Chapter 4: The Name From Two Years Ago
Mateo came downstairs forty minutes later.
Beatrice was in the kitchen, making tea she did not particularly want, because her hands needed something to do.
She heard him on the stairs before she saw him — the particular weight of his step, heavier on the right side from an old injury he never talked about.
He stopped in the kitchen doorway.
"How's Lily?" Beatrice asked.
"Sleeping.
Rosa's with her." He came into the kitchen and sat at the table without being invited, the way men do when they have something to say and are deciding how much of it to say.
"Leo told me what you said."
"I imagine he did."
"Beatrice—"
"You told me you would handle it." She set the kettle down.
"Seven months ago.
You told me to document it quietly and you would handle it."
Mateo's hands were flat on the table.
He did not look away from her.
That was the thing about Mateo Calder — he never looked away.
It was the quality that made him effective at his job and difficult to forgive.
"I made a mistake," he said.
"Lily nearly d*ed today."
"I know."
"That is not a mistake, Mateo.
A mistake is the wrong word for it."
He was quiet.
The kettle began to whistle.
Beatrice poured two cups without asking and set one in front of him.
"Who called Leo?" she asked.
Mateo wrapped both hands around the cup.
"A woman named Elena Vasquez."
Beatrice had never heard the name.
But something in the way Mateo said it — carefully, the way you carry something fragile — told her the name mattered.
"Who is she?"
"She was the lead investigator on the bombing two years ago.
The one that k*lled Camila." He paused.
"She was also the investigator who closed the case."
"Closed it as what?"
"Accident." He looked up.
"She's been in witness protection since three weeks after the case closed."
Beatrice sat down slowly.
"She was threatened."
"She was told that if she pursued the investigation further, her daughter would not make it to her eighth birthday." He said it without inflection, the way people say terrible things when they have had time to get used to them.
"She took the deal.
She went quiet.
The case closed."
"And now she's calling Leo."
"Because someone found her," Mateo said.
"Someone who knew exactly where she was.
Someone who wanted her to know that the protection she was promised is no longer being honored."
The kitchen was very quiet.
"Victoria," Beatrice said.
Mateo didn't answer.
He didn't need to.
"Victoria's father," Beatrice corrected herself.
"Richard Kensington."
"We don't know that yet."
"But Leo thinks it."
Mateo turned his cup in his hands.
"Leo thinks that Camila's death was not an accident.
He has thought that for two years.
He had no proof.
Elena Vasquez was the proof — and she disappeared before she could give it to him." He looked at Beatrice steadily.
"She's calling now because she's scared.
And because she says she has documentation she kept.
Evidence she copied before the case was closed."
Beatrice thought about Victoria standing in the hallway with her wine glass.
The practiced tears.
The way her face had changed when Leo mentioned the cameras — not surprised, only calculating.
"She knew," Beatrice said.
"Victoria knew about Camila."
"We don't—"
"She knew, Mateo." Beatrice leaned forward.
"Think about it.
She arrived at this house four months after the bombing.
She was already positioned.
She already knew exactly how to handle Leo — what he needed, what he feared, how to make herself indispensable.
That is not a woman who fell in love.
That is a woman who was placed."
Mateo looked at her for a long moment.
"Leo said the same thing," he said quietly.
"Word for word."
A sound from upstairs.
Small feet on the floor above the kitchen.
Then Lily's voice, thin and sleepy, calling for Bee.
Beatrice stood.
"Where is Elena Vasquez now?" she asked.
"Leo has people bringing her here tonight."
"Does Victoria know?"
Mateo's expression answered before he did.
"Then Victoria will find out," Beatrice said.
"And when she does, she will not wait."
She untied the torn apron from her waist and set it on the table.
She would not put it back on.
She did not know exactly what she was now in this house, but she knew she was not that anymore.
May you like
She went upstairs to find Lily.
Behind her, she heard Mateo pick up his phone.
