Chapter 3 - The Woman Who Was Buried
Adrian grabbed the speaker as if he could drag his father through the wall. “You buried her.”
“I buried a coffin,” Graham answered. “You supplied the grief.”
Mara watched something break behind Adrian's eyes. Then he forced his face still, took her hand, and ran.
The laundry elevator was a steel cage lined with damp towels. It rattled downward while voices echoed in the shaft above. Adrian stripped off his bloodstained jacket and pressed his palm against the torn fabric of his shirt.
“You need a hospital,” Mara said.
“I need a head start.”
She ripped a strip from her blouse and tied it around his ribs. His breath caught.
“Sorry.”
“You're doing better than the last person who tried to save my life.”
“Who was that?”
“My mother, apparently.”
At basement level, the elevator doors opened onto rows of industrial washers. A uniformed guard stood beside a loading dock, checking his phone. Adrian took two quick steps, struck the man's wrist, and caught the falling radio before it hit the floor.
Mara stared at the unconscious guard. “You do that a lot?”
“Only when polite conversation fails.”
They hurried into the cold night. Rain slid down the alley walls. Above them, sirens wailed toward the hotel.
Mara stopped under a flickering security light. “You don't get to drag me across the city without answers.”
Adrian looked toward the street. “Twelve years ago, my father's construction company owned the Larkspur building. He ordered a renovation. Your father found something in the basement. Two days later, the place burned.”
“What did he find?”
“I don't know. That's why I came tonight.”
“And your mom?”
“She'd been investigating him. Then she vanished.”
“You told the police?”
“I was twenty-five. I had a coroner's report and a father who looked me in the eye and swore she'd died in a car crash. I believed him.”
An unmarked SUV turned into the alley, headlights flooding the bricks. Adrian pushed Mara behind a dumpster. Tires hissed on wet pavement.
A woman stepped from the SUV. Dark coat, short silver hair, pistol held low.
“Adrian,” she called. “I'm not here for your father.”
May you like
He stiffened. “Detective Ruiz?”
“There's a warrant for your arrest,” she said. “And Mara Vale is already listed as the dead woman you murdered.”
