Chapter 6: Everything Luke Brought to the Table
Luke arrived at eight o'clock exactly.
He came alone, which I had not specified but had expected.
He carried a manila folder and set it on the table in my study without being asked.
Then he sat down, looked at Emma seated across from me, and said nothing about her presence.
I opened the folder.
Ryan Michael Carter.
Twenty-four years old.
Courier for Apex Dispatch, a mid-size delivery company operating out of the West Loop.
Employed there for fourteen months before his death.
The police report listed cause of death as blunt force trauma consistent with a fall.
Case closed: accidental.
No witnesses.
I turned a page.
Luke had gone further than the police report.
He had pulled Apex Dispatch's client records for the six months before Ryan's death.
One name appeared on the list seventeen times.
Meridian Property Holdings.
I looked up.
"Meridian Property Holdings.
That's the shell company Marcus Vane uses to move money."
Luke's jaw tightened.
"Yes."
Emma leaned forward.
"Who is Marcus Vane?"
"He runs the East Side," I said.
"Has for about four years.
We've had a boundary arrangement.
He stays east of the river, I stay west."
"Had," Luke said quietly.
I looked at him.
"There's more." He reached across and turned two pages.
"Ryan Carter made a delivery to the Meridian Tower on the afternoon of November fourteenth.
Two years ago."
Emma's hand went to her mouth.
November fourteenth.
The day I was sh0t.
"He was there," I said.
"He was in the building forty minutes before you arrived for your meeting.
He signed the delivery log.
Third floor.
Meridian Property Holdings' registered office."
The room was very quiet.
"He saw something," Emma said.
Her voice was barely above a whisper.
"He saw something and they—" She stopped.
"Eight months later he's found in an alley three blocks away," I said.
"And the case closes in six weeks."
Luke nodded.
"Vane has two people inside CPD.
Has had them for years.
I didn't know about Ryan Carter when I started the file on Emma.
I found the delivery log four days ago."
"And you still didn't tell me."
"I was verifying it.
I needed to be sure before I brought it to you."
"Luke." I said his name the way I used to say it before the sh00ting, when it still carried full weight.
"If you had told me four days ago, Emma would have been under protection four days ago."
He looked at her.
Something moved across his face that I hadn't seen there in a long time.
"I know," he said.
"I'm sorry."
Emma was staring at the folder.
"Ryan saw who placed the order.
For the sh—for what happened to Danny."
"That's my read," Luke said.
"And then someone found out he'd seen it."
"Eight months is a long time to wait," I said.
"Which means they weren't sure what he knew or who he'd told.
They waited to see if anything surfaced.
When it didn't, they moved."
Emma stood up.
She walked to the window and stood with her back to us.
Her shoulders were rigid.
"He called me the Sunday before he d*ed," she said.
"He said he needed to tell me something.
Something he'd seen at work.
I told him to tell me at dinner on Thursday." She stopped.
"He never made it to Thursday."
Nobody spoke.
She turned around.
Her eyes were dry.
The kind of dry that comes after you've run out of tears for a particular grief and what's left is something harder.
"Is there enough here to go after Vane?" she asked.
"Not yet," I said.
"The delivery log puts Ryan at the scene.
It doesn't connect Vane directly to either event."
"Then what do we do?"
I looked at Luke.
He looked back at me.
Eleven years of reading each other.
"We need someone inside Vane's operation," Luke said.
"Someone who can get to the original order.
The name of whoever Vane used on West Adams."
"We need Vane to make a move," I said.
"He knows Emma is here.
He put that photograph on my desk to flush her out or get her fired.
He's watching this house."
Emma crossed her arms.
"So use me."
"No."
"Danny—"
"No.
You are not bait."
"I'm already bait.
He already knows I'm here.
The only question is whether I'm bait with a plan or bait without one."
I looked at her for a long moment.
She looked back without flinching.
"Let me think," I said.
But Vane didn't give me time to think.
At nine-forty that night, one of my men at the east gate called in.
A car had been parked across the street for two hours.
When they approached it, the driver handed them an envelope and drove away.
Inside the envelope was a single typed line:
May you like
*Send the girl home.
Or I send her home myself.*
