffee.
Normal things.
Normal things were dangerous because they invited people to relax.
Chloe had learned that lesson from Tommy.
The first time he apologized after breaking a lamp beside her head, he made pancakes the next morning.
Roman opened a hallway closet and removed a folded blanket.
“You can sit in the kitchen.”
“I can stand.”
“You’re leaving blood on the floor.”
Chloe glanced down at her foot.
“I thought you were worried about your car.”
“I own more cars.”
“Good for you.”
Roman looked almost amused.
“You’re consistent.”
“About what?”
“Being difficult.”
“Keeping me alive long enough to insult me seems to be your current plan.”
“That depends on the quality of the insults.”
Despite herself, Chloe gave a tiny laugh.
It shocked her.
The sound felt foreign after the night she had survived.
Roman made a phone call from the adjoining room.
Chloe listened carefully.
He did not say her name.
“Come to Mercer,” he told someone. “Bring a medical kit. No staff. No security detail. And tell Gabriel nothing until I speak to him.”
A pause.
“No. That wasn’t a suggestion.”
He disconnected.
“Who’s Gabriel?”
Roman returned to the kitchen.
“Someone who works for me.”
“Someone you don’t trust?”
“Someone I trusted this morning.”
That answer stayed with her.
Roman placed the blue invoice beneath a brass lamp and photographed it using a second phone taken from a locked drawer.
Not his regular phone, Chloe noticed.
“You have a secret phone inside your secret house.”
“You make it sound dramatic.”
“I climbed barefoot into a stranger’s luxury sedan because organized criminals were chasing me over a handwritten shipping note.”
“Fair point.”
He enlarged the photograph.
“You recognize any of these container numbers?”
“No.”
“The handwriting?”
“Tommy’s.”
“All of it?”
“The numbers, yes. The words at the bottom too.”
Roman leaned closer.
“Northstar?”
“Yes.”
“V Freight?”
“Yes.”
“F.R.?”
“Probably Frank Russo.”
“Probably isn’t useful.”
Chloe looked at him.
“I was planning to take a bus to Pittsburgh tonight, Roman. I wasn’t conducting an audit.”
“Why Pittsburgh?”
“My sister lives outside the city.”
Roman’s expression sharpened.
“Name?”
“No.”
“Russo may know where she lives.”
“And you knowing would improve that?”
“If Frank knows, yes.”
Chloe folded her arms.
“No.”
Roman studied her and, to her surprise, nodded.
“All right.”
“You’re not going to force it?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re already calculating which window you can fit through.”
Chloe glanced unconsciously toward the narrow kitchen window.
Roman noticed.
“I’d prefer you not jump from the second floor.”
“Then unlock the front door.”
“It is unlocked.”
She stared at him.
“You’re lying.”
“Check.”
Chloe did.
The door opened.
Cold rain-smelling air entered the hall.
Beyond the small covered porch stood the courtyard, the iron gate, and the empty street on the other side.
Roman remained in the kitchen.
He did not follow her.
“You can leave,” he said.
Chloe stood in the doorway.
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“What about the paper?”
“Take it.”
“Why?”
“Because if I keep you here against your will, I become one more man deciding where Chloe Bennett is allowed to go.”
The sentence hit somewhere Chloe had not protected.
She turned slowly.
Roman was still beside the kitchen table.
“If you leave,” he continued, “I’ll give you cash, shoes, a phone, and a car service to any place you choose. But Frank’s people have your name, Tommy knows your sister exists, and somebody connected to Northstar is frightened enough to hunt you through an alley.”
He tapped the invoice.
“If you stay until morning, I may be able to tell you why.”
Chloe closed the door.
Not because she trusted Roman.
Because for once the choice had actually been hers.
A woman arrived twelve minutes later.
Dr. Elena Marquez was in her fifties, compact, sharp-eyed, and visibly unimpressed with Roman Vale.
“You said medical kit,” she told him when he opened the door. “You neglected to mention patient.”
“I thought the patient might prefer that.”
Elena saw Chloe.
Whatever question she intended to ask disappeared.
She approached slowly.
“May I look at your foot?”
Chloe nodded.
Roman left the room without being asked.
That mattered too.
Elena cleaned the cuts, bandaged Chloe’s foot, inspected her cheek, and confirmed that nothing appeared broken.
When she reached the bruise near Chloe’s mouth, she paused.
“Boyfriend?”
“Former.”
“Good.”
Chloe smiled faintly.
Elena gave her a clean sweatshirt, loose pants, socks, and a pair of soft house shoes.
“Roman keeps women’s clothing here?” Chloe asked.
Elena snorted.
“Roman keeps emergency clothing here because Roman believes civilization is always forty-eight hours from collapse.”
From the hallway came Roman’s voice.
“I can hear you.”
“I know.”
For the first time that night, Chloe felt something resembling safety.
It lasted nine minutes.
Roman’s burner phone rang.
He answered it in the study.
