Chapter 7 - WHAT FIRE COULDN’T TAKE
Marco ran.
Luca followed him.
I started after them, but Nora caught my arm.
“No.
You are not running toward smoke for these people.”
She was right.
I stayed.
For once, staying felt harder than moving.
Through the open service door, I heard shouting below.
An extinguisher discharged.
Someone coughed.
Vanessa stood perfectly still beside the table.
Enzo reached into his jacket.
Nora raised her phone.
“Keep your hands where I can see them.”
He looked at her with disbelief.
She was five feet four and wore discount-store sneakers.
Her voice didn’t shake.
“I’m recording.”
He lowered his hand.
Police arrived while Marco was bringing a soot-covered maintenance worker upstairs.
His name was Peter.
I had eaten lunch across from him a dozen times.
Now he wouldn’t look at anyone.
“The boxes were already burning when we got there,” Marco told the officers.
“He was at the back exit.”
Peter started crying.
“He said it was old paperwork.”
“Who?” an officer asked.
Peter looked at Enzo.
Enzo smiled.
“Careful.”
The officer stepped between them.
“Don’t speak to him.”
Luca came upstairs carrying nothing.
That mattered.
He had finally listened to someone who told him not to touch evidence.
The fire department checked the basement.
Police separated us.
An officer photographed my face and the bracelet where Luca had placed it on the table.
Vanessa gave her account in a clear, wounded voice.
I could hear pieces.
Unstable.
Financial problems.
Attention.
Then Rosa said something I couldn’t hear.
Vanessa stopped talking.
Later, Rosa sat beside me near the kitchen.
“What did you tell them?” I asked.
“That I saw her go into the staff changing room while you were washing your face.”
My eyes filled.
“Why didn’t you say so earlier?”
“I didn’t know what she’d done.”
She squeezed my fingers.
“I know now.”
Across the hall, Arthur handed his accounting book to a detective.
“I copied the entries before tonight,” he said.
“The originals were downstairs.”
The detective put the book into an evidence bag.
Then Arthur reached into his shirt pocket.
A small brass key lay in his palm.
“Daniel gave me this.”
“To what?” the detective asked.
Arthur looked at me.
“He said if anything happened, someone who still needed a paycheck would understand where to look.”
I stared at the key.
A number had been scratched into its head.
May you like
Thirty-two.
The number of Daniel’s warehouse locker.
