Chapter 5 - PIER NINE
Norah read the message three times before her mind accepted the words.
WE HAVE HER MOTHER.
Her first instinct was disbelief.
Her second was to call.
Her third was the terrible realization that she no longer had a phone.
"Give me yours."
Victor did not move.
"Norah."
"Give me your phone."
Gabriel stepped between them.
"Calling her tells them we received the message."
Norah stared at him.
"They already know we received the message."
"They may not actually have her."
"Then I would like to hear her tell me that."
"And if they are monitoring her line?"
"I don't care."
Gabriel's expression hardened.
"You need to care."
That sentence broke something loose inside her.
Norah shoved him in the chest.
He barely moved.
Serrano rose from the cot.
Victor looked away as if witnessing a private catastrophe.
"My mother is not one of your accounts," Norah said.
"She is not a security calculation."
"I know."
"Do you?"
"Yes."
"Because you are standing there telling me to wait while the people who killed my father claim they have her."
Gabriel's voice dropped.
"And if you panic into the trap they prepared, they get you too."
"Maybe that's the point."
"It is exactly the point."
Norah's hands curled.
"Then let them have me."
Gabriel's face changed.
It was not anger.
It was something colder.
"No."
"You don't get to decide that."
"Tonight I do."
"Why?"
He moved closer.
"Because they shot through two buildings to get to you."
His voice remained quiet.
"Because Cal died speaking to you."
Another step.
"Because whoever is doing this believes your hands can open a ledger they cannot open themselves."
He looked down at her.
"If you walk into Pier Nine alone, they do not trade your mother for you."
Norah swallowed.
"They keep both of you."
The anger remained, but it no longer had anywhere simple to go.
Victor held out his phone.
"One call."
Gabriel looked at him.
Victor shrugged.
"If they're monitoring the line, we learn something."
Norah took the phone.
She knew her mother's number by heart.
It rang once.
Twice.
Three times.
Then someone answered.
No voice.
Only breathing.
"Mom?"
Silence.
"Mom, it's me."
A faint sound came through.
A chair scraping.
Then her mother's voice.
"Norah?"
Norah's knees nearly gave way.
"Mom."
"Don't come."
A man's voice snapped in the background.
"Enough."
Her mother spoke faster.
"Norah, listen to me."
A slap cracked through the receiver.
Norah stopped breathing.
"Mom!"
The man's voice came closer.
"Midnight."
"Who are you?"
"You already know what we want."
"I don't know what ledger you're talking about."
A soft laugh.
"Your father did."
The call ended.
Norah held the phone so tightly her knuckles turned white.
Nobody spoke for several seconds.
Gabriel took the device from her gently.
"We're going."
She looked at him.
"You just said—"
"I said you weren't going alone."
Victor unfolded a paper map on the table.
Pier Nine had been abandoned for seven years after a redevelopment deal collapsed.
Three warehouses remained along the river.
One had burned.
One belonged to the city.
The third was held by a shell company Norah recognized immediately.
Mercer Industrial Holdings.
"Of course," she whispered.
Gabriel studied the map.
"Entrances?"
Victor pointed.
"Main gate here."
"Too obvious."
"River access here."
"Flooded at high tide."
"Maintenance tunnel under the east warehouse."
Gabriel looked at him.
"How do you know?"
"I ran security for the property when your father tried to buy it."
Norah stared.
"Your father tried to buy Pier Nine?"
Gabriel's eyes narrowed.
"When?"
"Twelve years ago."
Victor seemed to understand the significance at the same moment.
One year before Thomas Vale died.
Twenty-one months before Gabriel's father died.
"Why didn't the sale happen?" Norah asked.
Victor shook his head.
"Financing collapsed."
"Financing does not collapse for men like Gabriel's father."
"It did that time."
Gabriel looked at the shell-company ownership record.
"Maybe because he found out what the property was for."
Norah sat down at the old laptop again.
She searched her copied records for Pier Nine.
The name did not appear.
Then she searched the parcel number Victor gave her.
One result surfaced.
A waste-management contract.
The same kind of contract she had mentioned before sleeping at the safe house.
The company had billed Gabriel's organization for hazardous-material removal at Pier Nine for eleven years.
"That's impossible," Victor said.
"The property has been empty."
"Apparently its garbage is very expensive."
Norah totaled the payments.
The amount came to $8.4 million.
Not three million.
Eight point four.
The theft was older and larger than anything she had first identified.
"This started before Declan was underboss," she said.
Gabriel looked at her.
"How long?"
"At least eleven years."
Declan had been promoted four months ago.
Whatever he had done, he could not have built this from the beginning.
Norah filtered the invoices by approver.
Most names were low-level managers.
Many were retired.
Three were dead.
One name appeared repeatedly during the earliest period.
Thomas Vale.
Norah's breath caught.
"No."
Gabriel moved beside her.
"What?"
She pointed at the screen.
Her father's name sat beneath seven invoices.
Approved by: Thomas R. Vale.
Victor leaned over.
"Your father authorized payments?"
"He could not have."
"Why?"
"Because this one is dated two weeks after he died."
Gabriel's face hardened.
"Forged identity."
Norah opened the metadata.
The user account had remained active for seven years after Thomas's death.
Someone had used her dead father's credentials to approve millions of dollars in payments.
Her stomach turned.
"They didn't just kill him."
She heard her own voice shake.
"They kept using his name."
Gabriel closed the laptop.
