Chapter 6 - The Road to the WaterRosa woke Lily gently.
“We’re going for a ride,” she said.
Lily blinked. “Do I need shoes?”
“Yes, sweetheart.”
Naomi was already calling Helen. Nico was on his way. The two officers downstairs had been placed by Luca before Naomi knew he was involved. They had passed their background checks, but Naomi would not risk waiting to learn where their loyalties lay.
They decided to use the rear stairwell. Naomi went first. Rosa followed with Lily in her arms, moving past the second floor and down toward the back exit.
A man stood at the bottom.
He wore an officer’s jacket. He held up both hands.
“Ms. Vega,” he said, “Mr. D’Angelo sent me.”
Rosa backed up a step.
“I’m not going with you.”
The man looked past her, toward the sound of the front doors opening upstairs. “I was sent to warn you. The other guard took the garage.”
Naomi’s phone rang. Helen confirmed the man’s name: Officer Malik Reed, one of her own team. He guided them out to an unmarked car. Rosa buckled Lily into the back seat beside Naomi.
They were three blocks away when a black SUV came through a red light and struck their rear bumper.
Malik kept control of the car. Naomi shouted Lily’s name. Rosa turned and saw her daughter frightened but upright, held by her seat belt. The SUV pulled alongside them. Its passenger lowered a window.
Malik turned sharply down a crowded street. Cars honked. The SUV followed until police sirens sounded behind it; then it veered away.
For ten minutes, Rosa believed they had escaped.
At the safe station Helen had arranged, Lily asked to use the bathroom. Rosa took her. Naomi remained in the hall. A woman wearing a hospital transport badge stepped out of a supply room and called, “Naomi Park?”
Naomi turned. The woman sprayed something into her face.
Rosa heard the cry and pulled Lily back. Another person caught the door before it shut. Rosa fought to keep her grip on her daughter, but Lily slipped from her arms. Her scream carried through the corridor.
By the time Malik reached them, a service van was leaving the loading entrance.
The next hour moved in fragments. An ambulance took Naomi to be treated; she recovered. Rosa sat in Helen’s car, repeating every detail she could remember. The transport badge was false. The van’s plates belonged to a contractor whose vehicle had been stolen that morning.
Nico arrived and saw Rosa’s empty arms.
“Where is she?”
Rosa had no answer she could bear to give.
He knelt in front of her. “I’m going to find her.”
“Don’t tell me what you’ll do. Do it.”
He stood and went to Helen. In other years, Nico would have gathered his men and searched the city himself. This time, he gave Helen access to every camera and vehicle record his company controlled. He called no one Helen could not hear.
A call came from Vivienne thirty minutes later.
Nico put it on speaker.
“She’s fine,” Vivienne said. “She’s drinking apple juice.”
“Let me hear her.”
“No. I want the contracts Clara hid.”
“They’re with the police.”
“Then tell the police to give them back.”
“You know they won’t.”
Vivienne’s voice sharpened. “You always think there’s a deal. That was your problem with Clara. She didn’t want a deal either.”
Rosa lunged for the phone. Helen caught her wrist.
“Listen,” Helen mouthed.
Behind Vivienne’s voice came a low horn and a clatter of metal. Nico recognized the sound. Freight containers were being moved beside a ship.
“Which dock?” Helen whispered.
Nico shook his head. Several terminals sounded alike. Then a voice in the background called out a number. Pier Nine.
Vivienne ended the call.
Helen’s team moved. Cameras showed the stolen van entering a private warehouse at Pier Nine seventeen minutes earlier. Its gate was registered to one of Sal’s shell companies.
Nico asked to go. Helen refused at first. He knew the warehouse’s old layout and offered to mark its exits without entering. He kept that promise until officers found Lily in an upstairs office and called to say she would not leave with strangers.
“She’s asking for her mother,” an officer said. “Ms. Vega can come with us.”
Rosa went with Helen. Nico waited outside the warehouse, hands clenched so tightly his nails marked his palms.
Lily ran into Rosa’s arms. She smelled of apple juice and warehouse dust. Rosa held her until Lily complained she could not breathe.
“I knew you would come,” Lily said.
“I’m here.”
A man who had guarded the office was arrested. Luca was found bound in a storage room, bruised and furious. He claimed he had warned Rosa when he learned the plan, and Vivienne’s people had caught him. Helen did not decide whether to believe him that night.
Sal and Vivienne had escaped through a loading bay before officers entered.
Nico saw Lily as Rosa carried her out. He stayed where he was, letting Rosa choose whether to approach. Lily reached one hand toward him.
“The lady said you were mad at me for dancing,” she said.
Nico crossed to them. He kept his voice steady.
“I was never mad at you. I was proud of you.”
“Even when I fell?”
“Especially when you got back up.”
Lily rested her head against Rosa. Her eyes were already closing.
Helen came through the warehouse door holding a plastic evidence bag. Inside was a small silver key taken from the upstairs office.
“Sal’s people were packing records,” she said. “This was taped beneath the desk. It has a bank’s name on it.”
Nico recognized the bank. His company had kept a safe deposit box there years ago, one he had thought Sal had closed.
The label on the key carried two names.
May you like
One was Sal Bellandi’s.
The other was Clara Vega’s.
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