Chapter 6
THE WOMAN IN THE RECORDING
The message changed everything.
Dominic watched the video again, searching the background for clues. The room had a rusted radiator, a green tile wall, and a high window with a broken pane. Emily’s captor had placed the ultrasound photograph where the camera could see it, a deliberate cruelty meant to turn her unborn child into leverage.
Gabriel leaned over his shoulder. “The voice is altered.”
“But the accent isn’t,” Marco said. “South Jersey. Maybe Philadelphia.”
Vanessa’s hands trembled. “My father used a warehouse in Camden. Green tile in the old offices. He said it was condemned.”
Dominic looked at her. “You know the location?”
“I know where he used to take people he wanted to frighten. I never went inside.”
They drove in separate vehicles, with Marco leading a quiet perimeter. Gabriel insisted on coming, though his body still bore the consequences of years spent hiding and recovering. Dominic did not argue. He had already lost his brother once. He would not order him to stay behind again.
At the warehouse, the front doors stood open. Inside, a row of old monitors showed different rooms, including the one where Emily was held. But the chair was empty.
A speaker crackled.
“Right on time,” Robert Sterling said. “You always were predictable, Dominic.”
Robert appeared on a monitor in a well-lit office. He wore a tailored suit and held a glass of water, looking less like a frightened conspirator than a man hosting a private meeting.
“Where is Emily?” Dominic demanded.
“Alive. As long as you stop digging.”
“You paid my brother’s killers.”
“I paid people to protect an investment. Gabriel turned it into a crusade.”
Gabriel stepped into view. Robert’s glass slipped from his hand and shattered.
For one glorious second, Robert looked truly afraid.
Then he smiled. “You should have stayed dead.”
Gabriel moved toward the monitor. “Who is Shepherd?”
Robert’s smile vanished. “You don’t understand what you found. Northbridge was a clearinghouse for dirty money, yes. But the annex lists the people who authorized the operations, not just the people who profited. It contains enough names to collapse courts, agencies, and half the legitimate businesses in this state.”
“Then why kill me?” Gabriel asked.
“Because you wanted to publish it.”
“I wanted to give it to the authorities.”
“Same thing, if the authorities are on the list.”
A metal door slammed somewhere behind the monitors. Marco signaled his men to split up. Dominic followed a narrow corridor, hearing a faint thump from a locked room. He kicked the door open.
Emily was inside, her wrists free, crouched behind a table. She had managed to loosen the chair leg and used it to break a glass panel in the door. She was shaken but alert.
Dominic crossed the room and knelt in front of her. “Are you hurt?”
“No. They left me alone when the alarm went off.” Her voice wavered. “I heard them arguing about a woman in a recording. They said if you heard her voice, you’d stop looking.”
“What woman?”
Emily pointed to a small recorder on the table. “They wanted me to destroy it. I didn’t.”
Dominic took the recorder. A file was labeled with a date four years earlier—the night Gabriel supposedly died.
He pressed play.
A woman’s voice filled the room, breathless and frightened. “The car is ready. The body has been moved. Dominic must believe his brother is dead, or he’ll never sign the transfer.”
Then a second voice answered.
Vanessa’s.
“I’ll make sure he believes it.”
Vanessa, standing in the doorway, went rigid.
“That’s not the whole recording,” she whispered. “They cut it.”
Dominic turned the recorder off. “You’d better pray that’s true.”
“I was twenty-six and terrified. My father told me Gabriel was already dead. He said I had to repeat the story or Dominic would be killed too. I thought I was helping you survive.”
“You let me mourn him.”
“I know.”
Gabriel looked at the recorder, his face unreadable. “Play the rest.”
A hidden second track began. Vanessa’s voice was heard again, but this time it continued beyond the edited section.
“If Dominic must believe Gabriel is dead, then we have to make sure no one checks the second casket. I will not let them kill another person to cover this up. I’m sending the real evidence to Whitmore.”
Silence filled the room.
Dominic looked at her, anger still present but no longer simple. “You sent the evidence?”
“I sent what I had. I didn’t know where Gabriel was. I didn’t know if he was alive.”
A crash echoed from the main hall. Marco shouted that Robert had escaped through a service tunnel. The monitors flickered, then went dark.
Gabriel picked up the recorder. “The annex is the only way to identify Shepherd.”
Emily caught Dominic’s sleeve. “There was something else on the table. A note. They said the woman in the recording was still alive.”
She handed him a torn strip of paper. On it was a name:
ELENA MORETTI.
May you like
Dominic felt the world tilt. Elena was his mother, dead for twelve years.
Beneath the name was a date from the previous week.
