Chapter 4 - THE MAN ABOVE THEM
Patrick Kade sounded almost cheerful.
That was the worst part.
“Declan,” he called again from the kennel corridor. “You always did prefer making things difficult.”
In the darkness beneath the clinic, Declan lifted one finger to his lips.
Iris did not need the instruction.
Her heart was beating loudly enough to betray all of them.
Nolan crouched beside the steel case with the red ledger pressed against his chest. The cassette recorder sat on the shelf behind him, its tiny reels finally still.
Above, a second set of footsteps moved toward kennel B-14.
Patrick spoke again.
“I know Evan built himself a hole. I just never knew exactly where.”
Iris closed her eyes.
So Patrick had known.
For seven years, he had known her brother had hidden something somewhere inside the building she worked in every day.
Maybe he had watched her.
Maybe the photograph had been passed from hand to hand while she vaccinated puppies and cleaned exam rooms and worried about rent.
The thought made her skin crawl.
Declan leaned close enough for his breath to touch her ear.
“Is there another way out?”
She shook her head.
Then stopped.
Evan had renovated the drainage.
Not just the kennel floor.
The entire rear corridor.
She remembered him arguing with a contractor about a storm line running beneath the property toward the abandoned laundromat next door.
At the time Iris had cared only that the jackhammering frightened the animals.
She pointed toward the far wall.
Declan followed her hand.
A rectangular metal panel sat low near the floor.
Nolan crawled toward it.
Two screws.
Old hinges.
He pulled out a multitool.
Above them, Patrick said, “You can stay quiet, but we both know how this ends.”
Declan's face remained unreadable.
“Three men outside,” Patrick continued. “Two in the alley. Two at the front. I came because I did not want strangers handling family business.”
Iris nearly laughed.
Family business.
Her brother had died because of family business.
Declan's mother had burned because of family business.
Two men had invaded her clinic because of family business.
She was beginning to hate the phrase.
Nolan loosened the final screw.
The panel came away.
Behind it was a narrow concrete culvert, barely three feet high.
Cold air moved through it.
Iris could have kissed Evan.
Declan pointed to Nolan.
“Go.”
Nolan pushed the metal case ahead of him and crawled inside.
Iris followed.
Declan remained behind.
She looked back.
“What are you doing?”
“Buying time.”
“No.”
“Iris.”
“No speeches. Crawl.”
Something almost human crossed his face.
“I need to reset the panel.”
“So do it and crawl.”
Above them, metal scraped.
Someone was lifting the kennel drain.
Declan slid the cassette recorder into his coat, shoved the red ledger toward Iris, and replaced the panel from inside as he entered the culvert.
Darkness closed around them.
They crawled.
The tunnel was wet, narrow, and smelled like old concrete.
Iris's knees scraped against grit. Nolan's shoes disappeared ahead of her in the beam of a tiny penlight.
Behind them came the faint clang of the hidden floor opening.
Patrick had found the room.
A pause.
Then his voice, muffled by concrete.
“Declan.”
Another pause.
“You took it.”
The cheerfulness was gone.
A gunshot exploded behind them.
The sound traveled through the tunnel like thunder.
Iris flinched so hard she hit her head on the ceiling.
“Keep moving,” Declan said.
They reached a rusted grate twenty yards later.
Nolan kicked it once.
Nothing.
Twice.
Still nothing.
Declan crawled past Iris in the impossibly narrow space, braced one shoulder against the wall, and drove his heel into the grate.
It broke outward.
They spilled into the basement of the abandoned laundromat.
Iris landed on her hands.
Nolan pulled her upright.
“Stairs.”
They found them beneath a sagging EXIT sign.
The first floor smelled of mold and detergent that had soaked into brick decades earlier. Broken washing machines stood in rows like rusted tombstones.
Declan moved to the front window, keeping low.
“Two men outside the clinic. One across the street.”
Nolan checked the rear.
“Alley vehicle is ours if we can reach it.”
“Our vehicle is in the clinic alley,” Iris said. “Where Patrick has two men.”
“Yes.”
“That sounds less like an escape plan and more like a complaint.”
Nolan glanced at her.
“I like her.”
Declan did not look away from the street.
“So do I.”
The words came out before anyone seemed ready for them.
Silence.
Iris looked at him.
Declan's expression remained focused on the window.
Nolan suddenly found the floor fascinating.
Under different circumstances, Iris might have enjoyed watching the city's most feared man realize he had said something personal in front of another human being.
Tonight, a shadow moved outside.
No time.
Declan nodded toward a side door.
“We cross the rear lot, cut through the auto shop, and come out on Grant.”
Nolan lifted the case.
“What about the car?”
“We get another.”
Iris narrowed her eyes.
“Legally?”
Declan looked at her.
