Chapter 6 - THE SECOND FIRE
Warehouse Twelve stood beside the frozen river like the skeleton of something too stubborn to die.
Gabriel arrived at 9:00 p.m.
Alone.
At least, that was what Evan believed.
Rebecca had contacted federal investigators after the recorded threats.
Gabriel had agreed to wear a transmitter.
He hated every second of it.
Not because he feared law enforcement.
Because somewhere in his father’s voice, he could still hear the rule that had governed the Rowan family for decades.
Family handles family.
But Evan had used that rule for fourteen years.
Gabriel was done letting dead men decide how living ones behaved.
Evan stood inside the old loading bay.
He wore a charcoal coat.
His hair had gone mostly gray at the temples during the years Gabriel knew him.
For a moment, Gabriel saw the man from the hospital again.
Burned hands.
Red eyes.
A brother who refused to leave.
Then Evan spoke.
“You found Michael’s box.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“A child.”
Evan laughed softly.
“The maid’s kid.”
“Lucy.”
“Right.”
Gabriel’s eyes hardened.
“Use her name.”
Evan studied him.
“That’s new.”
“What is?”
“You caring about people who don’t belong to your world.”
“Maybe my world was the problem.”
Evan sighed.
“I knew this would happen eventually.”
“You knew?”
“Michael always liked insurance policies.”
Gabriel’s fists tightened.
“You knew that box existed.”
“I suspected.”
“You watched my house for fourteen years.”
“I protected you.”
Gabriel laughed once.
“You installed cameras in my bedroom corridor.”
“I needed to know whether you found anything that could reopen old problems.”
“You mean your crimes.”
“I mean our lives.”
“There is no ‘our’ anymore.”
Evan’s expression changed.
Something brittle entered it.
“You think you built Rowan Freight by yourself?”
“No.”
“I covered you when your father’s people wanted you gone. I cleaned up your messes. I negotiated with men you were too angry to speak to. I kept federal investigators away from your books. I made sure you survived long enough to pretend you were becoming legitimate.”
Gabriel stepped closer.
“And Michael?”
Evan looked away.
There.
After fourteen years, Gabriel saw it.
Guilt.
“Say his name.”
“Don’t.”
“Michael.”
“Gabriel.”
“Michael Rowan.”
Evan’s jaw clenched.
“He should have left the accounts alone.”
The sentence entered Gabriel like a blade.
“You killed him.”
“I didn’t intend for Michael to be there.”
“Did you pay Vale?”
Evan said nothing.
“Did you?”
“Yes.”
The word echoed through the empty warehouse.
Gabriel felt no satisfaction.
Only cold.
“What was supposed to happen?”
“The records were supposed to burn.”
“You disabled the sprinklers.”
“I moved money through fake maintenance contracts. Michael discovered it.”
“How much?”
“By then? Maybe six million.”
“You killed my brother for six million dollars?”
“No!”
Evan’s shout cracked through the building.
“I started it for money. Then it became survival.”
Gabriel stared at him.
“Michael threatened to tell your father. Your father would have killed me.”
“So you killed Michael first.”
“I told Vale the warehouse would be empty.”
“You knew Michael wanted to meet me here.”
Evan looked away.
That was the answer.
Gabriel’s voice became almost inaudible.
“You knew.”
Evan finally met his eyes.
“Yes.”
Gabriel lunged.
For three seconds, fourteen years disappeared.
He slammed Evan against a steel column.
Evan did not fight back.
“Do it,” Evan whispered.
Gabriel’s hand closed around his throat.
“Do it. You’ve done worse for less.”
Michael’s face flashed through Gabriel’s mind.
Then Lucy’s drawing.
GOOD PEOPLE LISTEN.
Hannah’s voice.
Don’t give him you too.
Gabriel released him.
Evan slid against the column, coughing.
“You don’t get that from me.”
Evan stared up.
“What?”
“My life.”
A sound came from outside.
Not police.
A vehicle.
Then another.
Evan smiled.
Gabriel’s stomach dropped.
“You weren’t the only one who made arrangements.”
The first shot shattered a high window.
Gabriel dove behind a concrete barrier.
Evan ran.
The building erupted into chaos.
Federal agents moved from their positions outside while two men loyal to Evan attempted to reach a side exit.
Gabriel heard shouting.
Then smelled smoke.
He froze.
Not again.
A stack of rotted pallets had ignited near the rear wall.
The flames climbed quickly.
Evan had prepared the building.
Another fire.
Another attempt to erase evidence.
Gabriel saw him heading toward the old office.
“Evan!”
Evan turned.
For one second, their eyes met through smoke.
Then part of the ceiling collapsed between them.
Gabriel could have left.
The exit was twenty feet away.
Agents were shouting for him to move.
Instead, Gabriel ran through the side corridor.
He found Evan trapped beneath a fallen timber.
Evan stared at him in disbelief.
“What are you doing?”
Gabriel bent and tried to lift it.
“Something you should have done fourteen years ago.”
“Leave me.”
“No.”
“You want me alive so I can go to prison?”
“I want you alive because I refuse to become you.”
Together with two agents, Gabriel pulled Evan free.
They made it outside seconds before flames burst through the roof.
Snow hit Gabriel’s face.
He stood in the parking lot staring at the burning warehouse.
Fourteen years earlier, Evan had dragged him from a fire he helped create.
Tonight Gabriel had saved Evan from another one.
Not out of love.
Not loyalty.
Choice.
Agents put Evan into an ambulance under guard.
Rebecca approached.
“You got the confession.”
Gabriel watched the flames.
“I got part of it.”
“Enough.”
His phone rang.
Hannah.
He answered immediately.
“What happened?”
Her voice shook.
Gabriel heard something behind her.
Glass breaking.
“Hannah?”
“Someone’s in the house.”
Gabriel turned away from the fire.
“Take Lucy and lock yourself upstairs.”
“I already—”
A crash.
Then Hannah screamed.
The line went dead.
Gabriel’s entire body went cold.
Rebecca saw his face.
“What?”
“Evan wasn’t the only threat.”
He ran toward the car.
Twenty-three minutes later, they reached the Evanston townhouse.
The front door hung open.
A lamp lay shattered.
Gabriel ran inside.
“Hannah!”
No answer.
“Lucy!”
The kitchen was empty.
Living room empty.
Upstairs, Hannah’s phone lay smashed beside the bedroom door.
No Hannah.
No Lucy.
Gabriel stared at the broken screen.
Then noticed something on the floor.
A purple crayon.
Ten feet away, another.
Then another near the staircase.
Lucy.
She had left a trail.
Gabriel followed it downstairs and out the rear door.
One final crayon lay beside tire tracks in the snow.
Rebecca crouched.
“There’s something wrapped around it.”
A tiny strip of paper.
Gabriel unfolded it.
In Lucy’s uneven handwriting were four words:
THE MAN SMELLS LIKE ORANGES.
Gabriel knew exactly one man in Evan’s organization who constantly chewed orange-flavored nicotine gum.
Marcus Dane.
Evan’s head of private security.
And Marcus knew every Rowan property in Illinois.
Gabriel looked toward the black night.
“He’s taking them somewhere I own.”
Rebecca stood.
“How do you know?”
“Because men like Marcus don’t improvise.”
Gabriel’s face hardened.
May you like
“And I know exactly where Evan would send someone he wanted nobody to find.”
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