Chapter 7 - THE MAN GABRIEL COULD NOT LOSE
Z
The first explosion shook dust from the vault ceiling.
Daniel looked almost pleased.
I was less impressed.
“What did you do?”
“Nothing.”
The second explosion came from farther away.
Daniel checked his watch.
“Your Gabriel is dramatic.”
“He’s not my Gabriel.”
Daniel laughed.
“You might want to tell him.”
The armed clerk grabbed my arm.
I kicked backward.
Hard.
My heel connected with his shin.
He swore.
I ran.
I made it three steps.
Daniel caught my hair.
Pain shot across my scalp.
He dragged me backward.
“You should have stayed a waitress.”
I elbowed him.
He stumbled.
The clerk raised his gun.
Then the lights went out.
Complete darkness.
Somebody screamed from the corridor.
Gunfire followed.
I dropped to the floor.
“Norah!”
Gabriel.
I had never been happier to hear anyone shouting angrily.
“Here!”
A flashlight beam cut through darkness.
Daniel grabbed me.
Cold metal pressed against my throat.
Not a gun.
A knife.
Gabriel appeared twenty feet away.
His weapon pointed directly at Daniel.
For several seconds, nobody moved.
“Put it down,” Daniel said.
Gabriel’s face was terrifyingly calm.
“Let her go.”
“You’re in no position to negotiate.”
Gabriel’s eyes flicked toward me.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
Daniel pressed the blade closer.
“Stop talking to her.”
Gabriel ignored him.
“Norah.”
“I’m fine.”
“Good.”
Then he shot the light above Daniel’s head.
Darkness exploded again.
I dropped instantly.
Gabriel had told me earlier that if something happened, I should never wait to understand his move.
Just get low.
So I did.
Two shots.
A grunt.
Hands grabbed me.
I fought.
“It’s me.”
Gabriel.
I stopped.
He pulled me behind a concrete support.
Emergency lights flickered on.
Daniel was gone.
The armed clerk lay bleeding from his shoulder.
Leo appeared from the opposite corridor.
“Daniel went through the service passage.”
“Take men.”
Gabriel’s hand remained around my wrist.
Leo hesitated.
“What about you?”
“I’m staying with her.”
That was the moment I understood Daniel had been right.
Gabriel should have chased him.
Daniel was twenty yards away.
The man responsible for Paulie’s death.
The man who manipulated Gabriel’s entire life.
And Gabriel stayed.
With me.
“Go,” I said.
“No.”
“He’ll escape.”
“I don’t care.”
“You absolutely care.”
“Not more than this.”
He looked at me when he said it.
Not more than you.
Neither of us spoke.
Leo disappeared after Daniel.
The vault alarm continued screaming.
Gabriel checked my face, arms, neck.
When he saw the thin cut where Daniel’s knife touched me, something in his expression changed.
“It’s nothing.”
“It’s blood.”
“I’m a nursing student. I know what blood looks like.”
He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket.
“Hold this.”
“You carry handkerchiefs?”
“Apparently.”
Despite everything, I started laughing.
Gabriel stared.
Then I laughed harder.
Shock.
Probably.
Tears followed.
He pulled me against him.
I stopped laughing.
His hand pressed against the back of my head.
His heart was beating too fast.
So was mine.
“You came.”
“Of course I came.”
“It was a trap.”
“I knew.”
“That’s incredibly stupid.”
“Yes.”
I pulled back.
“We agree on something.”
His forehead nearly touched mine.
Then Leo’s voice came through his earpiece.
“Boss.”
Gabriel straightened.
“What?”
“Daniel’s gone.”
Gabriel closed his eyes once.
“We have the building.”
“No. He had a tunnel connecting the service level to the old subway maintenance line.”
Of course he did.
Samuel entered minutes later surrounded by federal agents.
Gabriel almost punched him.
I physically stepped between them.
“That helps nobody.”
Samuel looked at my neck.
“He hurt you.”
“I’m fine.”
“Where is Daniel?”
“Gone.”
Samuel cursed.
Gabriel turned toward the vault.
