Chapter 6 - THE MAN IN MONTREAL
Thomas Carter was alive.
But nothing about that sentence was simple.
Dr. Wells explained.
Seventeen years earlier, Thomas arrived in Montreal with severe injuries.
Broken ribs.
Head trauma.
Memory problems.
He used another name.
Not because he forgot his identity entirely.
Because someone told him his family would be safer if he remained dead.
“Who?”
Dominic asked.
The doctor hesitated.
“Thomas refused to say for years.”
Emily sat beside him.
“Put him on speaker.”
Dominic did.
Dr. Wells continued.
Thomas spent months recovering.
Then years living quietly.
He remembered Emily.
Margaret.
His wife, Sarah.
But refused to contact them.
“Why?”
Emily’s voice cracked.
The doctor softened.
“He believed someone was watching them.”
“Was my mother alive then?”
“Yes.”
Sarah Carter died when Emily was four.
Emily knew that.
Cancer.
Real.
Documented.
No mystery.
Thomas apparently learned from afar.
He still did not return.
Emily’s anger surfaced.
“He abandoned me.”
Dominic said quietly:
“Yes.”
She looked at him sharply.
He did not excuse Thomas.
That mattered.
Dr. Wells continued.
Six years ago, Thomas’s health worsened.
He moved into assisted rehabilitation.
Memory began failing again.
Then two weeks ago, a visitor came.
“Name?”
“He signed in as Stephen Lombardi.”
Everything aligned.
Lombardi knew Thomas was alive.
He visited.
Then Emily found the transfers.
Then she was fired.
Then the archive burned.
“What did Lombardi want?”
“Thomas’s ledger.”
“The red one?”
“Yes.”
Dominic’s jaw tightened.
“Did Thomas give it to him?”
“No.”
Then where was the ledger Lombardi carried from Hudson House?
A copy?
Another volume?
Dr. Wells said:
“Thomas told him the real ledger went to Margaret Carter years ago.”
Emily looked toward Lily.
Shoebox.
Margaret’s letters.
The grandmother’s house.
Maybe.
Dominic asked:
“Can we speak with Thomas?”
The doctor was silent too long.
“What?”
“He disappeared yesterday.”
Emily stood.
“What do you mean disappeared?”
“Left the facility.”
“Alone?”
“Security footage shows a car.”
“Who picked him up?”
“Unknown.”
Thomas was seventy-three.
Memory impaired.
Potentially frightened.
Someone had moved him one day before Lily arrived at Moretti Plaza.
Dominic turned to Marco.
“Jet.”
Emily looked at him.
“No.”
“What?”
“We are not flying to Montreal.”
“Your father—”
“My daughter is asleep on your couch. I’m not dragging her across a border at three in the morning because men in your family have been hiding things for seventeen years.”
Dominic stopped.
She was right.
He hated that she was right.
“What do you propose?”
“Find out what’s in Brooklyn.”
Margaret’s home.
The shoebox had come from there.
If Thomas sent the ledger to Margaret, she may have hidden it.
At sunrise, they went to Emily’s grandmother’s old brownstone.
Margaret had died eight months earlier.
Emily inherited the property but had been unable to clear everything.
Boxes remained.
Clothes.
Old furniture.
A sewing table.
Lily knew exactly where to go.
“Grandma’s rabbit room.”
“What?”
The back bedroom.
Dozens of stuffed animals Margaret repaired for neighborhood children.
Lily placed her rabbit on the table.
Then pulled at the repaired ear.
Emily frowned.
“Sweetheart, don’t—”
The stitching opened.
Inside the stuffed ear was a tiny brass key.
Everyone stared.
Lily shrugged.
“Grandma said Mr. Rabbit had to keep the secret.”
Dominic almost laughed.
Margaret Carter had hidden a key inside a six-year-old’s toy.
But what did it open?
Lily knew that too.
“Basement.”
Behind an old furnace panel sat a narrow steel cabinet.
The key fit.
Inside:
The red ledger.
The original.
May you like
And one videotape labeled:
FOR EMILY — WHEN DOMINIC MORETTI FINDS YOU.
