Chapter 5 - Someone Had Been Inside Her Apartment
Harper slept badly.
At three in the morning, she woke in Victor's guest room convinced she'd heard someone outside the door.
It was Victor.
He stood in the hallway wearing black trousers and a dark T-shirt, speaking quietly into his phone.
Harper opened the door.
Victor immediately ended the call.
“What's wrong?”
“I was going to ask you.”
“Nothing.”
“It's three.”
“I don't sleep much.”
“That isn't healthy.”
Victor almost looked amused.
“Neither is being hunted by your employer's former accountant.”
“Former accountant's fake-dead associate.”
“Correct.”
Harper leaned against the doorframe.
“You really don't sleep?”
“Four hours.”
“How are you functioning?”
“Coffee.”
“Six-dollar charcoal water?”
Victor's mouth moved.
Harper caught it.
“You're doing it again.”
“Go back to bed.”
“You're avoiding the ledger.”
Victor's expression hardened.
She continued.
“You remember it.”
“Yes.”
“From childhood?”
“From when I was twenty-three.”
“After your father died?”
“Before.”
Harper waited.
Victor looked toward the windows at the end of the hallway.
“My father became paranoid during his final year. He trusted nobody. Not even me.”
“What happened?”
“He started moving records outside the company.”
“The ledger?”
“Yes.”
“Did he tell you where?”
“No.”
Harper studied him.
“Did he give you anything strange?”
Victor looked back.
“What?”
“A key. A phrase. A random object. Something that didn't make sense then.”
His eyes changed.
Harper saw it immediately.
“He did.”
Victor walked away.
She followed.
“What?”
He entered his office.
Opened a locked drawer.
Removed a small wooden box.
Inside lay an old brass luggage tag.
Number seventeen engraved on one side.
Harper stared.
“You've had that the whole time?”
“My father gave it to me three days before he died.”
“And you never connected seventeen to Route Seventeen?”
“I assumed it was symbolic.”
“Of what?”
“My age when he first brought me into the business.”
Harper picked up the tag carefully.
The reverse side contained tiny scratches.
Not scratches.
Letters.
She moved beneath the desk lamp.
“Victor.”
He leaned closer.
The engraving read:
L.M. 214
Harper looked up.
“What does L.M. mean?”
Victor had no idea.
Arthur arrived twenty minutes later.
He examined the tag.
“Locker?”
“Maybe,” Harper said.
“Luggage tag. Number. L.M. could mean locker map.”
Victor thought.
Then froze.
“Lake Michigan.”
Arthur looked at him.
“What?”
“My father kept a private warehouse near the lake.”
“Which one?”
Victor pulled up an old property map.
Most of the facility had been demolished.
One structure remained.
Warehouse 214.
Arthur swore quietly.
Harper smiled without humor.
“That seems promising.”
“You're staying here,” Victor said.
She looked at him.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Victor—”
“No.”
“You're not leaving me alone in your museum apartment while you go solve the mystery created by people invading my life.”
“It isn't safe.”
“Neither is sitting here.”
“It is safer.”
Harper stepped closer.
“You said you protect yourself by knowing everything.”
Victor held her gaze.
“Yes.”
“Then imagine what it's like being the person who knows nothing.”
That stopped him.
She lowered her voice.
“My apartment was destroyed because of you. People followed me because of you. Someone manipulated my job because of you. I deserve answers.”
Victor hated that she was right.
Arthur hated it too.
His expression confirmed it.
Forty minutes later, the three of them entered an armored SUV.
Warehouse 214 stood near the lake, abandoned between two redevelopment zones.
Wind moved off the water.
The building looked dead.
Arthur's team cleared it.
Inside, old freight markings faded across the walls.
Victor walked slowly through the darkness.
Memories came back.
His father bringing him here.
Men unloading crates.
Voices lowered whenever Victor approached.
Harper walked beside him.
“You've been here.”
“Yes.”
“How old?”
“Twenty-two.”
“Was it Route Seventeen?”
“I didn't know then.”
They reached the rear office.
A metal cabinet remained bolted to the wall.
Arthur checked it.
Locked.
Victor removed the brass tag.
It didn't fit.
Harper examined the number stamped on the cabinet.
214.
She looked at the tag again.
“Maybe seventeen isn't the key.”
“What?”
She turned the brass piece sideways.
The edge contained a thin groove.
Arthur took it.
Pressed.
A tiny key slid from inside.
Harper smiled.
“Your father enjoyed drama.”
Victor inserted the key.
The cabinet opened.
Inside sat one envelope.
Nothing else.
Victor removed it.
His name was written across the front.
VICTOR.
His father's handwriting.
Victor stopped breathing for a moment.
Harper noticed.
“You okay?”
“No.”
It was the most honest answer he'd given all night.
He opened the envelope.
Inside was a single page.
Victor,
If you are reading this, then someone finally came looking for Route Seventeen.
Victor read silently.
His face hardened with every line.
Arthur stepped closer.
“What does it say?”
Victor handed him the page.
Harper read over Arthur's shoulder.
Victor's father had not destroyed Route Seventeen.
He had hidden the network's true ownership records.
Not to preserve his empire.
To protect Victor from the men who had financed its earliest years.
Three names appeared near the bottom.
Malcolm Vane.
Daniel Mercer.
And a third.
Arthur Beckett.
Harper's eyes lifted.
Arthur's face went pale.
Victor slowly turned toward the man who had protected him for nine years.
Arthur stared at the page.
Then at Victor.
“Boss—”
Victor's voice was almost inaudible.
“Explain.”
Harper stepped back.
Arthur shook his head.
“I can.”
“Then do it.”
Before Arthur could speak, every light in the warehouse went out.
A second later, a gunshot cracked somewhere outside.
Arthur pulled his weapon.
Victor grabbed Harper and pushed her behind the steel cabinet.
More shots sounded.
Not inside.
Warning shots.
Then a speaker crackled in the darkness.
A man's voice filled the warehouse.
Older.
Calm.
Amused.
“Hello, Victor.”
Victor's face became stone.
Malcolm Vane continued.
“I'm glad your father finally introduced us properly.”
Harper looked toward Victor.
Arthur raised his weapon toward the darkness.
Vane laughed through the speaker.
“And Arthur?”
A pause.
“You've kept my secret long enough.”
Victor's eyes moved to Arthur.
The question between them was now more dangerous than the men outside.
May you like
Because if Victor's father had been telling the truth, then the person Victor trusted most had been connected to his enemy from the beginning.
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