Chapter 3 - THE MAN WITH THE SILVER WATCH
At 12:17 the following morning, Clara woke to find a stranger standing beside her hospital bed.
He wore a maintenance uniform.
In his hand was her medical chart.
Then she saw his watch.
Silver case.
Black face.
Orange leather strap.
Her blood turned cold.
The man from the motel.
He looked at her.
“Where is the boy?”
Clara threw her water pitcher at him and struck the emergency alarm.
He lunged.
She twisted away, tearing at the stitches behind her knee.
A guard burst through the door.
The stranger shoved him aside and escaped into the corridor.
Dominic arrived seconds later.
Clara was trembling.
“He found me.”
“Who?”
“The man who shot me.”
Dominic ordered the hospital locked down, but the intruder escaped through a service stairwell.
Security footage showed him entering the building.
Twenty-three minutes of recordings had been deleted.
Only hospital administrators and certain law-enforcement officials possessed the access needed to disable those cameras.
Raymond Vale was among them.
Then Matteo discovered another problem.
Vale had disappeared.
His wife reported that he had not returned home.
His department claimed he was on leave.
No leave request existed.
Clara described the silver watch again.
Dominic became still.
“Sofia gave her husband a watch like that.”
Clara frowned.
“Leo's father?”
“Thomas Bell.”
“Where is he?”
Dominic looked toward the dark hospital window.
“We buried him seven years ago.”
Thomas had supposedly drowned during a boating accident. His body was never recovered. Sofia had been pregnant with Leo at the time.
Clara considered the possibilities.
“Someone could have stolen his watch.”
“Yes.”
“Or Thomas could still be alive.”
Dominic said nothing.
He explained that Sofia had recently discovered someone using abandoned Castiglione freight routes for human trafficking. She had been collecting evidence when she died.
Clara stared at him.
“Your freight routes?”
“Yes.”
“And you didn't know?”
“I knew my organization had a criminal history. I believed those particular operations had been closed.”
“That isn't an excuse.”
“No.”
His willingness to admit it surprised her.
Then Clara remembered something Leo had whispered at the motel.
“The red boat has a room underneath.”
Dominic's expression changed.
Sofia had owned a red cabin cruiser at a private marina south of Chicago.
Matteo called the marina.
Nobody answered.
He dispatched security.
Forty minutes later, the report arrived.
May you like
The night guard had been murdered.
The red boat was gone.
