Chapter 3 - BRING HER BACK ALIVE
There was a kind of quiet that arrived just before violence, and Meline had learned to recognize it long before she was kidnapped.
It came when a client discovered a painting was worth less than the story he'd inherited with it. It came when Thomas lost more money than he could explain. It had come when her father didn't come home from the pier and the neighbors stopped looking directly at her mother.
Now it settled across the print shop as Sullivan's phone vibrated for the third time.
He read the screen. "Pack it."
Denny reached for the painting. Meline kept one hand on its frame.
"I haven't finished."
"You're not being asked."
"If you move an unstable paint layer without protecting it, you risk losing whatever's underneath."
Sullivan looked at her. "You have twenty seconds to tell me where the envelope is."
"I want to know where Thomas is."
"Your brother is learning that actions have consequences."
"So am I."
She kept her voice level. At her elbow lay a clean square of cotton. She placed it over the surface and slowly slid the painting into its padded case, making Sullivan wait. With her free hand, she pushed the blue-stained thread deeper beneath the frame so it wouldn't fall out.
A guard ran in from the corridor. "Two unmarked cars outside."
Sullivan's eyes fixed on Meline.
"Did you call them?"
"You've had me tied to a chair for hours."
He seized her by the upper arm. Pain lit the bruises along her ribs. She didn't fight the grip; she measured where his weight moved and kept her feet beneath her. Her father had taught her that much when he taught her to climb scaffolding: don't struggle against the whole structure; find the part that bears the load.
Somewhere outside, a voice called through a loudspeaker for the occupants to come out with their hands visible.
Denny swore. "We need the back exit."
Sullivan pulled Meline into the corridor. The building smelled stronger of fuel here. Through a narrow window she saw stacked shipping containers and the pale sweep of a harbor searchlight. Pier Seventeen, she thought. They had found the building, or at least the pier.
The man with the dragging foot unlocked a steel door. Sullivan thrust the painting into his arms and kept hold of Meline.
"Keep up," he hissed.
A second voice came from somewhere close, a woman speaking calmly through a speaker.
"Victor Sullivan. This is Detective Marisol Bennett. We know there is a civilian with you. She needs medical care. There is a way out of this without further injury."
Meline heard Denny take a breath. He was frightened. That was useful and dangerous at the same time.
She stumbled deliberately at the first stair. Sullivan dragged her upright, but his attention moved toward the door below. With her freed hand, she caught the railing, then hooked the remaining loop of rope over a protruding bolt. Her weight pulled the cord taut. Fibers snapped. The last restraint fell from her wrist.
She could run now, but the stairs ended in a corridor with no visible exit. Sullivan still had his hand on her arm. A panicked dash would give him a reason to grab her throat.
"My ribs," she said, bending. "I can't breathe."
"Move."
"I can't." She let her knees soften.
He turned toward her. His hold shifted. Meline shoved both hands against his chest and stepped sideways into the narrow space between the railing and wall. She didn't try to knock him down. She put the railing between them and screamed.
"I'M HERE. TOP OF THE SOUTH STAIRS."
Sullivan lunged, striking the wall instead of her. Denny dropped the painting case and drew a gun. Meline flattened herself behind the concrete return.
"Don't," she heard Sullivan say. "If you shoot, everybody hears."
"They already heard," she said, surprised by the raw strength of her voice.
Footsteps thundered below. A flash of light swept the stairwell. Police shouted commands. Sullivan grabbed her sleeve, but the fabric tore beneath his fingers. Meline threw herself down two stairs, landed hard on her hip, and held up both empty hands.
"I'm the hostage!" she cried. "I'm unarmed!"
A uniformed officer reached her before anyone else. He positioned himself between her and the men above, guiding her behind cover while others ordered Sullivan and Denny to the floor.
Meline heard cuffs snap. She heard a man argue that he knew important people. She heard the steady, low voice of the detective asking whether there were any other civilians inside.
Only then did she realize she was shaking so violently she could barely speak.
"My brother," she managed. "Thomas Foster. They have him too."
The officer repeated the name into his radio.
Outside, the rain had turned fine and cold. An ambulance waited between two police cars. Someone wrapped Meline in a thermal blanket. A paramedic asked her to say her full name, where she was, and what day she believed it was.
