Chapter 8 - THE WOMAN LORENZO UNDERESTIMATED
Lorenzo made one mistake.
He thought Beatrice Gallagher was helpless.
I had made the same mistake when I caught her packing leftover prime rib into a cracked plastic container.
Quiet woman.
Secondhand coat.
Trembling hands.
A maid.
People like us were trained to notice weapons.
We were terrible at recognizing strength when it arrived without one.
Thirty minutes after the terminal ambush, Gabriel and I were sitting inside an armored SUV while Marco drove.
My neck was bleeding.
Gabriel had been grazed in the shoulder.
Salvatore was dead.
Lorenzo had escaped.
And Beatrice was somewhere in Chicago with men who had killed her husband.
I wanted to tear the city apart.
Gabriel refused to let me.
“If you send soldiers everywhere, Lorenzo knows exactly what you're doing.”
“I don't care.”
“You should.”
“He has her.”
“I know.”
“You don't sound concerned.”
Gabriel turned on me.
“I lived twelve years because I learned panic wastes time.”
The words stopped me.
He leaned forward.
“Think.”
I forced myself to breathe.
Why take Beatrice?
Leverage.
But Lorenzo no longer needed transfer documents.
He had declared war openly.
So there had to be something else.
“What does she know?”
Gabriel frowned.
“Everything we know.”
“No. Something only she knows.”
Patrick.
The bank box.
The church.
The notebook.
Trust the maid.
Sister Catherine's final words.
I looked at Gabriel.
“Patrick left something else.”
“What?”
“I don't know.”
Marco spoke from the driver's seat.
“Her apartment?”
“Already compromised.”
“Bank?”
“Empty.”
Gabriel stared out the window.
“Food.”
I looked at him.
“What?”
“She had been feeding me for seven months.”
“So?”
“She never bought the meals herself.”
My brain caught up.
“She took leftovers.”
“Yes, but before that she brought canned food.”
“From where?”
“A pantry.”
“Which one?”
Gabriel slowly looked at me.
“St. Agnes.”
We turned around.
Ten minutes later, we were inside the church basement.
Gabriel led us to a storage cabinet.
Old canned beans.
Soup.
Bottled water.
Blankets.
Behind them was a metal cash box.
Locked.
I broke it.
Inside was an envelope bearing Beatrice's name.
Her hands must have touched it many times.
She had never opened it.
BEA — ONLY IF THEY FIND GABRIEL.
Patrick.
Gabriel whispered, “She didn't know.”
I opened the envelope.
A letter.
A photograph.
And another key.
Patrick's letter was short.
Bea,
If this reaches you, I am sorry.
I made a copy of everything because the people chasing Gabriel are powerful.
There is one name Gabriel kept repeating while unconscious.
Lorenzo.
But there is another thing I never told Carlo.
Gabriel was not alone when I found him.
Someone else escaped the warehouse.
I looked at Gabriel.
“Someone else?”
He shook his head.
I continued.
That man died three days later. Before he died, he gave me a recording and told me to hide it.
The key opens a locker at Union Station.
If men ever come looking for Gabriel, take the recording to the FBI.
Don't trust the police.
I love you.
Patrick.
Gabriel whispered, “We were just at Union Station yesterday.”
“Different locker.”
We raced downtown.
Locker 814 contained a small digital recorder sealed in plastic.
The battery was dead.
Marco found a charger.
When the device powered on, one audio file appeared.
December eighteenth.
Twelve years ago.
A man's voice spoke.
Salvatore.
“Gabriel leaves the warehouse tonight.”
Another voice.
Lorenzo.
“No.”
I looked at Gabriel.
He stared at the device.
Lorenzo's younger voice continued.
“You said we were frightening him.”
“He knows about Northstar.”
“Then buy him.”
“He can't be bought.”
“Send him away.”
“He'll come back.”
A long silence.
Then Salvatore said:
“You want Roman beside you someday?”
My skin crawled.
“Yes.”
“Then Gabriel disappears.”
“I won't kill him.”
“You don't have to.”
Another man asked a question.
Salvatore answered.
“Use the body from Cook County. Crane already handled the dental records.”
So the corpse had been prepared before the fire.
The entire funeral had been planned.
Then Lorenzo said something none of us expected.
“If Gabriel dies, I'm done.”
Salvatore laughed.
“You think Roman will forgive you if he finds out you were here?”
Silence.
“You're already involved, son.”
The recording continued.
Gunfire.
Shouting.
Then Lorenzo screaming.
“No!”
Gabriel looked stunned.
A crash.
