Chapter 7 - THE FATHER WHO DISAPPEARED|
Daniel Reyes lived in a modest apartment above a laundromat on the far West Side. Nadia had not visited since her brother’s funeral.
She remembered the apartment as a place filled with cigarette smoke, unpaid bills, and the sound of her father promising that everything would be different next week.
The building looked smaller now.
Evelyn parked two streets away.
“We go in together,” she said.
Nadia checked the bandage beneath her coat.
“If he’s there, I talk first.”
“If he’s dangerous, we leave.”
“He’s my father.”
“That doesn’t make him safe.”
Nadia had no answer.
They climbed the stairs.
The apartment door stood open.
Inside, a chair lay overturned beside the kitchen table. A broken mug had spilled coffee across the floor. Daniel’s old coat was missing from its hook.
Nadia searched the rooms while Evelyn examined the window.
“He left in a hurry,” Evelyn said.
“Or someone took him.”
Nadia found an envelope beneath the table.
Her name was written on it in her father’s uneven handwriting.
Inside was a photograph of Daniel standing beside a younger Isabel Carrera outside a warehouse. The date on the back was from three years earlier, months before Cristian’s undercover assignment began.
A second note read:
I took money to tell them where Cristian would meet his source. I thought they wanted to frighten him. I did not know they planned to kill him.
Nadia read it twice.
Her throat tightened.
Evelyn remained silent.
“How much?” Nadia whispered.
“What?”
“How much did they pay him?”
Evelyn studied the note.
“That isn’t the important question.”
“It is to me.”
Nadia had spent fourteen months believing her father’s gambling had merely ruined their finances. Now she understood that his weakness had been turned into a weapon against Cristian.
She crumpled the note in her fist.
“I should have known.”
“You were not responsible for your father’s choices.”
“I should have seen what he was becoming.”
“You were his daughter. Not his investigator.”
Nadia turned away.
On the table, beneath a pile of junk mail, lay a small key with a paper tag attached.
Twelve.
Evelyn picked it up.
“Terminal Twelve.”
A noise sounded in the hallway.
Both women turned.
A man stood at the top of the stairs, holding a phone. When he saw them, he ran.
Evelyn pursued him.
Nadia followed as far as the landing, but pain stopped her. By the time she reached the street, the man had vanished.
Evelyn returned two minutes later, breathing hard.
“He had a vehicle waiting.”
“Did you get a plate?”
“Partial.”
Nadia looked at the key.
“Then we go to Terminal Twelve.”
“No,” Evelyn said. “We find your father first.”
“What if he’s there?”
“What if he’s a trap?”
Nadia closed her fingers around the key.
“Then I’ll finally know what my family cost my brother.”
Evelyn’s expression softened.
“Cristian wouldn’t want you to die for his evidence.”
“He didn’t die for evidence,” Nadia replied. “He died because someone decided his life was worth less than a secret.”
May you like
She slipped the key into her pocket.
“And I want to know who made that decision.”