"Meline Foster," she answered. "Pier Seventeen. I don't know whether it's still Thursday."
"It is," the paramedic said gently. "You've done well."
She wanted to tell him that people always called survival bravery when they hadn't seen how terrified you were. Instead, she let him check her ribs and the swelling at her temple.
Gabriel arrived while they were securing a strap across the stretcher.
He stepped out of Leo's car before it had fully stopped, saw the ambulance, and crossed the wet pavement with such speed that one of the officers raised an arm to block him.
"I'm Gabriel Rossi. She's—"
He stopped. He didn't know how to finish.
He had no claim on her. He had never asked to be her partner. He'd been too proud, too guarded, and too afraid of how his name would change her life.
Meline saw him through the open ambulance door.
For a moment his expression was unfamiliar. She had seen him angry, amused, intent on studying a painting as though concentration might make him understand it. She had never seen him look destroyed.
His gaze went to the purple mark forming on her cheek, then to her wrists. He seemed to forget how to breathe.
"Meline," he said.
"Gabriel."
He stopped a few feet away. "May I come closer?"
It was such a simple question. It brought tears to her eyes more quickly than any declaration could have.
"Yes."
He stepped toward the stretcher but did not touch her. His hands hung at his sides, clenched so hard his knuckles whitened.
"I thought—" His voice broke. He tried again. "I'm sorry. I should have told you about the men outside your studio. I should have listened to what you were trying to tell me."
"You should have," she said.
He nodded. "I know."
The paramedic moved around them, checking the blood pressure cuff. Gabriel watched her face as if he feared that looking away might make her disappear.
"I need you to hear something," Meline whispered. "Victor Sullivan didn't take me because of Thomas's debt. That's the excuse. He wants something from your mother's painting. Something my father knew about."
Gabriel went still.
"My father?" he asked.
"Arthur Foster. They knew each other."
A terrible understanding settled across his face, followed by something harder to read.
"I know," he said.
The words were quiet, but Meline felt their impact more sharply than the fall down the stairs.
"How long?"
He didn't answer quickly enough.
"Gabriel. How long have you known?"
"That Arthur worked with my mother? Since before I brought the portrait to your studio."
For a second the harbor lights blurred. Every visit. Every coffee. Every question about the restoration. Had he chosen her because she was Meline or because she was Arthur Foster's daughter?
"I need you to leave," she said.
His eyes closed briefly. "All right."
"And I want Thomas found. Not by your men. By the police."
"I'll tell them everything I know."
He stepped back, making room for the paramedic to close the ambulance door. He did not ask her to forgive him. She was grateful for that, and angry that she was grateful.
At the hospital, the doctor confirmed bruised ribs, a mild concussion, and cuts that would heal. Cruz arranged for a police liaison and asked Meline only the questions she could bear answering. When Meline described the painting, Cruz made notes about its case, the two guards, the blue thread, and the distinctive stamp on the sheet covering the press.
"They've recovered the painting," Cruz told her. "It's being held as evidence."
"Don't let them wipe it clean. There's a thread tucked under the frame. I put it there."
Cruz's pen paused. "A message?"
"A marker. The pigment came from the print shop. It may connect that canvas to wherever it was prepared."
"You left us a trail."
"I was trying to stay useful," Meline said.
Cruz looked at the swelling on her wrists. "You never had to earn your rescue."
Meline stared at the ceiling after the detective left. She thought of her father, of the child in the photograph, and of Gabriel saying I know. She had survived the men who tied her to a chair. Now she faced a quieter danger: trusting the wrong person with the story that had shaped her entire life.
Her phone was gone. She asked a nurse for a hospital phone and called June.
"I'm alive," she said as soon as her assistant answered.
June began to cry.
Meline let her. Then she asked her to find the locked archival cabinet in the back office and bring the envelope from Rosa Rossi's portrait to Detective Bennett, with Cruz present.
"Not to Gabriel," she said. "Not yet."
May you like
The nurse returned with water. Meline drank carefully.
Beyond the window, the city was beginning to pale. She had made it through the night. Whatever the men who stole her had meant to silence, it was still alive too.
