Chapter 3 - Three Knocks
"They want Sophie," Dahlia said. "That means she knows something."
"She knows what the camera missed."
Nico watched Mara's video again. Her words were frightened, but her eyes kept shifting to her right, toward something outside the frame. At the end, just before the recording stopped, she tapped the chair three times with her heel.
Three knocks.
Sophie would have recognized it.
They photographed the bracelet and stepped away from the steel door. Nico moved to force it, but Dahlia stopped him.
"If she's on the other side and somebody's waiting with a weapon, barging in gets her killed. We need a layout."
"Then get me one."
The original basement plans were stored in a server no longer connected to the hotel's network. Dahlia called an engineer she trusted and asked him to retrieve them. While they waited, Nico contacted Simone Alvarez, a detective who had investigated labor crimes in Lower Manhattan before being assigned to a joint task force.
She answered on the fourth ring.
"If you're calling to talk your way out of another subpoena, Rivas, it's a bad night."
"A woman has been abducted inside my building. Her six-year-old daughter saw it."
The detective stopped joking.
"Where's the child?"
"Safe for now."
"For now isn't a location. Call 911. I'll alert the unit. Nobody at your hotel touches the evidence."
Nico looked down the deserted corridor. For years he'd treated police as enemies. Tonight that history slowed everything.
"There's a secured basement level and possibly armed suspects," he said. "The victim was taken in a laundry cart."
"Do not go through that door. I'm on my way."
Back upstairs, Sophie had fallen asleep sitting upright with Patch against her chest. Tessa was brushing hair away from the girl's eyes when Nico arrived.
He didn't wake her. He placed the bracelet on the desk and watched her small fingers move as though she were counting in a dream.
Then Sophie opened her eyes.
"You found my star."
"I did."
"Was Mommy wearing it when she knocked?"
"I think so."
Sophie sat up. "Then she left it for me. She said if anything scary happened, I'd know where to look."
"Look where?"
She lifted the rabbit and pointed to an uneven seam behind its ear.
"Mommy stitched Patch after his ear came off. She told me not to let anybody fix it again."
Nico held out the toy. "May I?"
Sophie hesitated, then nodded. He loosened three careful stitches with Dahlia's pocket scissors. Inside the stuffing was a tiny brass locker key wrapped in a dry-cleaning receipt.
May you like
The receipt bore four handwritten words:
THE ONES WITH NO NAMES.
