Chapter 18 - The Missing Witness
Tessa locked the apartment door while Rachel called emergency services.
Footsteps moved across the floor above them.
Marjorie opened a cabinet and removed a ring of keys.
“There’s a service staircase behind the pantry.”
They left the apartment carrying the recorder and flash drive. The hidden staircase descended through the bakery kitchen and ended at a steel delivery door.
Rachel expected Marcus to be waiting outside.
The alley was empty.
By the time police arrived, the black sedan had disappeared. Officers searched the roof and found a backpack containing a camera, rope, lock tools, and photographs of Marjorie entering the building.
They did not find the person who had brought it.
Marcus’s appearance complicated everything.
“Maybe he was warning us,” Rachel said.
“Or directing the person on the roof,” Tessa replied.
“He pointed upward.”
“He knew where we were.”
“So did Northline.”
Tessa sent the flash drive to a cybersecurity specialist. They returned Marjorie to the secure hotel and arranged police protection.
That evening, Rachel watched the video from the street camera outside the bakery.
Marcus exited the sedan at 2:16 p.m.
He pointed toward the roof at 2:17.
At 2:18, while Rachel and the others fled through the bakery, Marcus crossed the road and entered a public telephone booth.
The recording had no sound.
He remained inside for thirty seconds, left the receiver hanging, and walked out of the camera’s view.
Tessa obtained the telephone records.
The call had been placed to Rachel’s house.
Isaac had answered it.
Rachel crossed the street to speak with him.
“He didn’t identify himself,” Isaac said. “A man told me to look beneath the blue stone near your back wall.”
“Did you?”
“I waited until the police arrived.”
Beneath the blue landscaping stone, they found a plastic tube containing a handwritten note.
Rachel recognized Marcus’s writing.
VICTOR WILL DESTROY THE LEDGER AT MIDNIGHT. MOVE IT BEFORE THEN. DO NOT TRUST OLIVIA’S PHONE.
There was another sentence on the reverse side.
ASK HER WHY SHE WAS PAID BEFORE I MET YOU.
Rachel photographed the note and returned to the house.
Olivia answered her call from the secure hotel.
“What payment is Marcus talking about?”
Silence.
“Olivia?”
“I was going to tell you.”
“Tell me now.”
“Two months before Marcus met Victor, someone deposited forty thousand dollars into my account.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. It came from a company called E.V. Consulting.”
Eleanor Vale.
Rachel felt the pieces shifting again.
May you like
“Why were you paid?”
“They asked me to introduce Marcus to you.”
