Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN IN THE PHOTOGRAPH
My mother had been dead for seven years.
I had watched them close her coffin.
I had stood beside the grave while rain soaked through my black dress and turned the cemetery soil into mud beneath my shoes.
I had spent seven birthdays bringing white flowers to a stone engraved with her name.
And now Victor Salcedo was holding a photograph taken eleven days ago.
A photograph of Elena Morales alive.
"No."
The word came out of me as a whisper.
Victor said nothing.
I snatched the photograph from his hand.
The woman was older than my mother had been when she died.
Of course she was.
That thought nearly made me laugh.
Dead people didn't age.
But this woman had.
There were deeper lines around her mouth. Gray threaded through her dark hair. She wore sunglasses in one hand and appeared to be stepping from a black sedan outside a building I didn't recognize.
But the scar above her eyebrow was there.
My scar.
The scar I had touched as a child while she told me she'd fallen from a bicycle.
"No."
I turned the photograph over.
BRING ME MY GRANDDAUGHTER.
Below it:
Victor, if Mariana has reached you, then Mateo found her first.
I knew my mother's handwriting.
She made the lowercase a differently from everyone else I knew.
The sentence looked like hers.
My knees weakened.
Victor caught my elbow.
I jerked away.
"Don't touch me."
He immediately released me.
"Mariana—"
"She died."
"I know what you were told."
"I wasn't told. I buried her."
Lucia stirred.
Every thought disappeared.
I rushed back to her.
Dr. Ortega was checking her temperature.
"Thirty-eight point seven."
"That's still high."
"It is, but it's moving in the right direction."
"Is she okay?"
"She's responding."
I kissed Lucia's damp forehead.
My baby.
My real problem.
My real responsibility.
The rest could wait.
Except Victor apparently disagreed.
"We have to move."
I turned.
"What?"
"The estate is compromised."
"You said the attackers were contained."
"The first group."
My stomach tightened.
"First?"
Victor looked toward the monitors.
"Someone knew you were coming here."
"Nobody knew."
"Your supervisor."
"Armando didn't know until—"
I stopped.
Armando knew I was assigned to the Salcedo estate.
Vargas Facility Services knew.
Drivers knew.
Other cleaners knew.
Victor read my expression.
"Exactly."
"You think someone followed me?"
"I think someone has been following you for weeks."
The photographs proved it.
I looked at Lucia.
"We need a hospital."
"You'll have one."
"I mean a real hospital."
Dr. Ortega said, "Victor's private medical facility is better equipped than most private hospitals."
I looked at him.
"You're his doctor."
"I'm also a licensed pediatric emergency physician."
That surprised me.
Victor said, "Rafael runs a clinic."
"Then why is he making house calls for you?"
Rafael smiled slightly.
"Victor paid for the clinic."
Of course he did.
Nothing in Victor Salcedo's world appeared simple.
Victor spoke into his radio.
"Prepare Route Three."
A voice answered.
"Understood."
I stood.
"I'm not going anywhere until somebody tells me what Route Three means."
Victor looked at me.
"It means nobody outside six people knows where we're going."
"And why should I trust those six?"
"You shouldn't."
That answer stopped me.
"You shouldn't trust anyone automatically."
He glanced toward Lucia.
"But right now, you need a secure medical facility, and I need to determine why Mateo Navarro's people have been watching your daughter."
"You don't know they're Mateo's people."
"No."
"The prisoner said Mateo sent him."
"He may have lied."
"Why?"
"Because that is what frightened men do when somebody more dangerous is behind them."
I stared.
"More dangerous than Mateo?"
Victor didn't answer.
I hated when he did that.
I picked up Lucia.
Dr. Ortega stopped me.
"I'll carry the medical equipment."
"I carry my daughter."
Nobody argued.
Good.
The safe-room door opened after Victor's security team cleared the corridor.
The mansion outside looked different.
One window had shattered.
Two guards were moving quickly across the foyer.
Somewhere distant, sirens approached.
Victor stayed beside us.
We descended instead of going outside.
A private elevator took us beneath the house.
When the doors opened, I saw an underground garage containing more cars than existed on my entire street.
Three identical black SUVs waited with engines running.
"Which one?" I asked.
Victor almost smiled.
"That's the point."
Rosa climbed into one vehicle.
Dr. Ortega into another.
Victor guided me toward the third.
"No."
He stopped.
"What?"
"Rosa comes with me."
Rosa looked startled.
Victor didn't.
"Fine."
"And Dr. Ortega."
"We separate because—"
"My sick daughter is not being separated from her doctor."
Victor studied me.
Then nodded.
"Rafael, you're with us."
His security chief looked unhappy.
"Sir, that defeats—"
"Do it."
We climbed inside.
I sat between Rosa and Dr. Ortega.
Victor sat opposite me.
The convoy moved.
For several minutes, nobody spoke.
Then I asked:
"Where is the key?"
Victor's eyes sharpened.
"My mother's brass key. What does it open?"
"I don't know."
"You know something."
"I know what it may relate to."
"Which is?"