“We finish this.”
The real safe-deposit box was not controlled by fingerprint.
That had been Daniel’s lie.
The brass key from Rosa’s Bible opened an old mechanical compartment behind a wall panel.
Inside sat a metal case.
Thomas Bennett had hidden evidence there before I was born.
Ledger copies.
Photographs.
Cassette tapes.
Bank records.
Names.
Hundreds of them.
Samuel stared.
“This could bring down half the network.”
Gabriel picked up one ledger.
His expression changed.
“What?”
He turned it toward Samuel.
One name appeared repeatedly.
Michael Hayes.
Gabriel’s father.
Not as an informant.
Not as a victim.
As a recipient.
Rosa had believed Michael stole evidence to expose Daniel.
The ledger told a more complicated story.
Michael had worked with Daniel first.
Together they built the financial network.
Then they turned on one another.
Gabriel sat slowly.
“My father wasn’t trying to stop him.”
Samuel scanned the pages.
“Not initially.”
Gabriel laughed bitterly.
“Everybody lied.”
I sat beside him.
Samuel continued searching.
Then he found a newer envelope.
Postmarked fourteen years after Thomas’s death.
Someone had accessed the box.
Once.
A letter waited inside.
Addressed to Rosa.
She never received it.
Samuel opened it.
Elizabeth Bennett’s handwriting.
My mother.
Rosa,
Samuel came back.
He says he wants to protect Norah, but I found the payments.
Daniel has been paying him for years.
I do not know whether he is taking money to survive or because he has become one of them.
I am moving Norah again.
Do not contact us until I know the truth.
I looked up.
Samuel’s face had gone white.
Gabriel stood.
“Explain.”
Samuel closed his eyes.
“I took money.”
My stomach twisted.
“You worked for Daniel.”
“No.”
“Mom thought you did.”
“I took his money because it gave me access.”
“Did your supervisors know?”
“No.”
Gabriel laughed.
“So you were a corrupt prosecutor pretending to be a corrupt prosecutor?”
Samuel glared at him.
“I used every payment to track accounts.”
“Did Elizabeth know?”
“No.”
“Then to her, you were just corrupt.”
Samuel looked at me.
“That is why she cut me out.”
I couldn’t breathe properly.
“Did she die believing that?”
His eyes filled.
“Yes.”
I stood.
For the first time, I saw the real cost of all their secrets.
Rosa lost Gabriel because she thought silence protected him.
Samuel lost my mother because he thought deception protected us.
Gabriel nearly lost himself because he believed distrust was strength.
Everybody protected people by refusing to tell them the truth.
And everybody ended up alone.
A phone rang.
Not ours.
One of Daniel’s abandoned phones on a table.
Gabriel answered.
Daniel’s voice came through speaker.
“Did you enjoy the family archive?”
Gabriel’s expression hardened.
“Where are you?”
“Somewhere Rosa will recognize.”
I looked at Gabriel.
Daniel continued.
“Bring the records.”
“What do you have?”
A pause.
Then Rosa’s voice.
“Gabriel, don’t—”
The line went dead.
Gabriel’s face emptied.
Daniel had Rosa.
Again.
Except this time, Gabriel wasn’t sixteen.
He wasn’t powerless.
He reached for the case.
I put my hand over it.
“No.”
His eyes flashed.
“He has my mother.”
“And he wants you angry.”
“I am angry.”
“That is exactly why you don’t get to think alone.”
Samuel stepped closer.
“She’s right.”
Gabriel glared at both of us.
I held his gaze.
“For twenty-two years, people made decisions for you.”
I pushed the case toward him.
“So make this one yourself.”
“Save Rosa.”
“Yes.”
“But not by becoming exactly what Daniel expects.”
Gabriel looked at the case.
Then at me.
“What do you suggest?”
That was new.
Gabriel Hayes asking instead of ordering.
I smiled faintly.
“We feed him.”
His eyebrow rose.
“What?”
“The man has spent weeks using food to terrify you.”
May you like
I looked at the ledgers.
“So let’s invite him to dinner.”
