Chapter 7 - THE FIRE UNDER THE LEDGER
The first shot came through the library window.
Glass exploded across the floor.
Lorenzo dragged Isabella behind the stone fireplace.
Rafe killed the laptop screen and shoved the memory card into his pocket.
Evelyn grabbed the blank ledger.
"Basement tunnel," she said.
Lorenzo looked toward the hall.
"Too obvious."
"That is why they will cover it."
Evelyn pointed upward.
"Attic."
Isabella shook her head.
"No exterior exit."
"There is always a maintenance door," Evelyn said.
Lorenzo looked at her.
The phrase had become a rule between them.
Rafe fired twice through the shattered window.
"Three on the west lawn."
Luca appeared from the corridor with a shotgun taken from a locked cabinet.
"More coming from the drive."
Lorenzo made the decision.
"Up."
They moved through the back staircase.
Gunfire followed them into the hall.
Evelyn clutched the ledger to her chest.
It felt absurdly light for something worth so many lives.
At the second-floor landing, Isabella stopped.
"My room."
"Mother."
"There is a roof ladder in my old dressing room."
She led them through a bedroom frozen in another decade.
Dust covered a vanity.
Silk curtains hung stiff over tall windows.
Inside the dressing room, Isabella pulled a brass hook beneath a shelf.
A panel in the ceiling opened.
Rafe stared at her.
"Does everyone in this family hide doors?"
"We were not a trusting household."
Luca climbed first.
Evelyn followed.
The attic was enormous and dark.
Wooden beams crossed above them.
Old trunks and furniture created narrow lanes through dust.
Lorenzo closed the panel behind them.
Below, footsteps entered the bedroom.
Voices.
One belonged to Dante.
"They are upstairs."
Lorenzo's face hardened.
Rafe touched his arm.
"Not here."
Lorenzo nodded once.
They moved toward the far side of the attic.
Evelyn found the roof ladder.
It led to a small maintenance hatch concealed behind a chimney.
Snow blew inside when Luca opened it.
The roof sloped steeply toward the rear garden.
"You cannot be serious," Isabella said.
"You taught me to ski," Lorenzo replied.
"This is not skiing."
"Less expensive equipment."
Even Isabella almost smiled.
They crossed the roof one at a time.
Evelyn's borrowed boots slipped on ice.
Lorenzo caught her wrist.
For a second, she hung against the slope with thirty feet of frozen stone below.
"I have you."
His voice was steady.
Evelyn looked at his hand around hers.
"Do not let go."
Something moved in his eyes.
"I will not."
He pulled her up.
A shot cracked from the attic hatch.
Stone chipped near Lorenzo's shoulder.
Rafe fired back.
They reached the far chimney.
A copper drainpipe ran down to a balcony.
Luca descended first.
Then Isabella.
Evelyn looked over the edge.
"I hate this plan."
Lorenzo stood behind her.
"You hated the car too."
"The Honda was closer to the ground."
"Go."
She wrapped both hands around the pipe.
Halfway down, it groaned.
"That sound is bad."
"Keep moving."
The upper bracket tore free.
Evelyn dropped six feet.
Lorenzo caught the pipe with one hand and her coat with the other.
Pain flashed across his face.
"Move."
She reached the balcony.
Lorenzo came after her.
They entered through a French door and raced downstairs.
At the rear kitchen, Luca stopped.
"Cars are covered."
Rafe looked through a window.
"Four men."
Evelyn saw an old dumbwaiter door beside the pantry.
She almost laughed.
"You have got to be kidding me."
Lorenzo followed her gaze.
"Another service shaft."
"Apparently rich people and restaurants share a fear of stairs."
The dumbwaiter was larger than the one at the Obsidian.
It descended to a basement pantry beside the boiler room.
They used the shaft one by one.
When Lorenzo reached the bottom, smoke was already entering beneath the door.
"They set the house on fire," Isabella said.
Evelyn stared at the blank ledger.
"No."
"They set the ledger on fire."
Lorenzo understood.
"Heat reveals the writing."
Rafe looked toward the boiler room.
"Convenient place for that."
They entered the boiler room.
An old industrial furnace sat against one wall.
Luca found a workbench.
Evelyn opened the ledger.
"We need controlled heat."
"Not flames."
Isabella pointed to a radiator pipe.
"There."
They held the first page near the hot metal.
At first, nothing happened.
Then pale brown lines appeared.
Names.
Dates.
Amounts.
Evelyn's breath caught.
"It works."
Page after page came alive.
Rafe photographed each one with an offline camera.
Lorenzo read faster than anyone else.
"Judge Mercer."
"Captain Halloran."
"Vane Construction."
"Salvatore."
He turned another page.
"Dante."
The dates covered nearly twenty years.
Evelyn searched for Daniel.
She found D.C. beside dozens of entries marked AUDIT.
Then she found one line that made her stop.
12/04/12 - D. CARTER EXTRACTION - PAYMENT HELD.
"Extraction."
Lorenzo looked over her shoulder.
"That was four years after he disappeared."
"So he was alive."
"At least then."
A second line appeared beneath it.