"The agreement."
"Between the three families."
"Yes."
"Explain it."
Victor looked out the armored window.
"Thirty years ago, my father, Gabriel Navarro, and a man named Esteban Morales controlled interests in several development companies."
"Morales."
"Your grandfather."
I stopped breathing.
"My grandfather was named Luis."
"That was the name Elena gave you?"
"Yes."
Victor's expression said enough.
I laughed once.
"Wonderful. Apparently even my dead grandfather wasn't my grandfather."
"Esteban Morales was Elena's father."
"How do you know?"
"I met him."
"When?"
"I was a child."
I held Lucia tighter.
"What was he?"
"An accountant."
I almost laughed again.
"That's all?"
"No."
Of course not.
Victor continued.
"He managed financial structures for my father and Navarro."
"What structures?"
"Companies. Trusts. Property holdings."
"Legal?"
"Some."
"And the rest?"
Victor looked at me.
"I was a teenager. My father did not explain his crimes over breakfast."
Crimes.
There it was.
Not rumors.
Not newspaper euphemisms.
"What happened?"
"Esteban discovered money was disappearing."
"Who was taking it?"
"Nobody knew."
"Then?"
"He created evidence."
"What kind?"
"A complete ledger."
"Where?"
Victor looked at the locket around Lucia's neck.
"That is what people have been trying to find for almost thirty years."
My skin went cold.
"The key opens the ledger?"
"Possibly."
"A ledger doesn't need a brass key."
"Not the ledger itself."
"What, then?"
"Something containing it."
I thought of my mother's sewing box.
The little brass key.
I had hidden it years ago because it was the only object of hers that made no sense.
"Where is it?" Victor asked.
"No."
"Mariana."
"No."
"If Mateo saw it—"
"He saw the key. He doesn't know where it is."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
"How?"
"Because I moved it after he disappeared."
Victor leaned forward.
"Where?"
"I met you three hours ago."
"Two hours and forty minutes."
I stared.
"That doesn't make you more trustworthy."
Rosa made a tiny sound that might have been a suppressed laugh.
Victor looked at her.
She became fascinated by the floor.
Then Dr. Ortega checked Lucia again.
"Thirty-eight point three."
Relief.
I kissed her.
She opened her eyes.
"Mama's here."
Her tiny fingers closed around mine.
Victor watched.
Something changed in his face.
I didn't understand it.
Then the SUV stopped.
A guard spoke through Victor's earpiece.
"Obstacle ahead."
Victor became still.
"What kind?"
"Traffic collision."
"Unplanned?"
"Yes."
"Reverse."
Immediately.
The driver shifted.
Then an impact slammed into the side of the SUV.
Rosa screamed.
I folded over Lucia.
Victor was already moving.
"Down!"
Another impact.
Not gunfire.
A vehicle.
Someone had rammed us.
The SUV accelerated backward.
Security vehicles surrounded us.
Victor pulled a handgun from beneath his jacket.
I stared.
"Put that away from my baby."
He actually looked offended.
"Someone is attacking the vehicle."
"And she's eight months old!"
He lowered the weapon toward the floor.
Ridiculous moment.
Terrifying moment.
Then the radio exploded with voices.
"Motorcycle!"
"North side!"
"Vehicle moving!"
"Sir, we're clear!"
Our SUV accelerated.
Lucia started screaming.
I rocked her.
"It's okay. Mommy's here."
It wasn't okay.
Nothing was okay.
Then Victor's phone rang.
He looked at the number.
His face changed.
"Who is it?"
He didn't answer.
The phone continued ringing.
Finally he answered.
"Yes?"
Silence.
Then a man's voice came through loudly enough for me to hear.
"Victor."
Victor's expression became stone.
I knew the voice.
My blood froze.
Mateo.
I grabbed the phone.
Victor resisted for half a second.
Then let me take it.
"Mateo?"
Silence.
"Mariana."
My daughter's father.
The man who disappeared before Lucia was born.
The man I had cried over until I had no tears left.
"You bastard."
"Listen to me."
"You left us."
"I know."
"People are trying to take our daughter!"
"I know."
That destroyed me.
"You know?"
"I've been trying to stop them."
"Who?"
"Mariana, you cannot stay with Victor."
I looked at Victor.
He heard.
"Why?"
"Because Salcedo doesn't know the truth about Elena."
Victor held out his hand for the phone.
I ignored him.
"What truth?"
Mateo breathed.
Then said:
"Your mother didn't fake her death to escape my family."
My heart pounded.
"Then why?"
"She faked it to escape Victor."
I looked at the billionaire sitting across from me.
His face had gone completely still.
Mateo continued.
"And if Victor tells you Elena saved his life, ask him what happened the night his father murdered your grandfather."
The line went dead.
I stared at the phone.
Victor stared at me.
The armored SUV raced through Mexico City.
Lucia cried against my chest.
And suddenly the man protecting us was no longer simply the man my mother had once saved.
He was the son of the man who may have murdered her father.
"Start talking," I whispered.
May you like
Victor looked at me.
"Now."
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