Chapter 10 - The Woman Behind the Locked Door
I ran out of the police station and called Adrian's driver.
Victor answered immediately.
"Where are you?"
"Outside the station. Maya's been taken."
There was no hesitation.
"Stay where you are."
"No."
"Emma, listen to me."
"I've been listening to everyone for three days. It hasn't helped Maya."
I ended the call and hailed a taxi.
I knew where she lived. I knew which building entrance had a broken security camera. And I knew that if I waited for Adrian's people, I might lose the only friend who had stood beside me from the beginning.
Maya's apartment door hung open.
A chair lay overturned in the living room.
Her laptop was missing.
Her favorite blue mug had shattered across the kitchen floor.
I found a drop of blood beside the sofa.
My chest tightened.
"Maya?"
No answer.
I searched every room.
Then I found her phone beneath the kitchen table, its screen cracked.
A text message appeared as I picked it up.
Unknown number.
Raven Pier. Midnight. Bring Grace's file. Come alone.
I felt sick.
They believed I still had the file.
I called Adrian.
A different man answered.
"This is Victor."
"Where's Adrian?"
"He's being transferred."
"To where?"
A pause.
"An unofficial holding facility."
I closed my eyes.
"That sounds illegal."
"It is."
"Can you get him out?"
"I can try. But we have a bigger problem."
He explained that the police had obtained a warrant for a shipment linked to Adrian's organization. If the officers raided the warehouse, they would find weapons and financial records planted by Rusk's people.
"They want Adrian convicted," Victor said. "They'll destroy everything to make that happen."
"What does that have to do with Maya?"
"Everything. She found something they can't afford to lose."
The line went silent.
Then Victor spoke again.
"Emma, Adrian told me to give you a message."
I waited.
"He said to stop following the clues."
I laughed bitterly.
"Tell him he can give me that instruction himself when he's standing in front of me."
I ended the call.
At 11:43 p.m., I arrived at Raven Pier.
The warehouse stood near the water, its windows dark and its loading doors chained shut.
A single light glowed upstairs.
I walked through a side entrance.
The room smelled of damp concrete and old machinery.
Maya sat tied to a chair beneath a hanging lamp. Her face was bruised, but she was conscious.
When she saw me, she began shaking her head.
"Emma, no!"
A man stepped from the shadows.
Dominic Rusk.
In person, he looked more ordinary than I expected. Expensive suit. Gray hair. A smile that might have been charming in a different life.
"Miss Reed," he said. "You've caused me a surprising amount of trouble."
"Where's Adrian?"
"Being processed by men who are more than happy to help me."
He circled the chair.
"I understand you're a nurse. Tell me, do you believe people can be brought back from the dead?"
I stared at him.
"What did you do to Grace?"
His smile faded.
"Your curiosity is becoming tiresome."
He raised one hand.
Two men brought a woman into the room.
She wore a gray sweater and dark trousers. Her hair had grown longer than the woman in the photograph, and a thin scar crossed her left cheek.
But I recognized her eyes.
The same serious eyes from the photograph in Adrian's envelope.
Grace Vale.
Alive.
She looked at me, then at Maya.
And she began to cry.
"Emma," she whispered. "Don't let him take you to the hospital."
Rusk drew a pistol.
"That's enough."
He turned toward me.
"Now, Nurse Reed, we're going to discuss the ledger."
I realized then that the secret beneath St. Catherine's wasn't simply a record of crimes.
May you like
It was proof that a woman had been kept alive for three years while the people responsible for protecting her told the world she was dead.
And every person in that room was about to discover what Adrian Vale had been willing to destroy his own empire to find.
