Chapter 2 - Eleven Days After the Dead Returned
"I've been looking for that woman for six years."
Dante Valenti said it quietly.
That made it worse.
I stared at the tablet in Isabella's hands. My mother stood between Cameron Hale and Victor Sloane, smiling at something beyond the camera. Her red hair was shorter than I remembered. There were lines beside her eyes that hadn't been there before.
But the scar beneath her chin was the same.
She had gotten it falling from a bicycle when I was nine. I had helped hold the towel against her face while we waited for the ambulance. She had told me a ridiculous joke to stop me crying.
I remembered the joke.
I remembered the blood on the towel.
And I remembered dropping a handful of gray ashes into Lake Michigan seven years ago.
"Is that really from eleven days ago?" I asked.
Isabella turned the screen so I could see its details. "Original camera recording. We checked the system clock against the door-access log."
"Someone could have changed it."
"We're preserving the original," she said. "You don't have to take our word for it."
I looked at Dante. "You said you were looking for her. Why?"
His eyes moved to Gabriel Torres, who stood near the entrance with one hand against his earpiece. Gabriel understood the glance and stepped back to give us privacy.
"Her name was Evelyn Bennett," Dante said.
"I know my mother's name."
"She worked as an auditor for a charitable trust tied to several redevelopment projects in Chicago. Six years ago, records surfaced showing her authorization on money that disappeared from one of those projects. Some of the transfers passed through companies using my name."
"My mother wasn't a thief."
"I didn't say she was."
"But you've been hunting her for six years."
He considered that. "I've been looking for someone who could tell me whether those records were real."
I stared at the picture again.
"She's supposed to be dead."
"That's what I was told too."
I folded my arms around myself. Under the bright entrance lights, my wrinkled white blouse suddenly felt transparent. I wanted my mother to walk out of the office. I wanted to scream at her. I wanted to be seven years younger, standing beside a grave that was at least honest.
"Did you know before tonight that Cameron was connected to her?"
"No," Dante answered. "I knew Victor Sloane's name. I didn't know Hale's son was involved until Isabella showed me this."
"Who is Sloane?"
"A financial adviser with excellent connections and a talent for staying out of photographs. He once oversaw contracts for the same redevelopment trust."
I thought of the silver-haired man beside Cameron's locked filing cabinet.
She doesn't know anything, does she?
Cameron had answered him too softly for me to hear.
"I saw Sloane in our apartment," I said. "Months ago. He was standing beside a locked cabinet Cameron never let me open."
Dante didn't interrupt.
"I thought it held campaign papers for Cameron's father."
"It might."
"You don't believe that."
"I don't know yet. And neither do you."
For a man everyone called dangerous, he was infuriatingly careful with his answers.
A memory rose suddenly: Cameron asking whether I still had my mother's old address book. I had said no. He had smiled and told me he was merely curious about my childhood.
At the time, I had felt grateful he wanted to know.
Now my skin went cold.
"He asked about her," I whispered.
"Cameron?"
I nodded. "When we started dating. He wanted to know where she'd worked. Whether she had left me any documents."
Isabella lowered the tablet. "Nora, did you keep anything?"
I touched the little silver bird at my throat.
"Only this. She gave it to me before she disappeared."
Dante's gaze rested on the necklace for a second, then returned to my face. He didn't reach for it.
"I want to call her," I said.
Nobody answered.
"You've been looking for her for six years. Surely you have a number."
"I don't," Dante said.
The words made my throat ache.
"Then find her."
"I'll ask Isabella to preserve every piece of footage. We'll have someone independent review the date and identity."
"That isn't the same thing."
"I know."
I hated him a little for admitting it.
Gabriel returned. "The car's ready. A driver can take Miss Bennett to the Meridian without stopping."
I looked toward the nightclub doors. Cameron had vanished into the streets beyond them. He knew where I'd lived, where I worked, what I ate when I was upset. He probably knew I was still inside.
"The room will be in my name?" I asked.
Dante glanced at Gabriel. "Yes. No one will enter without your permission."
"And I can leave?"
"Whenever you want."
I made myself ask the question that mattered most.
"If I decide not to help you find my mother, what happens?"
Dante studied me. "You still get a safe room tonight."
For a moment, I couldn't move.
Cameron always attached an invisible price to kindness. Breakfast meant I owed him a pleasant evening. Flowers meant I had to forget an argument. A ride meant he could decide where I went next.
Dante held out neither a bargain nor a hand.
I nodded once.
At the Meridian, a woman at the front desk checked me in without asking why I had been escorted by security. My room was quiet, with cream-colored curtains and a view of the river. Gabriel showed me how to use the inner door lock, then stepped into the hallway.
"If you need medical care, we can arrange it," he said. "If you want no contact, tell the desk."
"You told me to be careful of Dante."
He looked uncomfortable. "I told you to be careful of anyone who offers safety before you know what they want."
"Has your opinion changed?"
"You don't need my opinion. You need choices."
After he left, I stood in the center of a room too beautiful to feel real. The clock read two twelve.
I washed my face. The red mark around my wrist had darkened. I photographed it with the hotel phone before remembering I had no one to send it to.
Then I sat on the edge of the bed and opened my purse.
Forty-two dollars.
My dead disposable phone.
The necklace my mother had given me when I turned eighteen.
I had carried those things through the worst night of my life. Now one of them seemed to belong to a woman I didn't know.
At three in the morning, the room phone rang.
I stared at it until the third ring.
"Hello?"
It was Isabella. "I'm sorry to disturb you. I thought you should know before anyone else."
My stomach dropped.
"The woman in the footage approached our reception desk that night," she said. "She asked whether a Nora Bennett had ever visited Saint."
I gripped the receiver.
"What did the receptionist say?"
"That she couldn't disclose information about guests. The woman left with Sloane."
"Did she say anything else?"
Isabella paused.
"She asked us to remember her name if you ever came."
I pressed a hand over my mouth.
My mother hadn't merely survived.
May you like
Eleven days before I ran into that club, she had come looking for me.
And somehow Cameron had led me straight to the same place.
