Chapter 10: Forty-Eight Hours
“Tell me what changed,” Gabriel said.
The investigator’s voice crackled through the phone. Behind it, traffic hissed over wet pavement. “Vale’s office filed another set of papers this morning. They’re pushing for the possession hearing as fast as they can get it.”
Marta sat very still at the kitchen table. The notice Gabriel had taken from their door lay beside the photographs of Daniel Reed’s records. Luis stood at the sink, one hand braced on the counter.
“Can they take the house before the hearing?” Marta asked.
“Not from what I can see,” the investigator said. “But they’ve made the deadline real. And Rusk’s company moved the transfer on three parcels to Thursday morning.”
Gabriel turned toward the window. Across the street, the neighborhood’s lit windows looked small against the dark.
“Those parcels were supposed to close next week.”
“They were. Now the paperwork says Thursday at nine.”
The hearing was less than two days away. So was the transfer.
When the call ended, Gabriel stayed on his feet, as if sitting down might make the walls close in. Marta watched him reach for his coat.
“Where are you going?”
“To the cart. Luis said he left the cash drawer there.”
“I’ll get it,” Luis said.
“You’re both staying here.”
Luis’s mouth tightened. “You don’t get to make that decision for us.”
Gabriel stopped. For a moment, the old instinct flashed across his face: get between danger and the people he loved, then disappear before they could stop him.
Marta stood and took her shawl from the chair.
“Go with Luis,” she said. “I’ll lock up and follow.”
The cart’s canopy had been pulled low against the cold, but one canvas flap hung open. Luis saw it from half a block away. He quickened his step, the damp air biting at the back of his throat.
The sugar-packet jar was on its side atop the counter. A few white packets had spilled across the old menu board. Someone had lifted the board from its brackets and was feeling along the back.
Luis recognized the polished shoes before the man straightened.
Jonah Pike.
Pike looked at him without surprise. In his hand was one of the cart’s small screwdrivers, the kind Luis used to tighten the wobbly hinge on the storage hatch.
“What are you doing in my cart?”
Pike glanced at the tool, then set it down.
“Looking for something that doesn’t belong here.”
“Then you’re in the wrong place.”
Luis stepped closer. The cart smelled of cold broth, coffee grounds, and the vinegar Marta used to wipe the counter. The familiar smell steadied him. Pike had no right to be among these things—not under the faded canopy, not with the sugar jar tipped like a child had knocked it over.
“You think we keep your records in here?” Luis asked. “You’ve already searched enough places.”
Pike’s smile was thin. “You should be careful about what you leave unsecured.”
“You should be careful about what you touch.”
Pike shifted toward the open flap. Luis didn’t move aside.
Footsteps sounded behind him. Marta came around the corner, followed by Gabriel. A woman from the laundromat stood across the street, phone in hand. Then Alvarez stepped out of his grocery, wiping his hands on a towel. A couple from the upstairs apartments appeared in the doorway, still in their house slippers.
Pike looked from one face to another.
Marta came to stand beside Luis. Her gaze settled on the screwdriver.
“Put it down,” she said.
“I already did.”
“Then leave.”
Pike’s eyes flicked toward Gabriel. “Your company has people in this neighborhood now. You know how this works.”
“I know how you work,” Gabriel said.
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No,” Marta said. “It isn’t. People here know the difference.”
The laundromat worker lifted her phone higher. Pike noticed. He glanced again at the little crowd gathering beneath the streetlight, at Alvarez’s towel, at the neighbors who had come downstairs without stopping to put on proper shoes.
“Enjoy your audience,” Pike said.
He walked around Luis and stepped onto the sidewalk. No one followed him. No one had to. The watching faces remained fixed on him until he reached the corner and disappeared into the traffic-dark street.
Luis picked up the fallen sugar packets one at a time. His fingers trembled once, then stopped.
Marta righted the jar. A single packet had slipped beneath the menu board. She bent to retrieve it, then paused with her hand against the worn wood.
“Did he find anything?”
“No,” Luis said. He checked the hatch, then the drawer. “He made a mess. That’s all.”
Gabriel’s phone vibrated before anyone could answer. He pulled it from his pocket.
An unknown number. One picture. No words.
The image showed yellowed paper lying on a dark surface. Beside it rested a wooden match, its red head tilted toward the page.
Gabriel’s breath caught.
Marta saw his face change. “What is it?”
He turned the screen toward her. She recognized the shape of the paper, the faded ink—perhaps. The picture was cropped tightly, hiding the edges and most of the writing.
Luis leaned in. “Is that the letter?”
Gabriel didn’t answer. He enlarged the image. A few strokes of handwriting sharpened, then blurred into pixels. He thought he recognized his father’s slanted capitals. He thought he saw the start of his name.
Back at the house, the letter lay where he had left it on the kitchen table. When they returned, he went straight to it. The old paper was still beneath the yellow light, the crease across the middle softened by the years. He touched it, careful not to smudge the ink.
The message came through a moment later.
If you want your father’s original letter back, come alone. The Marlowe Grill, 1842 West Cermak. 11 p.m.
Gabriel read it twice. His father’s letter was right there beneath his hand. The photograph showed too little to prove anything—and just enough to put the boy he had been back inside that old fear: if he didn’t do what the grown-up demanded, someone would take away the only thing he had left.
He closed his fingers around the phone.
“I’m going.”
“No,” Marta said.
He looked at her. “They said alone.”
“They can say whatever they want,” Luis replied. “That doesn’t make it wise.”
“If they have the letter—”
“We have the letter,” Marta said, touching the paper on the table. “And we have each other.”
Gabriel’s jaw worked. “I won’t put you in danger.”
“You don’t protect us by leaving us behind,” Luis said. “You did that once when you were a boy. You don’t have to do it now.”
For a second, no one moved. The message glowed in Gabriel’s palm, its promised location and demand plain as a road drawn straight into the dark.
Marta laid her hand over his.
May you like
“Whatever is waiting there,” she said, “you won’t face it alone.”
Outside, a car slowed on the wet street, then rolled on. Inside the kitchen, the letter remained beneath Gabriel’s hand—and the clock kept moving toward eleven.
