Chapter 7 - The Empty Apartment
Lena threw a chair through Miriam’s office window.
The glass shattered over the alley. She climbed onto the fire escape as one of the men grabbed her ankle. She kicked free, dropped two floors, and landed on a laundry awning that collapsed beneath her.
Julian found her in the alley, bleeding from the shoulder.
“You have a talent for dramatic exits,” he said.
“Miriam tried to have me kidnapped.”
“That’s less dramatic.”
He drove her to an abandoned church where the basement had become a temporary shelter for evicted families. The pastor, Reuben Cole, let Lena use a storage room to examine the ledger.
The names in the book were not only tenants. Beside each name was a symbol: a circle, a cross, or a black square.
“What do they mean?” Nico asked.
“Circle for paid. Cross for moved. Black square for missing.”
Nico pointed to a row of names. “These people are still listed as residents.”
“They’re not,” said Reuben. “The city says they relocated.”
“Where?” Lena asked.
“No one knows.”
They visited one of the empty apartments that afternoon. The family had supposedly moved to an approved complex across town, but the unit still held a child’s shoes, a birthday banner, and a bowl of soup turned black with mold.
On the wall, someone had scratched a message: WE DID NOT LEAVE.
Lena photographed it.
A floorboard creaked behind her.
Julian drew a pistol.
“Put that away,” Lena said.
“Not until I know who’s here.”
An elderly woman stepped from the kitchen, holding a broken broom handle.
“My name is June Bell,” she said. “The family who lived here paid me to watch the place.”
“Where did they go?”
“Men came with badges. They said the children would be taken if the parents refused.”
“Police?”
June shook her head. “They wore uniforms, but real police don’t smile when they threaten a mother.”
She handed Lena a small envelope.
“The father told me to give this to the woman with Gabriel Ortiz’s eyes.”
Inside was a bus ticket and a torn ledger page.
The page held one sentence: The black squares are not missing. They are witnesses.
The bus ticket was for a town in western Pennsylvania. A name was handwritten on the back: Etta Vale.
Julian went still.
“You know her,” Lena said.
“No.”
“You’re a terrible liar.”
“Etta Vale is dead.”
“Then why are you afraid?”
He did not answer.
Outside, sirens approached. June looked through the blinds.
“They found us.”
The shelter’s families began moving through the basement tunnels. Reuben knew an old passage that connected to the river. Lena carried the ledger under her coat while Julian guarded the rear.
At the tunnel entrance, he caught her arm.
“You can still walk away,” he said.
“So can you.”
“I tried.”
“When?”
“Every day since I was seventeen.”
His hand fell from her arm.
Lena looked at the black squares in the ledger.
“We’re going to Pennsylvania.”
“You don’t know what Etta Vale is.”
“Neither do you.”
“I know enough.”
“Then you know we have to find her.”
May you like
Julian’s expression showed fear for the first time.
“You don’t understand,” he said. “Etta Vale is the reason I became Julian Rook.”
