Chapter 8: The Morning It Ended
Agent Daniel Reyes was younger than I expected.
Mid-forties, maybe.
He had the kind of face that had learned to show nothing, but his hands moved when he talked, and his hands said everything.
We met in a federal building conference room on a Wednesday morning.
Dominic sat across from me.
Reyes sat at the head of the table with a colleague whose name I didn't catch and didn't need.
I put my father's letter on the table.
Reyes looked at it for a long moment before he touched it.
"He told me he'd left documentation," he said.
"He didn't tell me where."
"He didn't tell anyone," I said.
"That was the point."
Reyes picked up the letter.
Read it.
Set it down with both hands flat on the table.
"Ms.
Carter, I want to be direct with you.
When your father came to us, we were in the early stages of building a case.
His information was significant.
When he died—" He stopped.
"When the fire happened, the case went cold.
We lost our primary source and the manifests he'd provided weren't enough on their own.
We needed the operational records." He looked at the box I'd brought from Unit 14.
"Which you appear to have."
"All eight boxes," I said.
"I photographed everything before I moved it."
Dominic leaned forward.
"I'll provide full testimony about the operational structure.
What my father ran, how it was concealed, who knew." He paused.
"Including Marcus Hale's role in the legal cover-up after the fire."
Reyes looked at him steadily.
"That's a significant statement."
"I know what it means."
"It means," Reyes said carefully, "that you are implicating your own family's legacy.
Publicly.
Legally.
Permanently."
"I know what it means," Dominic said again.
Quieter this time.
Reyes turned back to me.
"The settlement offer Hale made last night — you documented it?"
"Written record, timestamped, photographed, emailed to a secure address within ten minutes of the call ending."
Something moved across Reyes's face.
Not quite a smile.
The professional equivalent of one.
"Your father would be proud of you," he said.
I didn't trust my voice for a moment.
"He kept his word to you.
I wanted you to know that."
"I know." He picked up the letter again.
"I've known it for eight years."
The meeting lasted three hours.
By the end of it, Reyes's colleague had made four phone calls, two of which I wasn't in the room for.
When they came back in after the second one, the colleague sat down and slid a single sheet of paper across the table to Reyes, who read it and set it face-down.
"Marcus Hale's office was served with a federal preservation order forty minutes ago," Reyes said.
"He cannot destroy, move, or alter any documents, communications, or records pending investigation."
Dominic's hands were on the table.
He didn't move them.
"And Vanessa?" I asked.
"Ms.
Whitmore is a person of interest in connection with the surveillance of your family and the coordination of last night's incident at the storage facility." Reyes paused.
"She has not been charged.
That may change."
I nodded.
We walked out of the federal building into a gray Chicago morning.
Dominic stopped on the steps and stood with his hands in his coat pockets, looking at the street.
"Are you all right?" I asked.
"I don't know yet." He looked at me.
"Are you?"
"I don't know yet either."
We stood there for a moment, two people who had both lost something and were only beginning to understand the shape of what came next.
"The offer Hale made," Dominic said.
"Your mother's care.
I want to make that happen regardless of what he does or doesn't face.
Not as a settlement.
Not with conditions.
Because it's right."
"I'm not taking money from the Moretti family."
"It wouldn't be from the family.
It would be from me.
Personally." He paused.
"Your father worked for my father in good faith.
He tried to do the right thing and it cost him everything.
The least I can do is make sure the people he loved are taken care of."
I looked at him for a long moment.
"I'll think about it," I said.
It was the most I could offer and he seemed to understand that.
His phone rang.
He looked at the screen and his face changed.
"It's Vanessa."
"Don't answer it."
He looked at me.
"Let her call," I said.
"Let her leave a message.
Let her wonder." I paused.
"She spent seven weeks making me feel like I didn't belong in any room she was in.
She can spend a few hours not knowing what's happening."
May you like
Dominic looked at the phone until it stopped ringing.
Then he put it back in his pocket.