Chloe heard only fragments.
“When?”
“Who authorized it?”
“No.”
A longer silence.
Then:
“Lock the East Dock manifests. Nobody accesses them. Not Gabriel. Not anyone.”
He returned carrying a laptop.
His calm had changed.
Not vanished.
Changed.
Hardened.
“What happened?” Chloe asked.
Roman placed the laptop on the table.
“Someone accessed V Freight’s archived shipping system at 11:07 tonight.”
“Who?”
“Administrative account.”
“Whose?”
“Mine.”
Chloe looked at him.
“You were driving.”
“Yes.”
“So someone has your password.”
“No.”
“Then how—”
“They cloned the authentication.”
Roman turned the computer toward her.
A list of container numbers appeared.
Chloe placed the blue paper beside the screen.
The first five numbers matched.
Exactly.
She stopped breathing.
“And the sixth?” she asked.
Roman typed it.
No result.
He tried another database.
Nothing.
Then an archived server.
Still nothing.
“The November eighteenth container doesn’t exist,” Chloe said.
Roman stared at the blank search screen.
“No.”
“But Tommy wrote it down.”
“Yes.”
“Why create a fake container number?”
Roman closed the laptop halfway.
“To move something without creating a normal trail.”
“What?”
“That’s what we need to find out.”
Elena, who had remained by the counter, looked between them.
“What is Northstar?”
Roman did not answer.
Chloe noticed.
“So you do know something.”
Roman rubbed one hand across his jaw.
“Eight years ago, V Freight had an internal emergency protocol.”
“Called Northstar?”
“No.”
He looked at the blue paper.
“But it used similar numbering.”
“For what?”
“Sensitive cargo.”
Chloe’s stomach tightened.
“What kind of cargo?”
“Not what you’re thinking.”
“You don’t know what I’m thinking.”
“I suspect you’re imagining weapons.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You are now.”
“Thanks.”
Roman opened the laptop again.
“The protocol was designed for high-value legal records. Original contracts. Ownership certificates. Financial archives. Materials that couldn’t safely exist on public servers.”
“Why?”
“Because my father trusted paper more than computers.”
“Your father ran V Freight?”
“He founded it.”
Chloe stared at the invoice.
“So Northstar might be documents?”
“Possibly.”
“Documents worth chasing me barefoot through an alley?”
Roman met her eyes.
“The right documents are worth more than money.”
His phone vibrated.
This time the message changed his face immediately.
“What?” Chloe asked.
He did not respond.
“What happened?”
Roman turned the screen toward her.
A security photograph had been sent from Gallagher Auto & Body.
The image showed firefighters outside Tommy’s shop.
Smoke poured through the roof.
Chloe stood up too quickly.
“My passport.”
Roman looked at her.
“What?”
“It was still there. In the drawer upstairs.”
“That’s what you’re worried about?”
“My money was there too.”
“How much?”
“Eight hundred and forty dollars.”
Roman looked as though she had spoken another language.
“That was everything I had.”
Something in his expression softened.
“I’ll replace it.”
“No.”
“Chloe—”
“I don’t want your money.”
“It isn’t charity.”
“It is exactly charity.”
Roman stopped arguing.
Elena touched Chloe’s arm.
“The fire might have been an accident.”
Roman and Chloe looked at her.
Elena sighed.
“Fine. It wasn’t an accident.”
Roman enlarged the image.
“Fire department arrived six minutes ago.”
“Tommy?” Chloe asked.
“No information yet.”
She surprised herself with the wave of relief that followed.
She hated Tommy.
But she did not want him dead.
Roman watched her.
“You still care whether he lives.”
“I care whether anybody dies.”
“That’s different.”
“Yes.”
Roman’s phone rang again.
This time he answered immediately.
A man spoke loudly enough that Chloe could hear the voice but not the words.
Roman listened.
Then his gaze lifted toward her.
“When?”
The voice continued.
Roman’s expression became colder.
“Where is he now?”
Another answer.
“All right. Nobody touches him until I arrive.”
He ended the call.
Chloe’s hands tightened.
“Who?”
Roman hesitated.
“Dean.”
“Tommy’s cousin?”
“He walked into one of my businesses ten minutes ago.”
“Why?”
“He asked to speak to me.”
Roman picked up his coat.
Chloe stepped forward.
“What does he want?”
Roman looked at her.
“He says Tommy didn’t start the fire.”
She waited.
“And?”
Roman’s voice lowered.
“He says Tommy is missing.”
Chloe felt the room tilt.
“Missing?”
“And Dean says Frank Russo ordered the shop burned because Tommy kept something he wasn’t supposed to keep.”
Chloe slowly looked at the blue invoice.
“The old copies.”
Roman nodded.
Then he said the words that turned a frightening night into something far larger.
“Dean says this isn’t the only one.”
May you like
And three floors beneath Gallagher Auto & Body, hidden behind a wall Tommy had built himself, there was supposedly an entire box of them.
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