Chapter 8 - Pier Nine
The fire alarm screamed while Gabriel shoved a chair beneath the door handle.
"Window?" I asked.
"Third floor."
"Terrific."
Carlo tried to sit up and failed.
"Service elevator," he whispered. "Laundry corridor."
Gabriel checked the hallway through a narrow gap in the door.
"Two men. Maybe three."
"Security?"
"Not theirs."
That was all I needed to hear.
I disconnected Carlo's IV, wrapped the line, and swung his legs off the bed.
"Can you stand?"
"With help."
The door shook under a hard impact.
Gabriel looked at me.
"Take him."
"What are you doing?"
"Buying time."
"I hate when you say that."
"You've mentioned it."
A second impact cracked the chair.
Mateo appeared through a connecting bathroom door from the adjacent room, breathing hard.
"Laundry route is open. Move."
We half-carried Carlo through the adjoining room and into a service corridor that smelled like detergent and hot metal.
Behind us, the bedroom door splintered.
Gunfire cracked.
I flinched.
Gabriel returned fire once, then followed.
We reached the service elevator.
Nothing happened when Mateo pressed the button.
"Power cut," he said.
"Stairs," Gabriel ordered.
Carlo looked at three flights and nearly laughed.
"I'll die first."
"Not tonight," I said.
We used a laundry cart.
It was humiliating, undignified, and effective.
Carlo lay beneath folded sheets while Mateo and I pushed the cart down a service ramp toward the loading dock. Gabriel walked behind us, pale from pain but refusing to slow.
At the final door, he caught my shoulder.
"Wait."
Headlights swept across the dock outside.
A black sedan rolled to a stop.
Victor stepped out.
Even from thirty yards away, I recognized the camel-colored coat.
"Of course," I whispered.
Gabriel's face became stone.
Victor looked toward the loading entrance and called, "Gabriel. We don't have to do this theatrically."
"Says the man staging a fire alarm."
Victor smiled.
"I came to collect my brother."
Carlo shifted beneath the sheets.
"He drugged me for six years," he whispered.
I looked at Gabriel.
"He doesn't go with Victor."
"Agreed."
Mateo pointed toward a delivery van parked behind the laundry building.
"Keys are in it. Staff transport."
"Can you get us there?" I asked.
Gabriel studied the open lot.
"If Victor wants Carlo alive, he won't shoot toward the cart."
"That is not comforting."
We moved.
Victor saw us immediately.
"Stop."
Gabriel kept walking.
Victor's men raised guns.
Gabriel raised his own.
"You fire," he said, "and Carlo dies first. Then you lose the only person who knows where the records are."
Victor froze.
That was our opening.
Mateo shoved the van door open. I climbed inside with Carlo. Gabriel backed toward us, weapon steady.
Victor's expression changed.
"You think she will forgive you when she knows what your father did?"
Gabriel did not look at me.
"This isn't about forgiveness."
"Everything is. Eventually."
Mateo started the van.
We drove through a maintenance gate as security vehicles converged behind us.
Only when the facility disappeared did I realize I had been holding my breath.
Carlo slept for most of the ride to the safe house.
By dawn, after fluids and a careful medication review, his speech became clearer. Someone had been keeping him on sedatives far above a normal maintenance dose.
"Victor visited every month," he told us. "Asked whether I remembered Pier Nine. Asked whether Jonathan left copies."
"Why not kill you?" Mateo asked.
Carlo gave him a tired look.
"Because dead men cannot reveal where they hid things."
He described Pier Nine beneath the old Rossy shipping terminal.
Not literally beneath the pier, but beneath a customs warehouse whose lower level had been sealed after a flood fifteen years earlier. Victor had converted part of it into records storage.
Paper records.
Hard drives.
Passports.
Employment contracts.
"Why keep evidence?" I asked.
"Leverage," Carlo said. "Victor never destroys what he can use against someone."
Gabriel stood by the window.
"My father knew the room existed?"
"He ordered it built."
Gabriel closed his eyes.
I watched shame cross his face.
I had spent days wondering whether I could trust him. Now I understood he was asking himself the same question about his own blood.
"We get the records," Mateo said. "Then what?"
All eyes turned to Gabriel.
The old answer, I suspected, would have involved violence.
Instead he looked at me.
"We make copies and give them to someone who can prosecute it."
I blinked.
"You trust prosecutors?"
"No."
"Police?"
"Less."
"Then who?"
Carlo spoke.
"Federal labor crimes unit. Jonathan had a contact."
My heart jumped.
"Name?"
"Miriam Cole."
I knew that name.
She had attended my father's funeral.
I had assumed she was a former patient.
Gabriel saw recognition on my face.
"You know her."
"I know of her. She sent flowers every year for three years."
"Then your father trusted her."
That night, Mateo arranged a route into Pier Nine through an abandoned drainage tunnel.
It sounded like a terrible idea.
Naturally, I went.
Gabriel argued for nine full minutes.
I won by pointing out that I knew my father's record codes better than anyone else.
The tunnel smelled like river water and rust.
We moved with flashlights covered by red filters. Mateo led. Gabriel followed him. I came next. Carlo stayed behind under guard.
At the end of the tunnel, a steel door opened into a room that should not have existed.
Rows of shelves disappeared into darkness.
Boxes labeled with hospitals, clinics, dock companies, and dates.
On one wall were filing cabinets marked PATIENT SOURCES.
I felt physically ill.
"My father was right," I whispered.
Gabriel said nothing.
We found the archive computer in a locked office.
Mateo bypassed the cabinet while I searched paper files.
Then I found a box labeled HAYES, J.
Inside were surveillance photos of my father.
Copies of his phone records.
A map of his route home.
And a typed operational note.
VEHICLE PRESSURE ONLY. NO CONTACT. S. ROSSY AUTHORIZATION.
Beneath it, handwritten in different ink:
MAKE IT FINAL. V.M.
I sat down hard.
Gabriel took the page from me.
Victor had changed the order.
My father had been meant to be frightened.
Victor had ordered him killed.
Gabriel's hands shook.
"I'm sorry."
I looked at him.
"You didn't write it."
"My family built the machine that let him."
Before I could answer, Mateo hissed from the doorway.
"Company."
Voices echoed in the warehouse above.
Victor had found us again.
Gabriel copied the archive drive while I stuffed my father's file into a waterproof bag.
Then I noticed another box on the floor.
ROSSY, GABRIEL.
I opened it.
Inside was a current photograph of Gabriel leaving my clinic.
Taken three days ago.
Underneath was an order sheet.
TARGET PRIORITY: GABRIEL ROSSY.
SECONDARY: NORAH HAYES.
AUTHORIZED BY: V. MORELLI.
And below that, one final handwritten instruction:
IF SHE SURVIVES, USE HER TO CONTROL HIM.
I looked up at Gabriel.
The danger was no longer because I had saved him.
Victor had noticed something before either of us was willing to name it.
May you like
He believed Gabriel would choose me over power.
And suddenly I was terrified he might be right.