"We end it tonight."
Victor looked at him.
"With four people?"
"Three."
Serrano raised both hands.
"Finally, a sensible statement."
Gabriel ignored him.
"We need Declan."
Norah stared.
"His men attacked us."
"Rory attacked us."
"Rory was Declan's man."
"And Rory was executed afterward."
Victor frowned.
"You think Declan is being framed."
"I think I want to see his face when I tell him Rory is dead."
"How do we contact him without exposing ourselves?"
Gabriel looked at the cemetery beyond the window.
"We don't."
He took Victor's phone and typed a message.
"We contact someone he cannot ignore."
Ten minutes later, they left the cottage.
Gabriel sent Norah and Serrano in Victor's sedan toward a twenty-four-hour diner two miles away.
Norah refused until Gabriel explained the plan twice.
Then she refused one more time for principle.
At 8:17 p.m., Gabriel and Victor returned.
Declan Keane sat between them in the back seat.
His wrists were zip-tied.
His left eye was swelling.
He looked furious enough to bite through metal.
"This is your plan?" Norah asked.
Declan stared at Gabriel.
"He kidnapped me from my mother's hospital room."
Gabriel sat across from him.
"You came willingly after Victor put you in the trunk."
"I am going to kill both of you."
"Get in line."
Norah looked at Declan.
He was forty, dark-haired, lean, and much less polished than the men who usually surrounded Gabriel.
His knuckles were scarred.
There was dried blood on his collar that did not seem to be his.
"Rory Finch is dead," she said.
Declan's rage stopped.
"What?"
"He was at the safe house."
Declan looked at Gabriel.
"Rory hasn't worked a job for me in six weeks."
Gabriel's expression did not move.
"He was still your man."
"He was suspended."
"For what?"
Declan hesitated.
"Stealing."
Norah leaned forward.
"What did he steal?"
"Security codes."
Victor went still.
Declan looked at him.
"I caught him trying to photograph a credential sheet in my office."
"Why didn't you report it?" Victor demanded.
"Because I didn't know how high it went."
"So you kept it from the head of security?"
Declan laughed bitterly.
"I kept it from everyone."
His eyes moved to Gabriel.
"Including you."
Gabriel's voice became quiet.
"That was a mistake."
"Maybe."
Declan leaned back.
"But I am still alive."
Norah thought about that.
Cal had told them something and died.
Rory had survived the safe house and then died.
Thomas Vale had investigated and died.
Gabriel's father had investigated and died.
Secrecy had protected Declan longer than loyalty might have.
"Did you create Mercer Industrial Holdings?" Norah asked.
Declan frowned.
"No."
"It was formed three days after your promotion."
"Convenient."
"Your initials are on a payment list."
"Also convenient."
"Do you know Cal Mercer?"
Declan's expression shifted.
"Victor's deputy."
"He was shot today."
"Dead?"
"Yes."
Declan looked at Victor.
"Then they are cleaning everyone."
Gabriel's eyes narrowed.
"Everyone who knows what?"
Declan looked at Norah.
"The fourteen percent."
Silence fell inside the car.
Norah leaned closer.
"You knew?"
"I knew something."
"How much?"
"Not enough."
"Try me."
Declan stared at her for a long moment.
"Four months ago, before Gabriel promoted me, Luca asked me to review missing revenue from the construction side."
Gabriel's face changed almost imperceptibly.
"Luca asked you?"
"Said you were worried but didn't want Victor involved yet."
Victor swore.
"He never spoke to me."
Declan continued.
"I found invoices inflated by fourteen percent."
Norah's pulse quickened.
"What did Luca say?"
"That it was an old arrangement authorized by Gabriel's father."
Gabriel's voice was ice.
"He told you that?"
"Yes."
"And you believed him?"
Declan looked at him.
"Luca Ferraro has been sitting beside your family longer than I've been alive."
That answer hurt because it was reasonable.
Norah saw it in Gabriel's eyes.
"What was the arrangement for?" she asked.
"Luca wouldn't say."
"Then why keep paying it?"
"He told me stopping the payments would start a war."
Gabriel's jaw tightened.
"With whom?"
Declan's gaze dropped.
"He said I was safer not knowing."
Norah remembered the voice on the phone.
For keeping old graves closed.
"Did you ever see Pier Nine?"
Declan went still.
"Why?"
"Because they want me there at midnight."
His face lost color.
"Don't go."
Gabriel watched him.
"You know it."
Declan looked toward the diner window.
"I know enough to tell you not to go."
"That is not enough for me."
Declan cursed.
"Pier Nine was where your father kept the old cash ledgers before everything went digital."
Norah felt a chill.
"The ledger they want me to open."
"Maybe."
"Why would they need me?"
Declan looked at her.
"Because Thomas Vale encrypted it."
Norah stopped.
"My father?"
"That's what Rory told me."
"When?"
"Before I suspended him."
Gabriel leaned forward.
"What else did Rory say?"
Declan swallowed.
"He said Thomas Vale left a failsafe."
"What kind?"
"A key hidden with his body."
Norah closed her eyes for a second.
Cal had been telling the truth.
"Then they need me to get it," she said.
Declan shook his head.
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because if they only needed the key, they would dig up the grave themselves."
Norah looked at him.
Declan's voice lowered.
May you like
"They need you because the key is useless without something only Thomas's daughter would know."
THE FOURTEEN PERCENT LEDGER
