Chapter 7: The Night Vane Showed His Hand
I read the note twice.
Set it on the desk.
Looked at Luke.
"He's escalating," Luke said.
"He's scared." I turned the envelope over.
"Scared men make threats.
Confident men make moves.
He's not ready to move yet, which means he doesn't have everything he needs."
"What does he need?" Emma asked.
"To know how much we know." I set the envelope down.
"He's not sure if Ryan told you anything before he d*ed.
He's not sure what you came here looking for.
He put the photograph in my desk to see how I'd react.
Now he's sent a threat to see how I react to that."
"So we give him a reaction," Luke said slowly.
"We give him the reaction he expects." I looked at Emma.
"You're going to leave."
Her jaw set.
"I just said I'm not—"
"You're going to leave visibly.
Tomorrow morning.
With your things.
The housekeeper will tell anyone who asks that you were let go.
You'll go to your apartment.
You'll stay there." I paused.
"And Luke's people will be on your building around the clock."
"And then?"
"And then Vane relaxes.
And relaxed men get careless."
Luke was nodding slowly.
"We've got a contact at Apex Dispatch.
The manager who was there when Ryan worked.
He's been cooperative before."
"Pull him in.
I want every delivery Ryan made to Meridian Property Holdings.
Every date, every floor, every signature he collected.
If he handed something to Vane directly, I want to know what it was."
"That could take a few days."
"Then start tonight."
Emma was looking at me with an expression I couldn't fully read.
Not anger.
Not fear.
Something more complicated.
"You're asking me to walk away and wait," she said.
"I'm asking you to let me work."
"Ryan was my brother."
"I know who he was." I held her gaze.
"I also know that Vane has two people inside the police department and at least one person inside this house who fed him information about you.
If you stay visible, you are a target.
If you disappear quietly, you become a question he can't answer.
That's more useful."
She was quiet for a long moment.
"How do I know you won't just — handle it?
Quietly.
The way men like you handle things.
And I never find out what actually happened to Ryan."
The question sat between us, honest and fair.
"You don't know," I said.
"You're going to have to decide if you trust me."
She looked at Luke.
He met her eyes without looking away, which was more than he'd managed earlier in the evening.
She looked back at me.
"Okay," she said.
"But I want to hear it from you directly when you know.
Not through Luke.
Not through a message.
You."
"Agreed."
She left at midnight.
I watched from the window as the car pulled out of the gate and turned north.
The street was empty.
The parked car from earlier was gone.
Vane's man had seen what he needed to see.
Over the next four days, Luke's contact at Apex Dispatch pulled Ryan's full delivery record.
Seventeen trips to Meridian Property Holdings over six months.
The last one, November fourteenth, was different from the others.
Ryan had not delivered a package.
He had picked one up.
A document envelope.
Signed out by a man named Gerald Pryce.
Vane's personal attorney.
The envelope had been addressed to a private mailbox service in Evanston.
Luke's people tracked the mailbox.
It had been registered under a name that meant nothing — until they cross-referenced it with the shell company structure beneath Meridian Property Holdings.
The name on the mailbox was the same name on the account that had funded the sh00ting.
We had a thread.
On the fifth day, Luke came to my study at seven in the morning.
He set a single sheet of paper on my desk without speaking.
I read it.
May you like
The name at the top was not Marcus Vane.
It was someone I had trusted far longer than Luke.
