Chapter 4 - The Last Call
The train doors closed between Mara and the man in the cap. He hit the glass with his palm as the train pulled away.
Mara sank into a seat across from an exhausted nurse. The prepaid phone rang.
“Don't say my name,” a woman whispered. “Listen carefully.”
“Who are you?”
“Evan called me the night he disappeared. He said an unmarked SUV was following him. At 11:18, he gave me a plate number. At 11:26, I heard shouting.”
Mara gripped the phone. “You were on the line?”
“Yes. He didn't hang up. Someone said, ‘Price wants the bag.’ Then a door slammed.”
“Who are you?”
“Detective Lena Ortiz. Internal Affairs. Officially, I was transferred to Buffalo six months ago.”
“Unofficially?”
“I'm hiding because the transfer order was forged.”
Mara stared at her reflection in the window. “Why didn't you come forward?”
“I tried. A witness died two days later. Evan's evidence went missing. I couldn't tell who was clean.”
“Daniel?”
Lena hesitated. “Daniel was Evan's friend. That's why he got close enough to see something dangerous.”
“Did he betray him?”
“I don't know.”
The train rattled beneath Manhattan. Mara wanted certainty, and every answer gave her another shadow.
“Meet me at the twenty-four-hour pharmacy on Thirty-Fourth,” Lena said. “Bring the envelope, not the drive.”
At the next stop Mara stepped onto the platform. A security announcement echoed above her, followed by the familiar metallic screech of brakes. She crossed the street to the pharmacy, where a tired clerk watched a cooking show behind the register.
A woman in a green coat stood by the cold medicine, facing away.
“Lena?” Mara whispered.
The woman turned. She was not Lena. Her eyes filled with tears.
May you like
“I'm her sister,” she said. “They picked Lena up an hour ago.”
She opened her hand. Inside lay Lena's police shield, bent almost in half.
