Chapter 3 - Locker 214
Amelia did not tell Vincent about the photograph until sunrise.
For three hours she sat awake in the hospital, watching rain creep down the window while Angela slept in the visitor’s chair.
Every ten minutes Amelia opened the message again.
Locker 214.
The same chipped corner.
The same faded number.
The same terminal where she had arrived in Brooklyn carrying a duffel bag and believing Raymond had lost her.
Only two people had ever known she had rented a locker.
Amelia.
And the clerk who had taken cash and barely looked at her face.
Which meant somebody had reconstructed her escape.
She hated the thought.
At six fifteen, Vincent returned carrying coffee for Angela and tea for Amelia.
“I don’t drink tea.”
“You did at the diner.”
She looked at the cup.
“Chamomile?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“Angela.”
Amelia glanced toward the sleeping woman.
“Traitor.”
Vincent placed the tea on the table.
He looked as though he had not slept.
“Doctor says you can leave at eight if your neurological exam stays normal.”
“Good.”
“Where will you go?”
“My apartment.”
“No.”
Amelia’s eyes sharpened.
Vincent closed his briefly.
“I did it again.”
“Yes.”
“I strongly advise against your apartment.”
“Better.”
“I’m learning.”
Against her will, Amelia almost smiled.
Then she remembered the photograph.
Her face changed.
Vincent noticed immediately.
“What happened?”
She held out the phone.
He read the message.
Every trace of humor disappeared.
“When did this arrive?”
“Three hours ago.”
“And you waited?”
“I was thinking.”
“That is not what I would call it.”
“What would you call it?”
“Deciding whether to walk into a trap alone.”
Amelia stared.
He had guessed.
“I wasn’t going alone.”
“Who?”
She did not answer.
Vincent looked toward Angela.
“Absolutely not.”
“You don’t get to decide.”
“No, but I’m allowed to describe bad ideas accurately.”
Amelia folded her arms.
“You’re very irritating.”
“I’ve been told.”
He handed back the phone.
“Is that locker real?”
“Yes.”
“What’s inside?”
“The drive.”
Vincent’s expression hardened.
“You kept it in a public bus terminal for three years?”
“Nobody knew.”
“Apparently someone did.”
“Apparently.”
“Why not destroy it?”
Amelia looked down.
“Because someday I wanted Raymond to answer for what he did.”
Vincent studied her.
Not just what he did to you, he thought.
She had said it differently.
“What else did he do?”
Amelia’s eyes closed for a second.
“Not today.”
Vincent nodded.
That surprised her.
“All right.”
“Just like that?”
“You said not today.”
Nobody had ever respected those words when she used them with Raymond.
She hated that she noticed.
At eight thirty, Amelia left through a private hospital exit.
She expected Vincent to insist she get into his car.
Instead he asked, “Where do you want to go?”
“Locker 214.”
Marco muttered something under his breath.
Vincent looked at Amelia.
“You understand whoever sent that photograph may be waiting.”
“Yes.”
“You could let us retrieve it.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m done letting other people hold my evidence.”
That answer seemed to satisfy him.
“Then we go together.”
The Port Authority terminal was crowded enough to make Amelia nervous.
Crowds meant cover.
They also meant exits.
Vincent arrived with only Marco.
No visible army.
Amelia noticed.
“You could have brought twenty men.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“You would have left.”
She looked at him.
“Probably.”
“I’m learning.”
They descended toward the locker corridor.
Amelia’s heart hammered harder with every step.
Three years earlier she had stood here shaking so badly she dropped the key twice.
Now the lockers had been modernized, but a bank of older units remained near the service hall.
214 was still there.
Someone had scratched a line across the door.
Vincent scanned the corridor.
Marco watched the staircase.
Amelia inserted the key she had kept hidden in the lining of her handbag for three years.
Nothing happened.
She tried again.
“Changed lock,” Marco said.
Amelia stepped back.
“No.”
Vincent inspected it.
Fresh metal around the cylinder.
“Someone opened it.”
Her chest tightened.
“Then why send the picture?”
“To make you come.”
Vincent had barely finished when the service door behind them opened.
A man appeared.
Then another.
Marco moved immediately.
“Down.”
Vincent pulled Amelia behind a concrete support column as something struck the metal lockers with a violent crack.
