Chapter 3 - A Deal in the Cold
Nora drove into the underground garage of a closed hotel, circled once, and stopped beside a concrete pillar. The black sedan swept past the entrance without turning in.
Adrian let out a breath he’d been holding.
“You’re welcome,” Nora said.
“You saved us.”
“I saved myself. You’re still on probation.”
He accepted that with a tired nod. In the fluorescent light, she could see a thin scar crossing his right eyebrow, one she didn’t remember from before Ethan’s death.
“Richard’s pushing the acquisition through tomorrow,” he said. “Voss Mobility buys Vale Automotive, the board gets paid, and every record connected to Ethan’s crash goes into a sealed archive.”
“Then I’ll stop the sale.”
“You can’t stop it with a voicemail.”
“I can with the diagnostic logs.”
“If you can find them.” Adrian took a small brass token from his wallet. One side bore Ethan’s initials; the other showed a simple drawing of a key. “He gave me this two weeks before he died. He said you’d know where it belonged.”
Nora stared at the token. It had been cut from the same brass as the keychain their father gave them as kids. She remembered the old service center on Archer Street, the one sold after the company moved its engineering division. Ethan used to hide birthday gifts there in a rusted toolbox.
“Why didn’t you go yourself?”
“I did. The building’s been cleared. Someone took the toolbox.”
“Then the key is useless.”
“Maybe. Or maybe Ethan expected you to think like him.”
She wanted to slap him for sounding like he still knew her. She also wanted to believe him, and that was more dangerous.
“Here’s the deal,” Nora said. “You take me to the old center. You give me everything you know. If you leave out one detail, I walk straight to the police and tell them you helped bury evidence.”
“I deserve that.”
“That wasn’t an invitation to agree.”
They climbed into the Range Rover. Before she could start the engine, a man stepped out from behind a parked delivery van. He wore a dark overcoat and held a phone at his side.
“Nora Vale?” he called.
She locked the doors.
The man lifted his empty hand. “I’m not here to hurt you. My name is Luis Ortega. I worked on Ethan’s test car.”
May you like
Adrian’s face went rigid. “Luis, you’re supposed to be in Arizona.”
“Not anymore,” Luis said. He looked past them toward the garage entrance. “And we have about thirty seconds before Richard’s people find me.”
