Chapter 3 - TABLE NINEThe room seemed to tilt.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
Damon ended the call and slipped the phone into his pocket. “It means someone wants me to believe this child is connected to my family.”
“The baby is Eli’s.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
His eyes sharpened. “You think I doubt you?”
“I think you have spent years believing my husband betrayed you.”
The words landed between us like another gunshot.
Damon had gone very still.
“He told me you wanted him dead,” I said.
“When?”
“The night he died.”
“What else did he tell you?”
“That you were being watched. That someone inside your organization was feeding information to the Marquettis. That if anything happened to him, I should never let you see the watch.”
Damon looked down at the old steel case.
“He thought I was involved.”
“He thought you were surrounded by people who wanted you to believe he was involved.”
The door opened, and a broad-shouldered man entered. I recognized him from the restaurant. He was the guard who had followed us through the rain, the one with the broken nose and a silver scar under his left eye.
“Nico,” Damon said. “Report.”
Nico’s gaze moved to me, then to the watch. “The shooter used a suppressed nine-millimeter. He came in through the service alley and left by the river road. We found tire tracks, but the rain washed most of them away.”
“The message?”
“Written on the inside of a matchbook.” Nico placed it on the desk.
The matchbook belonged to St. Cordova.
On the front, beneath the restaurant’s gold emblem, someone had written two words in black ink.
TABLE NINE.
My stomach tightened.
“What is under table nine?” Damon asked.
“Nothing,” I said.
“You worked there.”
“The floor is marble. There’s a wine cellar below the dining room, but it’s sealed.”
“Who has access?”
“The manager. The owner. The maintenance crew.”
“And you?”
“I served tables. I didn’t crawl under them.”
Damon walked toward the door.
“We’re going back.”
“Absolutely not.”
He turned. “You know the room.”
“You just said a shooter tried to kill me there.”
“Which is why we’re going back with twelve armed men.”
“I’m pregnant.”
“I noticed.”
“I’m bleeding.”
“The doctor said you’re stable.”
“I am not a key you can carry into a locked room.”
His expression softened by half a degree. “No. You’re the only person who knows what we’re looking for.”
That was not comfort. It was a challenge.
I hated him for understanding exactly how to reach me.
“One hour,” I said. “Then I return here for the ultrasound.”
“Thirty minutes.”
“Forty-five.”
“Thirty-five.”
“Forty.”
He considered me. “You negotiate while injured.”
“I learned from my husband.”
For the first time, the corner of his mouth moved.
It was not a smile. It was a memory trying to survive.
We drove back to St. Cordova in a convoy of black vehicles. The rain had weakened to a mist, but the city looked washed of color. Boston’s old buildings rose around us like silent witnesses, their windows glowing gold while the streets remained cold and dark.
I sat beside Damon in the rear seat. Between us lay Eli’s watch.
Neither of us touched it.
“Why did Eli leave you?” I asked.
“He said he wanted a clean life.”
“Did you believe him?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because he kept meeting people in alleys at two in the morning and coming home with blood on his cuffs.”
My breath caught. “He told me he worked security.”
“He did. For me.”
“You sent him into danger.”
“He volunteered.”
“That is what men say when they want to avoid admitting they used someone.”
Damon looked out the window. “You think I don’t know that?”
The car slowed outside the restaurant.
St. Cordova looked abandoned. The lights were off. The gold sign above the door swung in the wind. Police tape crossed the entrance, though no police car stood nearby.
“Where are the officers?” I asked.
“I dismissed them.”
“You dismissed the police from a crime scene?”
“They were not investigating the crime.”
“What were they doing?”
Damon opened the door. “Waiting to see who would arrive.”
Inside, the restaurant smelled of spilled wine and broken glass. The tables had been cleared, but the white marble floor still carried the faint red stain from Celeste’s dress.
Table nine stood near the far wall.
I remembered serving it a hundred times. The table had one leg slightly shorter than the others, so the manager kept a folded napkin beneath it. The chair nearest the wall had a scratch shaped like a crescent moon.
“There,” I said.
Damon followed my gaze. “What?”
“The napkin.”
He crouched and pulled it free.
Nothing.
I stepped closer. “The table was replaced last winter.”
“Why?”
“The original cracked.”
“Who replaced it?”
“The owner’s private contractor.”
Damon touched the underside of the tabletop. His fingers found a narrow groove.
He glanced at me. “Step back.”
The tabletop opened like a false drawer.
Inside was a waterproof envelope.
My lungs forgot how to work.
Damon removed it and opened the seal. Several photographs slid onto the table.
The first showed Eli standing outside a warehouse on the waterfront.
The second showed Celeste’s father, Marcel Marquetti, shaking hands with a man whose face had been scratched out.
The third showed Damon.
Not Damon as he looked now, but Damon three years earlier, standing beside a black sedan while Eli argued with him.
On the back of that photograph, in Eli’s handwriting, were the words: HE DOESN’T KNOW.
Damon picked up another photograph.
It showed a woman leaving a clinic.
I recognized her immediately.
She was the woman who had called me after Eli’s death.
“That’s her,” I whispered.
Damon’s fingers tightened around the photograph. “Her name is Miriam Vale.”
“You know her?”
“She used to work for my father.”
The restaurant lights suddenly came on.
Every bulb in the room flashed at once.
Then the front doors slammed shut.
Nico shouted from the entrance. “Move!”
A red line appeared across Damon’s chest.
Laser sight.
I grabbed his coat and pulled him down.
The window behind us exploded.
May you like
Glass rained over table nine.
And from somewhere inside the dark kitchen, a woman began to applaud.
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