Chapter 7 - THE WRONG APARTMENT
Victoria showed Ortiz the message. “If they want the storage key, they don’t know we opened the unit.”
“Good,” Ortiz said. “We can use that.”
The message included an address in Lower Manhattan and a deadline of one hour. Ortiz arranged surveillance while Victoria put the brass key in her coat pocket. Emma stayed with two officers at the hotel.
At the address, Victoria climbed to the third floor. Apartment 3B was unlocked.
“Caroline?”
The room was empty except for a table, two chairs, and a phone propped against a mug. On its screen was a live video call.
Daniel appeared.
“You brought the key,” he said.
“Where’s my sister?”
“Safe, if you stop making this worse.”
Victoria kept her voice steady. “You took her outside the hotel.”
“She came willingly at first. She wanted to talk.”
“Then show me she’s okay.”
Daniel shifted the camera. Caroline was behind him, seated on a couch. She looked exhausted, but when she saw Victoria, her eyes widened.
“Tory, don’t—”
Daniel pulled the camera back.
The apartment door opened behind Victoria. Ortiz entered with two officers, weapons lowered but ready. She looked at the phone screen.
“Daniel Cross,” she said, “you’re being recorded. Tell us where Caroline Hale is.”
Daniel gave a tight smile. “You’re already too late.”
The call ended.
Ortiz ordered a trace. The phone’s location registered in Hoboken, near the address on Caroline’s pharmacy receipt.
They drove there with lights flashing. Peter Vale’s building stood between a laundromat and a vacant storefront. The front door was open.
On the second floor, Peter lay against the hallway wall, conscious but bleeding from a cut above his eye.
“Caroline was here,” he gasped. “Daniel took her.”
“Where?”
Peter pointed weakly toward the stairs. “I heard him say the old place.”
May you like
Victoria knew which place he meant.
Her father’s Brooklyn records office—the one that had burned eighteen years ago.
