Chapter 5: The Pharmacy on Clement Street
The pharmacy smelled the way it always had — antiseptic and old wood and something faintly sweet underneath that I had never been able to name.
My cousin Marcus looked up from behind the counter when I walked in.
His expression moved through surprise, then concern, then the particular careful blankness of a man who has learned not to ask questions he doesn't want answered.
"Elena.
You just — I heard you were at the hospital."
"I was.
I'm fine.
The baby is fine." I kept moving toward the back.
"I need five minutes in the storeroom."
"Of course.
Yes.
Whatever you need."
The back room was narrow and smelled of cardboard.
The old cast-iron radiator stood against the far wall exactly as it always had, painted over so many times the surface was thick and uneven.
I crouched beside it and pressed my fingers along the bottom row of bricks.
Third from the left.
I had watched my father press it a hundred times without knowing why.
The brick shifted inward.
Behind it, wrapped in a cloth that had once been a dish towel, was a small black drive no larger than my thumb.
My hands were steadier than I expected.
I wrapped it back in the cloth and put it in my coat pocket.
When I stood up, Marcus was in the doorway.
"Elena." His voice was different now.
Lower.
"A man came in two days ago.
He said he was doing an insurance assessment.
He asked a lot of questions about the back room."
I went still.
"What did he look like?"
"Tall.
Expensive coat.
He had a ring on his right hand — a signet ring, dark stone."
Richard Vance wore a signet ring.
He had worn it every Christmas.
I had thought it looked distinguished.
"Did he go into the back room?"
"I didn't let him.
I told him it was storage only, nothing relevant to an insurance assessment." Marcus hesitated.
"He left a card.
He said if anything unusual turned up during the assessment, I should call him directly."
"Do you still have the card?"
Marcus disappeared and came back with it.
Plain white.
A phone number.
No name, no company.
I took it.
"Don't call that number," I said.
"And if that man comes back, call me first.
Immediately."
"What's happening?"
"Something my father started a long time ago." I put the card in my pocket beside the drive.
"I'm going to finish it."
Luka was waiting outside on the pavement.
I held up the drive without a word.
His shoulders dropped slightly — the first time I had seen anything in his body that looked like relief.
"We need someone who can read this without leaving a trace," I said.
"I know someone."
"Of course you do."
He almost smiled.
Not quite.
My phone buzzed.
A text from the hospital nurse: *Your husband arrived.
He's asking where you are.*
Daniel was already there.
Already in that room, standing over Rosa, standing over my daughter, believing he had come back to find a frightened woman with nowhere to go.
I looked at the drive in my hand.
"How fast can your person work?" I asked.
May you like
"Fast enough," Luka said.
We were already moving.