“No.”
“Fantastic.”
They moved.
The rear lot was empty for four seconds.
On the fifth, someone shouted.
Gunfire cracked against brick.
Nolan staggered.
Iris saw red bloom across his upper arm.
“Nolan!”
“Through and through,” he gasped.
“You cannot possibly know that.”
“I can feel air.”
“That is not how anatomy works.”
Declan fired toward the alley entrance.
“Move!”
They reached the auto shop.
The side door was locked.
Declan shot the lock.
Iris stared at him.
“What?” he said.
“Nothing. I just miss keys.”
Inside, they passed lifts, tool cabinets, and three partially disassembled cars.
Nolan left drops of blood across the concrete.
Iris pulled a clean shop rag from a shelf and tied it around his arm while walking.
“Pressure.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
“Veterinarian.”
“At this point I would let you perform heart surgery.”
“Do not tempt me.”
They emerged onto Grant Street.
Declan took a phone from his pocket, removed the battery, snapped the SIM, and threw both into separate drains.
Iris stared.
“Was that necessary?”
“Yes.”
A gray sedan sat at the curb with its engine running.
A man stepped out.
Declan raised his gun.
The driver froze.
“Out.”
Iris grabbed Declan's arm.
“No.”
He looked at her.
“We need a car.”
“You are not carjacking a stranger while I am standing here holding evidence of a criminal conspiracy.”
“Iris.”
“No.”
The driver, wisely, remained very still.
Nolan was bleeding on the sidewalk.
Declan looked from Iris to Nolan to the sedan.
Then he lowered the gun.
“Do you have a phone?” he asked the driver.
The man nodded rapidly.
“Call a cab.”
Iris blinked.
Declan removed several hundred dollars from his wallet and held them out.
The driver stared.
“For what?”
“Your car.”
“That is not enough for my car.”
Declan added more.
The man took it.
“You have twenty-four hours to report it stolen,” Declan said. “Tomorrow afternoon it will be parked three blocks from here with a full tank.”
The driver looked at Iris.
She shrugged.
“This is going better than it was thirty seconds ago.”
They left him on the sidewalk calling a rideshare.
In the sedan, Iris turned the back seat into a makeshift treatment area.
Nolan had been right.
The bullet had passed through the outside of his upper arm without hitting bone.
She wrapped it tightly.
Declan drove north.
No one followed.
For ten minutes, none of them spoke.
Then the dashboard lit with an incoming call through the car's Bluetooth.
UNKNOWN NUMBER.
Declan's hands tightened on the wheel.
“Do not answer,” Nolan said.
Declan answered.
Patrick's voice filled the car.
“You always were stubborn.”
Declan said nothing.
Patrick continued.
“You found the photographs.”
Still nothing.
“And I'm guessing Hayes recorded something dramatic. He liked insurance policies.”
Iris leaned forward.
“Did you kill my brother?”
Silence.
Patrick chuckled softly.
“So that is Iris.”
Declan's face hardened.
“Answer her.”
Patrick sighed.
“No. I did not pull the trigger.”
“Did you order it?” Iris asked.
A longer pause.
“I gave Captain Larkin a problem to solve.”
Iris felt the world narrow.
Declan's voice dropped.
“Patrick.”
“What did you expect?” Patrick snapped. “Hayes had original books. Names. Transfers. He was going to hand them to people who would have buried all of us.”
“All of us?” Declan said. “Or you?”
Patrick laughed without humor.
“You still think there is a difference.”
Declan's eyes remained on the road.
“What happened to my mother?”
Patrick went silent.
Iris watched the muscles in Declan's jaw tighten.
“Answer me.”
Patrick exhaled.
“Your mother made the same mistake Hayes made.”
“What mistake?”
“She believed truth mattered more than family.”
Declan's knuckles went white around the steering wheel.
Iris understood suddenly that Patrick was trying to make him crash emotionally if not physically.
She reached forward and placed one hand on Declan's shoulder.
His body went still beneath her touch.
Patrick continued.
“Eleanor wanted to leave. She wanted to take you and expose the accounts. Your father begged her to stop.”
Declan's voice was almost inaudible.
“My father knew?”
Patrick laughed again.
“Your father knew everything.”
The call ended.
No one spoke.
Declan drove another block.
Then another.
Iris kept her hand on his shoulder.
At the next light, he looked at her.
Not as a boss.
Not as a man everyone feared.
As a son who had just been told his entire childhood was a lie.
“Patrick lies,” Nolan said quietly.
Declan looked forward again.
“Yes.”
“Then we verify.”
“Yes.”
Iris tightened her hand once.
“And if he told the truth?”
May you like
Declan's eyes turned colder than she had ever seen them.
“Then my family has been dead longer than I knew.”
