Chapter 2 - THE BROTHER WHO CAME BACK FROM THE DEAD
Malcolm Avery had buried his younger brother.
Closed casket.
Private funeral.
No press.
No questions.
The brother’s name was Vincent Avery.
And now Vincent appeared on hotel surveillance placing a twenty-million-dollar watch beneath a chair for me to find.
I stared at the screen.
“He wanted me to find it?”
Malcolm nodded slowly.
“Possibly.”
“Why?”
“That’s what frightens me.”
Nathan looked toward Malcolm.
“Sir, if Vincent is alive, then someone staged his death.”
Malcolm’s jaw tightened.
“Obviously.”
I hugged my arms around myself.
The room suddenly felt too cold.
Then I remembered my landlord.
Tyler’s therapy.
My unpaid bills.
And how absurd it was that the biggest problem in my life that morning had been forty-three dollars.
Now I was standing inside a billionaire’s private suite discussing dead men who weren’t dead.
Malcolm looked toward me.
“Hannah, do you have somewhere safe to stay?”
I laughed bitterly.
“My apartment has a red eviction notice on the door.”
His expression changed.
“I can arrange—”
“No.”
He stopped.
I took a breath.
“I returned your watch. That doesn’t mean I want to owe you anything.”
For a second, something almost like respect appeared in his eyes.
“Fair.”
Nathan shifted impatiently.
“Sir, we need to assume Miss Reed may be part of whatever Vincent is planning.”
I looked at him.
“Wonderful.”
Malcolm ignored the sarcasm.
“Did your mother leave anything unusual behind?”
I thought of Margaret’s old cedar box.
Letters.
Receipts.
A photograph album.
And the brass key she told me never to throw away.
“Yes.”
Malcolm leaned forward.
“What?”
“A key.”
His expression sharpened.
“What kind?”
“Small. Brass. Number eighteen engraved on it.”
Nathan and Malcolm exchanged a look.
I felt my stomach drop.
“What?”
Malcolm spoke quietly.
“My father kept safety deposit box eighteen at the old Chicago Mercantile Trust.”
I stared.
“That bank closed years ago.”
“The vault didn’t.”
My hands began shaking.
Then Nathan’s phone rang.
He listened.
His expression changed.
“Sir.”
“What?”
“We pulled Vincent’s movements from the hotel.”
“And?”
“He didn’t leave alone.”
Nathan turned the screen.
Another figure appeared beside Vincent.
A woman.
Older.
Silver hair.
I stared at her.
My breath vanished.
“Mom?”
Malcolm looked at me.
The woman in the footage was Margaret Reed.
My mother.
May you like
Five years after I buried her.
And beneath the image was a timestamp from three nights ago.
