Chapter 5: Agent Reyes
She pulled into a parking garage on Michigan Avenue and sat in the dark on the second level with the engine running.
"How do you have this number?" she asked.
"We've been watching the Larimer Street property for four months," Reyes said.
"We know you were there two Fridays ago.
We have you on traffic cameras two blocks south at 7:31 a.m."
Amara was quiet.
"We're not interested in you, Mrs.
Moretti.
We want to understand what you know and what you have."
"And if I don't want to talk to you?"
"Then you walk out of this marriage with a suitcase and a manila envelope and no legal protection, and Dante Moretti spends the next six weeks deciding how serious a problem you are." A pause.
"We can offer you something better than that."
"What can you offer me?"
"Protection.
Legal insulation.
And a path to a settlement your husband will not be able to contest, because contesting it would require him to explain in open court where his money came from."
Amara looked through the windshield at the concrete wall of the parking level.
A water stain ran down it in the shape of a river.
"You've been building a case," she said.
"For two years."
"And you need what I have."
"We need to know what you have.
There's a difference."
She thought about the routing numbers.
The fourteen accounts.
The shell company names she had written down in her own handwriting on a piece of paper she had memorized and then burned.
"The document from the third drawer," she said.
"You already know about it."
A brief silence.
"We know it exists.
We haven't been able to access it."
"What's it connected to?"
"That's not something I can discuss before we meet."
"Then I'm not discussing what I have."
Another silence.
Longer this time.
"Mrs.
Moretti—"
"I'm six months pregnant," she said.
"I left my husband forty minutes ago.
I am sitting in a parking garage and I am holding every card I have left.
So you will tell me what that document is connected to, or this conversation is over and I find a different kind of lawyer."
Reyes exhaled.
"The routing numbers connect to a money-movement operation that runs through three countries," he said.
"It's been active for eleven years.
We believe it's been used to conceal proceeds from at least six federal crjmes.
Two of the shell companies on that list have directors who are currently cooperating witnesses in a separate investigation."
Amara's hand tightened on the phone.
Eleven years.
One year before she had met Dante.
"He built this before me," she said.
"Yes."
"He married me while this was already running."
"Yes."
She sat with that for a moment.
Not grief.
Something colder.
"If I cooperate," she said.
"What does that look like?"
"It looks like a meeting.
Tomorrow.
Somewhere you choose.
You bring what you have.
We tell you what we know.
We talk about what comes next."
"And my daughter?"
"Is not part of this investigation in any way.
Her future is exactly what you make it."
Amara looked down at her belly.
Her daughter was still.
Resting, maybe.
Or listening.
"There's something else," Amara said.
"Tell me."
"Selena Ward.
The woman at the Larimer property.
She called someone the moment I left the bedroom.
I don't know who."
"We know who she called," Reyes said.
"That's actually why I'm calling you right now instead of tomorrow morning."
Amara went cold.
"Who did she call?"
"His lawyer," Reyes said.
"But that's not the problem.
The problem is who his lawyer called thirty seconds after that."
"Who?"
A pause.
"Someone inside my building," Reyes said.
"Which means you need to not go home tonight.
And you need to not tell anyone where you are."
Amara stared at the concrete wall.
"Where do I go?" she asked.
"Do you have someone?
Someone Dante doesn't know about?"
She thought for three seconds.
"Yes," she said.
"Go there.
Now.
Don't use your regular phone after this call.
I'm going to text you a number from a different line.
Use that to reach me."
"Okay."
"Mrs.
Moretti." His voice shifted slightly.
Not warmer, but more direct.
"You did the right thing leaving when you did.
Whatever happens next — you did the right thing."
She ended the call.
The parking garage was silent around her.
Somewhere below, a car engine started and faded.
She pulled out of the space, drove down the ramp, and turned north.
She knew exactly where she was going.
The only person in Chicago she had never introduced to Dante.
Her college roommate, Nadia, who lived in a two-bedroom apartment in Wicker Park and who had said, every single year for eight years: *If you ever need to disappear, you know where I am.*
Amara had always smiled and said she was fine.
She drove through three green lights before she realized she was crying.
Not from fear.
From the specific, exhausting relief of finally believing her own instincts.
Her phone buzzed once.
A text from a number she didn't recognize.
Four words.
May you like
*Don't stop.
Keep moving.*
