Chapter 5 - THE SONG WITH ELEVEN NOTES
Christian arranged for Elena to remain under medical supervision while investigators examined the circumstances of her disappearance.
I stayed with her until she fell asleep.
Then I walked into the hallway.
Christian waited near the window.
"You should go home," he said.
I laughed bitterly.
"Which home?"
He looked at me.
I continued.
"The apartment I've been hiding in? The childhood home that doesn't exist anymore? Or the place my mother disappeared from?"
Christian said nothing.
I rubbed my eyes.
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be."
I looked at him.
He seemed exhausted.
His jacket was gone.
His sleeves were rolled up.
There was a bruise along his jaw.
For the first time, he looked like a man rather than a legend.
"What happens now?" I asked.
"We follow the evidence."
I nodded.
"And Victoria?"
"We find her."
I stared.
"You're not going to kill her?"
Christian's expression tightened.
"No."
I studied him.
"Why not?"
"Because I want her to answer questions."
That was not the answer I expected.
He continued.
"And because killing her would make me exactly what she expects."
I looked down.
For a moment, neither spoke.
Then I whispered the melody.
Seven notes.
A pause.
Four notes.
Christian listened.
"Again."
I repeated it.
He frowned.
"That's not random."
"I know."
He reached for a pen.
Wrote the rhythm.
Then studied it.
"Could be a sequence."
"Numbers?"
"Possibly."
I closed my eyes.
My father used to tap the melody on the kitchen table.
Sometimes he tapped it on my shoulder.
Sometimes against the steering wheel.
And once, on the night before he died, he tapped it against the metal door of our storage locker.
My eyes flew open.
"The locker."
Christian looked up.
"What?"
"We had a storage locker in South Boston."
He stood.
"Do you remember where?"
I nodded slowly.
"Near the old ferry terminal."
Christian reached for his phone.
Then stopped.
He looked at me.
"Do you want to do this?"
I stared.
It was such a simple question.
And yet nobody had asked me what I wanted in a long time.
I thought of my father.
My mother.
The years I'd spent believing I was alone.
Then I nodded.
"Yes."
Christian smiled faintly.
"Then we do it properly."
He called Gabriel.
Not to arrange revenge.
But to contact a federal investigator he'd been cooperating with quietly for months.
I stared.
"You work with federal agents?"
Christian looked at me.
"Sometimes."
"Why?"
He hesitated.
Then said:
"Because I'm trying to get out."
I stared.
"Out of what?"
He looked toward the city.
May you like
"Everything my father built."
And suddenly, I realized the man I thought I understood was carrying secrets of his own.