Not a gunshot.
A metal baton.
One attacker charged.
Marco intercepted him.
The second came toward Vincent.
Amelia pressed herself against the wall.
The man swung.
Vincent ducked, drove a shoulder into him, and slammed him against the lockers.
The first attacker broke away from Marco and ran.
“Leave him!” Vincent shouted.
Marco obeyed.
That told Amelia something.
Vincent cared more about keeping her there than chasing a man.
The second attacker struggled.
Vincent twisted his arm behind him.
“Who sent you?”
The man spat blood onto the tile.
Vincent’s expression went cold.
Amelia stepped closer.
“Don’t.”
He looked at her.
“Don’t what?”
“Become what I’m already afraid you are.”
For two seconds, neither spoke.
Then Vincent released pressure slightly.
The man laughed.
“That girl’s got you trained fast.”
Vincent ignored the provocation.
“Who sent you?”
The man smiled.
“Fletcher said she’d come.”
Amelia’s stomach dropped.
“Raymond is here?”
“No.”
“Where is he?”
The attacker looked directly at her.
“Closer than you think.”
Marco searched him.
Phone.
Knife.
No wallet.
Then he found a key card.
AMBER CREST HOTEL.
Vincent recognized the logo.
“Manhattan.”
Marco nodded.
Amelia crouched in front of the attacker.
“Did Raymond open the locker?”
He grinned.
“Yes.”
Her heart sank.
“What did he take?”
“Nothing.”
She blinked.
“What?”
“He said it was empty.”
Amelia’s confusion must have shown.
The attacker continued.
“Your precious drive wasn’t there.”
Vincent looked at her.
“You moved it?”
“No.”
“When?”
“I didn’t.”
The attacker laughed.
“Then somebody beat Fletcher to it.”
Police sirens approached in the distance.
Vincent’s men had apparently called before anyone entered the corridor.
Amelia stood.
“If Raymond doesn’t have it…”
Vincent completed the thought.
“Someone else does.”
Her mind raced through the past.
The locker clerk.
A stranger.
Salvatore.
Then she remembered the night she fled Raymond.
She had not gone directly to the terminal.
She had stopped at Castellano’s.
Not this Castellano’s.
Another restaurant with the same family name near Atlantic Avenue.
It had been closed.
But somebody had seen her outside.
A man carrying garbage bags.
Older.
Gray hair.
He had asked whether she needed help.
She had said no.
Then the man had looked at the bruise on her face.
He gave her a business card.
ANTHONY CASTELLANO.
Amelia had forgotten the name.
“Vincent.”
He turned.
“Did you have an uncle named Anthony?”
Vincent’s expression changed completely.
“My father.”
Amelia stopped breathing.
“Your father?”
“He died three years ago.”
“When?”
Vincent answered.
“November seventeenth.”
Amelia felt the floor tilt.
That was the night she ran from Raymond.
“I met him.”
Vincent stared.
“Where?”
“Outside a Castellano restaurant.”
“What did he say?”
“He asked if I needed help.”
“Anything else?”
“He gave me a card.”
Vincent looked as though someone had opened a door he had spent years trying to unlock.
“My father was murdered that night.”
Amelia’s throat closed.
“What?”
“Hit-and-run, officially.”
“But you don’t believe that.”
“No.”
Vincent stepped closer.
“Amelia, did you give my father anything?”
“No.”
She started to answer again.
Then memory hit.
The terminal.
Her shaking hands.
The drive.
She had opened her duffel bag.
Inside was a business card.
Anthony Castellano.
She had wrapped the drive in paper before placing it in the locker.
But she had been crying.
Confused.
Had she actually locked it inside?
Or had she done something else?
Vincent saw her face.
“What?”
“I remember something.”
“What?”
“Before I reached the terminal, I went back.”
“Where?”
“To the restaurant.”
“Why?”
“I was scared Raymond would find the locker.”
Vincent’s breathing slowed.
“Did you give the drive to my father?”
Amelia looked into his eyes.
“I think I did.”
Neither moved.
Three years.
Vincent had spent three years trying to understand why his father died.
Amelia had spent three years hiding from the man whose records she stole.
May you like
Those two mysteries had begun on the same night.
And neither of them had known.
