Chapter 4 - The Grave Without FlowersAnna Evans had been dead for eleven years.
Leukemia.
Twenty-six years old.
Too young to have a grave Chloe had visited so many times she knew the cracks in the stone.
Lorenzo stood beneath a black umbrella while Chloe knelt in wet grass at Mount Carmel Cemetery.
Chicago’s October rain had softened into mist.
Adrian remained near the car, watching the road.
“What did the mug mean?” Lorenzo asked quietly.
Chloe looked up.
“What?”
“World’s Okayest Sister.”
A faint smile touched her mouth and disappeared.
“Anna gave it to me when I graduated basic training.”
“You were close?”
“She was annoying.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“Yes.”
Chloe touched the edge of the headstone.
ANNA MARIE EVANS.
BELOVED DAUGHTER AND SISTER.
“She got sick while I was overseas. Dad didn’t tell me how bad it was because he thought I’d leave the service.”
“Did you?”
“When I found out.”
Lorenzo looked at the dates.
“You came home before she died.”
“Three weeks.”
“I’m sorry.”
Chloe’s hands stopped.
“Don’t say things you don’t mean because you’re standing in a cemetery.”
“I meant it.”
She looked at him.
His face held no performance.
That somehow hurt more.
Chloe reached behind the headstone and pushed her fingers into the muddy soil beside the base.
Lorenzo watched.
“You buried it?”
“Anna used to hide cigarettes here from our father.”
“At her own future grave?”
“Not the key.”
Chloe almost laughed.
“There was an old stone wall behind our childhood house. Anna kept a metal tin beneath a loose brick. After she died, Dad had part of the wall moved here when he paid for the family plot. Sentimental insanity.”
“That sounds expensive.”
“My father was sentimental only when no one was looking.”
Her fingers struck metal.
She pulled free a rusted tobacco tin.
Inside was a red cord.
The brass key hung from it.
Nine years of rain had not touched it.
Lorenzo looked at the small object.
“That may have gotten your father killed.”
“Yes.”
“And Victor has spent years trying to find it.”
“Apparently.”
“Yet you kept it.”
Chloe closed her hand.
“I thought it was useless.”
“No.”
He shook his head.
“You kept it because your father gave it to you.”
She looked away.
He had seen too much.
They returned to the car.
Adrian drove them to a vacant printing company on the western edge of the city.
The building belonged to one of his aliases.
No records connected it to Meridian, Capello or Chloe.
Inside, he set the encrypted drive on a worktable.
Chloe inserted the brass key.
It fit perfectly.
The casing released with a click.
Beneath it was a narrow biometric pad.
Lorenzo exhaled.
“Your father enjoyed complications.”
“He was an accountant.”
“Same thing.”
Chloe placed her thumb on the pad.
Nothing.
Adrian frowned.
“Try again.”
Nothing.
“It’s not mine.”
Lorenzo stepped closer.
“Whose?”
Chloe stared at the device.
Thomas had built the archive with Carlo.
Two men.
Two families.
“It might require both sides.”
Lorenzo put his thumb on the sensor.
Red light.
“No.”
Adrian examined the casing.
“There’s a manufacturer stamp.”
He read it.
“Veyron Secure Systems.”
Lorenzo knew the name.
“My father used them for private vaults.”
“Who else?”
“My mother.”
Chloe looked at him.
“Elena?”
“She handled the family’s legitimate foundations.”
Adrian turned the drive over.
“Then your father may have designed this so neither Thomas nor Carlo could open it alone.”
“Family authentication,” Chloe whispered.
Lorenzo frowned.
“What does that mean?”
“The key came through my father. The biometric may require someone your father trusted.”
“Like my mother.”
“Yes.”
Adrian immediately shook his head.
“Going near Elena is dangerous.”
Lorenzo’s eyes hardened.
“She is my mother.”
“She’s under surveillance.”
“She is still my mother.”
Chloe interrupted.
“Victor expects you to contact her.”
“I will not leave her exposed.”
“Then we don’t go to her.”
He stared.
“We bring her to us.”
Adrian laughed without humor.
“You want to extract Elena Capello from a Gold Coast townhouse under Victor’s surveillance?”
Chloe shrugged.
“Now you understand why I needed the key first.”
Lorenzo looked at her with something dangerously close to admiration.
“I thought you were retired.”
“So did I.”
Adrian’s phone vibrated.
He checked the screen.
His expression changed.
“What?”
He turned the phone around.
A live television report showed The Sovereign surrounded by police vehicles.
A reporter stood under an umbrella.
The headline beneath her read:
CHICAGO RESTAURANT MASSACRE: ORGANIZED CRIME FIGURE LORENZO CAPELLO MISSING.
Then the image changed.
Security footage.
Chloe sliding across the dining room floor.
Chloe firing Lorenzo’s weapon.
Chloe helping him through the kitchen doors.
Her face was visible.
Clear.
Three years of anonymity ended in nine seconds of video.
The reporter continued.
“Police are also seeking this woman, identified by restaurant employees as thirty-two-year-old waitress Chloe Evans, for questioning.”
Adrian cursed.
Lorenzo looked at Chloe.
“You said Victor knew you survived.”
“He did.”
“Now everyone knows.”
Chloe stared at her own frozen image on the television.
The quiet waitress.
The invisible woman.
Gone.
Then another headline appeared.
This one stopped Adrian cold.
FEDERAL SOURCES SAY EVANS MAY BE CONNECTED TO DEFUNCT SECURITY FIRM MERIDIAN RISK.
Chloe’s eyes narrowed.
“That connection was sealed.”
“Victor,” Adrian said.
“No.”
She moved closer to the screen.
“The federal record was sealed under a national security agreement. Victor couldn’t release it unless someone inside government helped him.”
Lorenzo understood immediately.
“You have another enemy.”
Chloe watched the reporter read from information that should never have been public.
“No.”
Her voice was quiet.
“We have another traitor.”
A photograph appeared beside hers.
A smiling man in a dark suit.
Former Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Mercer.
Now Chicago’s deputy mayor for public safety.
Chloe had known him.
More importantly, her father had known him.
Thomas Evans had once trusted Daniel Mercer enough to name him executor of his will.
Chloe whispered, “Mercer.”
Lorenzo looked at her.
“Friend?”
She remembered Mercer standing beside her at her father’s funeral.
Holding her shoulder.
Promising the police would keep investigating.
“No.”
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Her stomach turned.
“Family.”
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