Chapter 10 - The Voice She Buried
Clara stood in the parking lot staring at her phone.
Sofia reached her first.
"Who was it?"
Clara could not answer.
Leonardo saw her face and knew.
"Gabriel."
She nodded.
Dante immediately began checking the number.
Clara grabbed his phone and lowered it.
"No."
"Clara, we can trace—"
"No."
"For three years everyone around him has traced, followed, hidden, lied, and decided."
"I am done letting other people move first."
Leonardo watched her carefully.
"What did he say?"
"Not to go to the warehouse."
Dante looked toward the others.
"Then we definitely go."
Clara glared at him.
"That is exactly the kind of thinking that created this mess."
Sofia folded her arms.
"He may be warning us about a trap."
"Or he may be trying to keep us from finding something."
Clara hated herself for saying it.
She hated even more that she believed it could be true.
Leonardo asked, "Did he sound afraid?"
Clara replayed the single word in her mind.
Gabriel had said her name softly.
Almost tenderly.
Then the warning had been urgent.
"Yes."
"For himself?"
"I don't know."
Leonardo nodded.
"Then we do not go yet."
Dante looked surprised.
So did Clara.
Leonardo continued.
"We find out who owns the warehouse now."
"We watch it."
"We do not walk into a place my brother specifically told Clara to avoid."
Clara studied him.
"You trust him?"
Leonardo looked toward the empty clinic.
"I am trying to learn how."
They returned to Chicago that evening.
Clara refused the hotel and instead stayed in a secured apartment Sofia kept under another name.
It was small, plain, and anonymous.
For the first time in twenty-four hours, Clara was alone.
She sat on the edge of the bed and listened to Gabriel's eleven-second call again.
The number had left no voicemail, but her phone had recorded the exchange through a safety app Dante installed earlier.
"Clara."
Her chest tightened every time.
The voice was older and rougher.
But it was him.
She remembered him singing badly while cooking pasta.
She remembered the way he said her name when he was apologizing.
She remembered waking from a nightmare after his funeral and reaching across the bed before reality returned.
Now reality had changed again.
She wanted to see him.
She wanted to slap him.
She wanted to ask whether he had ever stood across the street while she carried groceries alone.
She wanted to know whether he had watched her sell his guitar to pay a hospital bill he thought had already been cleared.
At midnight, someone knocked softly.
Clara froze.
"Who is it?"
"Sofia."
Clara opened the door.
Sofia carried two paper cups and a folder.
"I found the trust records."
Clara let her in.
They spread the documents across the kitchen counter.
Gabriel had created a fund of four hundred thousand dollars in Clara's name two weeks before the Boston crash.
The money had been transferred through a law office called Merrin & Blythe.
Clara recognized the second name.
"Blythe."
Sofia nodded.
"Victor's personal attorney."
The trust had been marked distributed.
The receiving account, however, did not belong to Clara.
It belonged to a collection company called Northline Recovery.
That was the company currently collecting Clara's medical debt.
She stared at the page.
"They used his money to buy my debt."
"Yes."
"Then charged me for it."
"Yes."
Clara laughed in disbelief.
"So every payment I made went back to people Gabriel was trying to expose."
Sofia nodded.
"It kept you financially visible."
"Every change of address, employer, and bank account flowed through the collection system."
Clara's stomach turned.
"They didn't need to follow me."
"They made me report myself."
"Exactly."
That realization changed something in Clara.
The debt she had treated as a private shame was not evidence of failure.
It had been a leash.
She folded the statement with deliberate care.
"I'm going to the warehouse."
Sofia did not argue.
"Tomorrow?"
"Tonight."
"Leonardo will object."
"Then don't tell him until we're already there."
Sofia stared at her.
Then, unexpectedly, she smiled.
"You are more like Gabriel than either of you would enjoy hearing."
Clara did not smile back.
"I am not doing this his way."
"I'm going because I choose to."
At 1:40 a.m., Clara and Sofia parked two blocks from the warehouse.
The building sat behind a chain-link fence near the river, dark except for one small light above a loading door.
They entered through a side entrance using the brass key.
Inside, their footsteps echoed across an empty concrete floor.
A narrow staircase led down.
At the bottom was a steel door with no window.
The room with no windows.
Clara inserted the key.
The lock turned.
Sofia touched her arm.
"Ready?"
"No."
Clara opened the door anyway.
The room beyond contained a desk, a wall of photographs, and a single lamp.
Hundreds of images covered the far wall.
Clara at work.
Clara leaving her apartment.
Clara buying groceries.
Clara standing at Gabriel's grave.
Clara's face went cold.
"He watched me."
Sofia stepped closer to the wall.
"Not all of these were taken by Gabriel."
She pointed to different camera dates and formats.
"Some are surveillance copies."
"He may have been tracking whoever was tracking you."
Then Clara noticed a fresh photograph pinned in the center.
It showed her entering Gene & Georgetti the previous night.
Written beneath it in Gabriel's handwriting were four words.
They found her again.
A floorboard creaked behind them.
Clara turned.
A man stood in the doorway.
For one impossible second, she saw Gabriel's face.
Then the man lifted his hands.
"Clara, don't scream."
May you like
It was not Gabriel.
It was the man from the restaurant security footage.