LOCATION: CERMACK COLD WORKS.
Evelyn remembered the list in the notebook.
Cermak Cold Works had a club symbol.
Force.
Security.
"They held him there."
Isabella shook her head.
"That facility closed years ago."
Rafe was reading another page.
"Not closed."
"Transferred."
He showed them.
Property ownership had moved through three shell companies.
The final owner was Vane Logistics.
Evelyn felt hope and terror rise together.
"My father could be there."
Lorenzo turned another page.
"Or someone wants you to think so."
"You told me to trust what I see."
"I see a location written by a man who knew people would hunt this ledger."
"I also see a date from 2012."
"Fourteen years is a long time."
"I know exactly how long it is."
Their eyes locked.
Lorenzo looked away first.
"We verify before we go."
A loud crack sounded overhead.
The house was burning fast.
Smoke entered the boiler room.
Rafe pointed at the final pages.
"Finish."
They heated the remaining sheets.
One page contained no money.
Only three names in a triangle.
SALVATORE MORETTI.
VICTOR VANE.
MARIAN VALE.
Evelyn frowned.
"Who is Marian Vale?"
Isabella's face changed.
"Celeste's mother."
"I thought her mother died when she was young."
"She disappeared."
Lorenzo looked at the triangle.
"Same year as Daniel."
Isabella nodded.
"She and Daniel were working together."
Evelyn stared at her.
"Celeste's mother helped my father?"
"For a while."
"Then what happened?"
"Nobody knows."
A final line appeared beneath the triangle.
PROJECT JANUS.
Evelyn read it aloud.
Rafe looked at Lorenzo.
"Two faces."
"One looking forward."
"One looking back."
Isabella whispered.
"A replacement plan."
Lorenzo turned to her.
"What replacement?"
She did not answer.
The basement door above them crashed open.
Dante's voice echoed down the stairwell.
"Lorenzo."
"The fire department is not coming."
"The police are not coming."
"Your people are not coming."
"You have five minutes."
Lorenzo drew his pistol.
"He likes five minutes."
Evelyn held up the ledger.
"He wants this intact."
"Then we use it."
She looked around the boiler room.
Coal chute.
Maintenance tunnel.
Fuel controls.
Another cage.
Another maintenance door.
"Rafe, how much do you trust the gas line?"
"Not at all."
"Good."
Evelyn pointed to the old service valve.
"Can you make it look like we opened it?"
Rafe smiled for the first time that day.
"Now I understand why Lorenzo likes you."
Lorenzo looked at him.
"He does not," Evelyn said quickly.
"She is exhausting," Lorenzo added.
Rafe crouched by the valve.
"Same thing in some families."
They created the smell of gas without releasing enough to ignite.
Then they left the ledger open on the workbench.
Rafe placed a small flash charge beneath the table.
The real photographs of the pages went into his coat.
The ledger itself was valuable.
But not more valuable than living.
They entered the coal chute and crawled toward the rear yard.
Dante and two men entered the boiler room seconds later.
Evelyn heard him shout.
Then Rafe triggered the flash charge.
The blast was mostly light and sound.
Dante's men panicked because they smelled gas.
They ran.
Dante did not.
He grabbed the ledger.
Exactly as Evelyn hoped.
From the coal chute opening, Lorenzo watched him emerge through the smoke carrying it.
He raised his pistol.
Evelyn touched his arm.
"Not yet."
"He betrayed me."
"And now he thinks he has what he came for."
She watched Dante run toward a black SUV.
"Let him take us to the person he serves."
Lorenzo lowered the gun.
Rafe whispered.
"We do not have a tracker on the ledger."
Evelyn smiled faintly.
"We do now."
She held up Celeste's beaded clutch.
Lorenzo stared at it.
"Where did you get that?"
"Panic room."
"You stole my fiancee's purse during a gas attack?"
"Former fiancee."
Evelyn opened the clutch.
Inside was a slim phone.
"She used this to coordinate the Obsidian."
"If it still transmits, Dante will carry Celeste's own location beacon straight back to her."
Rafe looked impressed.
Lorenzo looked irritated.
"You did not tell me you had it."
"You did not ask the correct question."
Isabella laughed.
It was the first real laugh Evelyn had heard from any Moretti.
Behind them, Hawthorne House burned.
Ahead, Dante's SUV disappeared through the gates.
Rafe opened a tracking program on the recovered laptop.
A blue dot moved south.
Then another dot appeared.
Not from the clutch.
From inside the blank ledger itself.
Rafe frowned.
"There was already a tracker in the book."
Lorenzo looked toward the burning house.
"Daniel's?"
Evelyn shook her head.
"Too modern."
The dot transmitted an identifier.
VANE-07.
Celeste had planted it.
Evelyn felt a chill.
"She never needed Dante to find us."
Lorenzo stared at the screen.
"She needed us to find the ledger."
The blue dot stopped moving.
Its coordinates appeared.
CERMACK COLD WORKS.
Evelyn looked at Lorenzo.
"She is sending us to my father."
Lorenzo's voice was grim.
May you like
"Or to a body she wants you to believe is his."
