Chapter 5 - THE WAREHOUSE BY THE WATER
The old harbor warehouse smelled exactly as I remembered.
Salt.
Rust.
Oil.
Rain.
I entered through the side door at midnight with Arthur, two former investigators, and three men who had once worked for me and had spent nineteen years living ordinary lives.
They had families now.
Mortgages.
Gray hair.
None of them asked why I had called.
They remembered.
The warehouse was dark.
Then a light came on.
Victor Raines stood on the second-floor balcony.
He looked older.
Thinner.
But his eyes were the same.
“Daniel.”
I hadn't heard my old name in his voice since I left.
“You took Tyler.”
Victor shook his head.
“No.”
“Then where is he?”
“Alive.”
I looked at the room below.
“You're lying.”
“If I wanted him dead, you wouldn't have received the photograph.”
Arthur stepped forward.
“Victor Raines, you're under investigation for—”
Victor laughed.
“Arthur Kane.”
“You remember me.”
“I remember everyone who tried to catch us.”
Arthur's face hardened.
“You were never as clever as you thought.”
Victor looked at me.
“He's right.”
That surprised me.
“You've changed.”
“So have you.”
Victor leaned against the railing.
“You really believed you could become Daniel Walker?”
“I did.”
“And Emma?”
My body went still.
“What about her?”
“She was never random.”
“What does that mean?”
Victor looked toward the dark windows.
“Your father knew about her family.”
I felt my pulse hammer.
“What family?”
“Bennett.”
The name meant nothing.
Then Arthur whispered, “The Bennett Foundation.”
I looked at him.
He nodded slowly.
“Emma's mother.”
I stared at Victor.
“Explain.”
“Her mother was a financial auditor.”
Victor paused.
“She was the person who discovered the first Northstar accounts.”
The warehouse seemed to become colder.
“What happened to her?”
Victor's expression changed.
“She disappeared.”
“When?”
“Twenty-seven years ago.”
Emma had never spoken about her mother.
She had told me she died when she was a child.
I had never questioned it.
Now I understood why.
“Where is she?”
“I don't know.”
“Victor.”
“I swear.”
A gunshot cracked from somewhere below.
Everyone moved.
Arthur pulled me behind a support beam.
The lights went out.
Men shouted.
Glass shattered.
We did not fire blindly.
We waited.
Footsteps ran across the concrete.
Then silence.
Emergency lights flickered on.
Victor was gone.
But a door stood open at the far end of the warehouse.
I followed it.
Behind the door was a small office.
A desk.
A chair.
A single envelope.
My name was written on it.
DANIEL.
I opened it.
Inside was a photograph.
Emma as a little girl.
Standing beside an older woman.
The woman had Emma's eyes.
On the back:
SHE WAS TOLD YOU DIED.
My hands shook.
Arthur came behind me.
“Who is that?”
“Emma's mother.”
He stared at the photograph.
“That's impossible.”
“Apparently not.”
I looked at the date.
The photograph had been taken six years ago.
Not twenty-seven years ago.
Six years.
Emma's mother had been alive.
Recently.
I felt the old world closing around me.
Then my phone rang.
A hospital number.
I answered.
“Mr. Walker, you need to come back immediately.”
“What happened?”
“Emma is asking for you.”
“Is she okay?”
“She woke from the medication and keeps saying one thing.”
“What?”
The nurse hesitated.
“She says her mother is alive.”
I closed my eyes.
Of course.
Victor hadn't come to threaten me.
He had come to force me to understand the connection.
Northstar wasn't just an old criminal operation.
It was a family secret.
And Emma was standing in the middle of it.
When I reached the hospital, Emma was awake.
Her face was still swollen.
Her hands trembled as she wrote.
I showed her the photograph.
She stared.
The pen fell from her fingers.
Then she wrote one word.
MOM.
I nodded.
“She may be alive.”
Emma's eyes filled.
She wrote again.
WHERE?
“I don't know yet.”
She looked at me.
Then she touched the photograph.
A second later, her expression changed.
She pointed at the woman beside her younger self.
I leaned closer.
There was a necklace around the woman's neck.
A small silver compass.
Emma touched her own throat.
She had worn the same compass pendant every day since I met her.
I had thought it was sentimental.
I suddenly understood.
It had belonged to her mother.
And inside it was a tiny engraved number.
A number I recognized.
A warehouse code.
My father's warehouse code.
I stood.
“Emma.”
She grabbed my sleeve.
I looked down.
She wrote:
DANIEL, DON'T TRUST VICTOR.
I stopped.
“Why?”
She stared at me.
Then wrote:
HE WORKED FOR MY MOTHER.
That was the moment the entire story changed.
Victor wasn't hunting Emma.
He was protecting her.
May you like
And if that was true, then the person who had ordered her attack was still free.
Someone much closer to the Northstar operation than I had realized.
