Chapter 6 - Somebody Wanted the Ledger
The dark lasted less than a second before Lorenzo shoved me behind him.
"Stay down."
"I'm five-foot-six. Staying down is most of my life."
"Amelia."
That tone meant stop joking.
Metal scraped outside.
Someone was locking the unit.
Marco hit the emergency release. Nothing.
"Cut," he said. "Cable's been cut."
Lorenzo pulled out his phone. No signal.
Of course.
Because apparently crime conspiracies also hated convenience.
Then smoke slid beneath the door.
Not thick. Not yet.
But enough.
"Fire," I whispered.
Lorenzo looked at the cinder-block wall, then at a narrow maintenance panel near the ceiling.
"Marco, boost me."
"You're six-five."
"Then boost her."
I stared. "Absolutely not."
Thirty seconds later, I was standing on Lorenzo's shoulders, swearing at a ventilation grate while smoke rose around us.
I kicked the panel loose, squeezed into a maintenance crawlspace, and dropped into the next unit hard enough to bruise both knees and my dignity.
I found the hallway, pulled the fire alarm, and screamed until the night manager came running.
By the time firefighters opened our unit, flames had eaten through the cardboard boxes near the entrance.
The ledger survived because Lorenzo had shoved it inside his shirt.
Outside, he handed it back to me.
"You okay?"
"Ask me after I stop smelling like smoked cinnamon rolls."
His hands were shaking.
Not from the fire.
From almost losing me.
I understood because mine were doing the same thing.
Marco found the security recording forty minutes later.
A man in a maintenance uniform had entered the hallway ten minutes before us.
He wore a cap low over his face.
But when he turned, I recognized the profile.
Ethan.
I felt sick.
"He tried to kill us," I said.
Lorenzo's voice went quiet. "He tried to destroy the ledger."
My phone buzzed again.
A message from Ethan.
YOU SHOULD HAVE STAYED SMALL, AMY.
Then a second message arrived.
A photograph of my mother walking out of a grocery store in Arizona.
Under it:
NEXT TIME, I WON'T MISS.
I looked at Lorenzo.
"We're done hiding."
He nodded.
But before we could move, Marco's phone rang.
His face drained of color.
"Boss," he said, "Bianca Romano is at the front gate."
"What does she want?"
May you like
Marco looked at me.
"She says she knows why the other five women left."
