Chapter 6 - THE TRAITOR AT MY TABLE
The man entering the interview room wore a police jacket and carried a handgun.
Claire reached for the baseball bat Ruby had insisted on bringing from the foster home. I stepped between the muzzle and the table.
The emergency light found the man's face.
It was Gabriel.
"Down," he said.
I trusted the urgency before I trusted the explanation.
We dropped.
Gabriel fired twice through the open doorway. A shadow in the corridor fell behind a row of plastic chairs. Officers shouted from the far stairwell. The building's backup generator surged to life, flooding the room with white light.
Gabriel kicked a pistol away from the man outside.
He had a burn scar across his right hand.
Evan Shaw.
The medical transport employee Andrew had named.
Shaw survived the gunshot wounds. In his pocket, police found a station access card and a folded photograph of Ruby leaving her foster home.
Gabriel surrendered his weapon for the second time in twenty-four hours.
This time, officers put him in handcuffs.
"How did you know?" I asked.
"An old contact called me after the storage fire," he said. "Said Evan Shaw was alive and working private security under Blake. I followed him."
Rebecca's anger could have powered the station without a generator.
"You were instructed to stay away from the investigation."
"Yes."
"You followed a suspected conspirator without notifying police."
"Yes."
"You entered a secured station with a weapon while your name appeared in evidence connected to the crime."
"Yes."
"Are you trying to make my job impossible?"
Gabriel considered it. "Not intentionally."
Even Claire almost laughed.
Shaw's survival gave investigators their first living link between Blake and the body substitution. It also deepened the mystery around Gabriel.
The ledger did not merely contain his name. Financial tracing found a fifty-thousand-dollar payment made weeks after the crash to a medical account belonging to Gabriel's late wife.
Gabriel had never told me.
We met with him at the county detention center after his attorney arrived.
"Maria needed experimental treatment," he said. "Insurance refused it. An anonymous foundation paid. I thought you arranged it."
"I did not know she was ill until six months later."
"She made me promise not to tell you. She did not want charity from the family. When the account was paid, I assumed Dominic found out."
Dominic shook his head. "I didn't."
The payment originated from a Blake Institute donor-advised fund.
Not proof Gabriel participated.
Proof someone had purchased a piece of leverage and left him unaware of the price.
Gabriel asked to see the transaction date again. When Rebecca showed him, he pressed his thumb against the corner of the paper.
"That was the night Carlo sent me to Connecticut," he said.
"For what?" I asked.
"A false threat against you. He claimed a rival crew planned to intercept your car after a charity dinner. I spent six hours verifying an informant who never existed. Dominic covered your return route instead."
Carlo had moved both of the men most likely to recognize Gabriel's duplicate credentials.
"Did you document the assignment?" Rebecca asked.
"In the old security log. If it survived."
The log had survived because Mateo's reforms required operational records to be archived outside family control. It placed Gabriel eighty miles from Saint Agnes while Evan Shaw used his badge. It also showed Carlo personally approved the false lead.
The discovery did not erase every question, but it changed the shape of them. Someone had not merely borrowed Gabriel's identity. They had designed an alibi that would look suspicious later, placing him far enough away to avoid recognition but close enough to seem involved.
"Carlo prepared blame the way other men prepared weapons," Dominic said.
Gabriel stared through the glass toward us. "Because blame keeps firing after the man who loaded it is gone."
"Why your access?" Rebecca asked.
Gabriel looked ashamed. "My old credentials opened the private ambulance entrance at Saint Agnes. We had a protection agreement there for family emergencies. Carlo ordered duplicate badges for the security rotation. He could have kept one."
"And Evan Shaw used it," I said.
"Most likely."
"Most likely is not cleared," Rebecca warned.
"I know."
Gabriel remained under investigation. He was released after prosecutors concluded that the station shooting appeared to be defense of others, but he was ordered not to contact witnesses.
That included us.
Dominic watched him walk away alone.
"We should bring him home."
"We cannot interfere," I said.
"He saved Claire and Ruby."
"And if we pressure investigators now, every defense attorney will say we controlled the inquiry."
Dominic turned on me. "You sound like a board manual."
"That is because board manuals contain useful ideas, such as not obstructing criminal cases."
"He is family."
"That sentence has excused enough damage."
Dominic flinched.
I regretted the cruelty, not the point.
At the safe residence, Leo waited until the adults finished arguing before he brought me his tablet.
"Ruby sent me this," he said.
The message came from an account created that afternoon.
LEO, I FOUND OUT WHERE OUR DADS WENT. DON'T TELL THE ADULTS. MEET ME AT THE OLD HOSPITAL.
"Did you answer?" I asked.
"No."
"Why not?"
He gave me a look Mateo had perfected at the same age.
"Ruby is sitting in the next room with Aunt Claire. Also, she calls you Mr. Moretti, not 'the adults.'"
Despite everything, pride warmed my chest.
"You did exactly the right thing."
"I know. Mom made me memorize the rule. Secrets that make you leave a safe place are not secrets you keep."
Elena had turned survival into language a child could use.
The message metadata was masked, but investigators traced an image embedded in the account profile. It had been photographed at Saint Agnes Neurological Annex, the facility where Andrew said Mateo was first taken.
Saint Agnes had closed eight years earlier after a flood. The main building was scheduled for demolition. Blake Institute still owned the private wing through a subsidiary.
Police obtained a search warrant.
They found empty rooms, stripped medical equipment, and one recently cleaned chamber in the basement.
On the wall were dozens of photographs.
Mateo leaving rehabilitation.
Elena carrying infant Leo.
Dominic entering the estate.
Claire at Andrew's memorial.
Ruby at school.
And me, kneeling on the office rug with Leo in my arms nine years earlier.
Someone had possessed interior estate surveillance from the day the truth began.
Gabriel had supervised that system.
Before police could question him again, he disappeared.
His ankle monitor had been cut beside the Hudson River. His car was found empty. Blood marked the driver's seat.
At midnight, a traffic camera captured a black medical transport van crossing into New Jersey.
May you like
In the passenger seat sat Gabriel Russo.
Behind him, barely visible through tinted glass, was Ruby.