Salvatore cursing.
Then explosion.
The recording ended.
I stared at Gabriel.
“Lorenzo tried to stop it.”
“Twelve years ago.”
“Yes.”
“That doesn't erase what came after.”
“No.”
But it changed something.
Lorenzo had not begun as Salvatore.
He had become Salvatore.
That mattered because men often repeated the place where they first discovered power.
Union Freight Terminal?
Too obvious.
Warehouse Fourteen.
The birthplace of everything.
I pulled out my phone.
“That's where he took Beatrice.”
Gabriel nodded.
Marco shook his head.
“Warehouse Fourteen was demolished.”
“The original building.”
“Yes.”
“But the land?”
Marco checked.
A company owned it.
Northstar Industrial Renewal.
Of course.
Twenty minutes later, my phone rang.
Beatrice.
I answered immediately.
“Beatrice?”
Silence.
Then her voice.
Calm.
“Mr. Vale.”
“Are you hurt?”
“Not badly.”
“Where are you?”
“I don't know.”
A man's voice shouted in the background.
The phone shifted.
Beatrice spoke louder.
“They want the recording.”
My eyes met Gabriel's.
“How do they know?”
“I told them.”
I stared at the phone.
“What?”
“I told Lorenzo Patrick made one.”
Gabriel's eyes widened.
Why would she do that?
Then I understood.
She was feeding Lorenzo information.
Deliberately.
“Did you tell him where?”
“Yes.”
Her voice changed slightly.
“The place where your brother died.”
Not almost died.
Died.
Wrong wording.
A signal.
Gabriel understood too.
“What else?”
Beatrice said, “He told me to remind you of dinner.”
Dinner?
Then the line went dead.
Marco frowned.
“What does that mean?”
I thought back.
The first night.
Prime rib.
Roasted vegetables.
Mashed potatoes.
Beatrice taking food.
What had she been doing before I entered the kitchen?
Cleaning the formal dining room.
Which dinner?
Then I remembered something absurdly small.
At dinner that night, Beatrice had accidentally spilled water when Lorenzo entered the room.
He made a joke about her hands shaking.
She stared at his left sleeve.
Why?
“His cuff.”
Gabriel frowned.
“What?”
“Lorenzo wore a silver cuff link.”
“So?”
“It had a logo.”
I had seen it hundreds of times.
A compass.
Northstar.
My pulse accelerated.
“He wasn't just using Northstar as a hidden business.”
Marco understood.
“It's his headquarters.”
Northstar's official Chicago headquarters occupied three floors of a renovated meatpacking building west of the river.
Public offices above.
Private underground storage below.
We changed direction.
When we arrived, the building was dark.
Too dark.
No lobby security.
No night staff.
Gabriel whispered, “He knows we're coming.”
“Probably.”
We entered through the loading area.
Below the basement was another level missing from city plans.
Cells.
Records.
Computers.
Rooms with locks on the outside.
My stomach turned.
This had existed in my city.
Under businesses carrying my family name.
I had never known.
Or had never asked enough questions.
We reached a corridor.
A guard lay unconscious.
Not shot.
Hit with something heavy.
Another guard was zip-tied beside him.
Gabriel looked at me.
“Your men?”
“No.”
We heard movement.
A woman stepped from a doorway holding a fire extinguisher like a baseball bat.
Beatrice.
Blood marked her lip.
Her coat was torn.
But she was standing.
She looked at us.
“You took long enough.”
For two full seconds, neither Gabriel nor I spoke.
Then Gabriel started laughing.
I almost did too.
“How did you get free?” I asked.
“Lorenzo's men underestimated a maid.”
She handed me a key card.
“I took that from one of them.”
“Where's Lorenzo?”
Her expression changed.
“He left.”
My stomach dropped.
“Where?”
“He said you would come here.”
“Then why leave?”
“Because this wasn't where he wanted you.”
She pointed toward a bank of computer screens.
One displayed a live security feed.
My mansion.
Another showed men entering the property.
Armed men.
Lorenzo stood in the main hall.
And behind him were nearly thirty members of my organization.
My captains.
My soldiers.
Men I had paid.
Protected.
Promoted.
Lorenzo looked directly into the mansion camera.
As if he knew I was watching.
Then he raised a glass of my whiskey.
“To new management.”
Beatrice whispered, “He didn't kidnap me to trade for the recording.”
I stared at the screen.
“No.”
“He used me to pull you away from home.”
Lorenzo sat down in my father's chair.
May you like
My chair.
And one by one, my own men stepped forward and kissed his ring.
