Chapter 14 - Fire on the Thirty-First Floor
The masked man splashed gasoline across the carpet.
Maya grabbed Thomas and ran the other direction.
"Elevators are locked!" Daniel shouted from the smoke.
Flames climbed the wall behind them.
Employees poured into the stairwell.
Maya kept one fist wrapped around the flash drive.
On the twenty-eighth floor Thomas stumbled.
"Leave me," he gasped.
"Not happening."
Ben's voice came into her head from years ago: A kid screaming is my business.
Some kinds of kindness were contagious.
Daniel and Maya carried Thomas down three flights before firefighters met them.
Outside, news helicopters circled the tower.
The fire destroyed half of Carter & Bell's records floor.
But the flash drive survived.
So did security footage showing the masked arsonist entering through a service corridor using a Calder Development access badge.
Victor denied everything.
By evening, federal agents had the ledger, Thomas's files, Judge Harlan's sworn statement, and Mayor Mercer's preserved tape.
Maya expected arrests.
Instead, the lead agent said, "We need time."
"He's had twenty years."
"And if we move too early, he walks."
Maya hated that they were right.
At nine that night, Ben called.
"Maya, somebody broke into my apartment."
She was already moving.
"Are you hurt?"
"No. But they didn't take money."
"What did they take?"
Ben looked at the empty space above his kitchen shelf.
Ruth's recipe box was gone.
So was the dime Maya had paid him twenty years earlier.
On the table sat a fresh hot dog wrapped in foil.
May you like
Inside the foil was a note.
YOU PAID YOUR DEBT. NOW WALK AWAY.
