Chapter 10 - The Shot in the Garage
Claire saw the laser first.
“Down!”
She shoved Marcus sideways.
A bullet exploded through the windshield behind him.
Nathan fired toward the upper level.
The garage filled with echoes.
Marcus crawled behind a concrete pillar.
Claire dropped beside him.
“You saved me,” he said.
“Don’t make me regret it.”
Nathan pointed toward a stairwell.
“Move!”
They ran.
Another round struck the wall, spraying dust.
Claire’s lungs burned as they climbed two flights.
On level four, Nathan kicked open a utility door.
They hid inside a room smelling of oil and metal.
Marcus pressed a hand against his side.
Blood seeped through his shirt.
Claire’s stomach dropped.
“You were hit.”
“Grazed.”
Nathan ripped fabric from Marcus’s undershirt and wrapped the wound.
For a strange second, they looked like brothers again.
Then Marcus said, “Daniel Shaw wasn’t innocent.”
Nathan stopped tying the bandage.
Marcus continued. “Daniel worked for Raymond. He was the driver in your staged crash.”
Claire stared.
“When he realized Nicholas survived, he threatened to talk. Evelyn panicked. Raymond gave her a choice: identify Daniel as Nicholas or both of them died.”
“And Daniel?” Claire asked.
“Raymond killed him anyway.”
Silence filled the room.
Claire looked at Nathan. “So the body in your grave is the man who tried to kill you.”
Nathan’s expression was unreadable.
Marcus nodded. “And Evelyn spent six months collecting evidence because she knew Raymond would eventually come for her.”
“Where is it?” Nathan asked.
“I don’t know.”
Claire remembered the photograph from the cemetery pouch.
ASK DR. EVELYN SHAW WHO SHE IDENTIFIED.
“She left us a trail,” Claire said.
Marcus shook his head. “If she did, Raymond already searched her house.”
“Maybe she expected that.”
Claire pulled out her phone.
Dr. Shaw had sent her a sympathy card after the funeral.
Claire suddenly remembered something strange written at the bottom.
When grief gets loud, go where the city goes quiet.
At the time, she had thought it was poetic.
Now she understood.
“The public library,” she said.
Nathan looked at her.
Claire’s pulse quickened.
“Dr. Shaw donated her medical archive to the New York Public Library two years ago.”
Marcus’s face changed.
“What?”
Before Claire could answer, his phone buzzed.
May you like
A photo filled the screen.
Claire’s mother, tied to a chair.
