Chapter 6 - The Girl in the Photograph
The police arrived with polite voices and hard eyes.
They did not storm Vincent’s estate. No one stormed Vincent Rourke’s estate unless they wanted their warrants examined by judges who owed him favors, their careers dissected by lawyers who billed by the heartbeat, and their personal mistakes mailed anonymously to their spouses.
Instead, three detectives waited at the gate beneath black umbrellas while news cameras captured every second.
Vincent watched them from the foyer.
Harper stood halfway up the staircase, wrapped in Mrs. Vale’s sweater, feeling like a trespasser in her own disaster.
Celeste had not left.
Of course she had not. She stood near the fireplace in the front sitting room, sipping tea she had not been offered, looking as though tragedy were a theater seat she had paid for.
Caleb entered from the security hall. “Detective Marla Keene is asking to speak with Miss Davis.”
Vincent’s eyes narrowed. “Keene?”
“You know her?” Harper asked.
“She has been trying to put me in prison for seven years.”
Celeste stirred her tea. “In fairness, Vincent, you do make it tempting.”
Harper ignored her. “If I refuse, I look guilty.”
“If you speak without counsel, you risk becoming useful to people who want you destroyed,” Vincent said.
“I’m already useful to them.”
“That is why you need to be careful.”
Harper descended the stairs slowly. “No. That is why I need to stop letting everyone else decide where I stand.”
Vincent turned fully toward her.
She met his eyes, terrified but steady.
“I didn’t call Richard,” she said. “I didn’t leak your files. I didn’t kill anyone. And I’m not hiding upstairs while strangers tell the world what kind of woman I am.”
Something like pride moved across Mrs. Vale’s face.
Vincent looked at Caleb. “Bring Keene to the east sitting room. No cameras. No recording devices except ours. Counsel on speaker.”
Harper frowned. “Ours?”
“Yes.”
She wanted to object.
Then she remembered the headline calling her an office girl and decided she could tolerate one advantage.
Detective Marla Keene was a compact woman in her forties with tired eyes and a navy raincoat. She entered the sitting room without looking impressed by the wealth around her. That alone made Harper like her a little.
“Miss Davis,” Keene said.
“Detective.”
Keene glanced at Vincent. “Mr. Rourke.”
“Detective.”
Their dislike could have powered the house for a week.
Keene sat across from Harper. Vincent remained standing near the window. Caleb stood by the door. A lawyer’s voice waited on speakerphone from New York, sounding expensive even in silence.
Keene opened a folder.
“Richard Bell placed a call to your number at 11:48 this morning,” she said. “Duration: eighteen seconds.”
“I never received it.”
“Records say otherwise.”
Harper took out her phone and opened her call log with shaking fingers. “There’s nothing there.”
Keene accepted the phone, examined it, and gave it back. “Logs can be deleted.”
“I didn’t delete anything.”
“I didn’t say you did.”
Vincent’s voice cut in. “But someone made it appear she received the call.”
Keene did not look at him. “I’m here to ask questions, not entertain theories from men who own too many boats.”
Harper almost laughed despite herself.
Keene turned a page. “Bell was killed during a transport between holding facilities. The official reason was a paperwork issue. The unofficial reason appears to be someone wanted him in a smaller vehicle with fewer witnesses.”
Vincent’s eyes sharpened.
Keene saw it. “Yes. That part interests me too.”
Harper leaned forward. “Why would he call me?”
“That is what I hoped you could tell me.”
“I barely knew him outside work.”
“He was your supervisor.”
“He was a creep who threatened me because I refused to lie in a presentation.”
Keene studied her.
Harper continued, voice gaining strength. “He gave me an envelope to deliver upstairs. It had a flash drive in it. Mr. Rourke opened it before I touched the drive. Then my apartment was destroyed. Then the internet decided I was his mistress. Then you arrived because apparently my day had room for one more nightmare.”
For the first time, Keene’s expression softened slightly.
“That is quite a day.”
“I skipped lunch.”
Keene’s mouth twitched.
Vincent looked at Harper like he was seeing her again for the first time. Not as a problem. Not as a person to protect.
As a person who could stand in fire and still make a joke about the smoke.
Keene removed a photograph from her folder and slid it across the table.
“Do you recognize this woman?”
Harper looked down.
The photograph showed a young woman outside Harper’s apartment building. Dark hoodie. Baseball cap. Face partially turned from the camera.
“No.”
Vincent stepped closer.
His entire body changed.
Caleb noticed and moved too.
Harper looked up. “You know her?”
Vincent’s voice was barely audible. “Elena.”
Celeste’s teacup clicked sharply against its saucer in the next room.
Keene’s eyes moved between them. “Elena who?”
Vincent did not answer.
Caleb did. “Elena Marquez.”
Keene wrote it down. “And she is?”
Vincent stared at the photograph as though it had reached out from the past and closed around his throat.
“My father’s last mistake,” he said.
The room went silent.
Harper waited.
Vincent turned away, but there was nowhere inside that house far enough to escape what had just entered it.
“Elena worked for my father,” he said. “Courier, translator, fixer. She disappeared nine years ago.”
“The same year your wife left,” Keene said.
Celeste appeared in the doorway, face pale but composed. “Careful, Detective.”
Keene looked delighted to have stepped on something painful. “I usually am.”
Harper looked at Vincent. “Why would Elena be outside my apartment?”
“I don’t know.”
But Celeste’s expression said she did.
Harper saw it.
So did Vincent.
He turned. “Celeste.”
She lifted her chin. “Don’t.”
“What did you do?”
Celeste’s lips parted, but before she could answer, the lights flickered.
Once.
Twice.
Then the mansion went dark.
For half a second, nobody moved.
Then Caleb drew his weapon.
Vincent crossed the room and reached Harper before she could stand.
His hand closed around her arm, not restraining this time.
Anchoring.
From somewhere outside came the sharp crack of glass.
Mrs. Vale’s voice echoed from the foyer. “Security breach!”
Keene pulled her own gun. “You have got to be kidding me.”
Emergency lights washed the room in red.
Harper’s phone buzzed.
One new message.
No number.
Just a photograph.
A younger Vincent, no older than twenty-six, standing beside Elena Marquez on a dock at night.
On the back of the photo, written in black marker, were five words:
Ask him what he buried.
May you like
Harper looked up at Vincent.
His face told her the answer might be worse than every lie so far.
