Chapter 5 - Pier 44
I got my mother off the bed myself.
No elevator.
No main hall.
The old house had survived Prohibition, two wars, and my grandfather’s paranoia.
That morning, his paranoia saved us.
Marcus opened a hidden service passage behind the linen closet.
Delia followed, one hand pressed against her ribs.
“You shouldn’t be walking.”
“Neither should your mother.”
“Fair.”
Behind us, glass shattered downstairs.
Someone shouted.
I carried my mother through a passage barely wide enough for my shoulders.
For the first time in four years, she pressed her fingers around my wrist.
Weak.
But deliberate.
I looked down.
“I’ve got you.”
Her grip tightened.
At the rear garage, one of my men waited with an armored SUV.
Marcus opened the door.
“Safe house in Indiana.”
“No.”
He stared at me.
“Damian—”
“Take my mother.”
“And you?”
“Pier 44.”
Delia immediately said, “I’m coming.”
“No.”
“I know Ewan.”
“I know Pier 44.”
“You knew Ewan twenty-nine years.”
“And apparently you knew him better in eleven months.”
That hurt both of us.
She climbed into my car anyway.
I let her.
The old pier had been abandoned since the fire.
City fencing surrounded most of it.
Snow collected against rusted loading doors.
We entered through the north side.
Nothing.
The burned-out interior looked like the bones of an animal too large to bury.
Delia walked beside me.
“This is where he died.”
“No.”
She looked at me.
“This is where we thought he died.”
We found the lower room behind a collapsed freight elevator.
A steel door had been welded shut from the inside.
Fresh weld.
Marcus had sent two men ahead.
They cut it.
The room beyond smelled like dust and damp concrete.
A cot stood against one wall.
Canned food.
Medical supplies.
Maps.
A radio.
Someone had lived there recently.
Very recently.
Delia touched the pillow.
Her face broke.
“Ewan.”
On the wall were photographs.
Me.
Celeste.
August Vandermark.
My mother.
Marcus.
Judges.
A state senator.
Dock supervisors.
Twenty years of people.
Red string connected names and dates like a detective had gone mad.
Then I saw my father.
A photograph of Malcolm Vale shaking August Vandermark’s hand.
Under it, written in black marker:
THE FIRST DEAL.
Beside that:
THE FIRE WAS THE SECOND.
Delia found a laptop.
Password locked.
Then she noticed a small wooden box beneath the cot.
Her wedding date opened it.
Inside was a flash drive.
And Ewan’s ring.
She picked it up with shaking fingers.
“I gave this back to him.”
“When?”
“The morning he disappeared.”
My chest tightened.
Meaning Ewan had returned for it at some point.
Meaning he had been here.
Delia inserted the flash drive.
One video file.
Six months old.
Ewan appeared on the screen.
Scar across one side of his neck.
Gray in his beard.
Alive.
Delia covered her mouth.
I forgot how to breathe.
Ewan looked into the camera.
“If Damian is watching this, then things have gone worse than I expected.”
I leaned closer.
“I’m sorry, brother.”
My throat tightened.
“For what?”
He continued.
“I know you think the fire was about me.”
A pause.
“It wasn’t.”
Delia squeezed my arm.
Ewan said, “The fire was meant to destroy proof of something Dad did before either of us was old enough to understand it.”
His face hardened.
“And Celeste was there.”
I looked at Delia.
Ewan continued.
“She used the name Celeste Ward. She got close to me because August needed one of us.”
He held up a document.
The same survivorship agreement.
“If I died, Damian became the sole Vale heir.”
My stomach turned.
“If Damian married Celeste, the Vandermarks got the waterfront.”
Ewan leaned toward the camera.
“So they tried to kill me.”
I whispered, “Son of a—”
Then Ewan said something worse.
“But that isn’t why I stayed dead.”
I stared at the screen.
He looked straight into the camera.
“I stayed dead because someone inside our house helped them.”
The recording ended.
Behind us, a floorboard creaked.
I reached for my gun.
A voice came from the darkness.
“You always were slow, Damian.”
I knew that voice.
I had heard it every day of my childhood.
May you like
Ewan stepped into the light.
Alive.
