Chapter 6 - The Price of a Memory

“They have Evelyn,” Rosa said. She looked suddenly older than her sixty-one years.

Alexander read the text twice. “We call the police.”

Rosa shook her head. “The last time I tried that, an officer returned my statement to the man who threatened me.”

“That was twenty-three years ago,” Naomi said. “We don’t have to trust the same people.”

They brought the message to Detective Maya Chen, who took detailed statements and asked for the original photographs instead of copies. She did not promise a dramatic rescue. She promised to treat the threat as real.

Meanwhile Vanessa arrived at Alexander’s penthouse with a florist and a wedding planner, insisting their engagement party could still be remembered for something other than a waitress’s outburst.

Alexander refused to see her. She let herself into his office with a key he had not remembered giving her. On his desk lay an old family ledger. Page seventeen listed a transfer from Whitmore Holdings to a company called Harbor Relief, with the same date as the fire.

Vanessa photographed it. Then she called her father, Malcolm Sterling.

“He’s connecting the records,” she said.

“Then stop behaving like a spoiled girl and start behaving like someone who wants a future,” Malcolm replied.

“Is the nurse alive?”

“Don’t ask questions you can’t afford to hear answered.”

At six, police positioned officers near the location in the threatening message: an abandoned ferry terminal by the East River. Naomi waited two blocks away with Maya and Alexander, unable to keep her hands from shaking.

A figure appeared under the terminal roof. It was not Evelyn. It was Daniel, the waiter, bloodless with fear, clutching a phone.

“Naomi,” he said into the speaker, “I’m sorry. They have my little brother.”

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Maya told the group to keep their phones charged and to document everything. Naomi began a timeline on a legal pad, distinguishing what she remembered from what other people had told her. She refused to let the desperate need for answers turn a suspicion into a fact.

Then someone behind him ordered, “Tell her what’s under the ballroom floor.”