Chapter 15 - The Storage Unit on Route 9
I stepped out of the surveillance van into the freezing drizzle.
The dock was swarming with federal agents, state police, and Coast Guard personnel. Victoria Sterling was already being marched up the gangway in handcuffs, her camel coat soaked, her face twisted in sneering defiance until she locked eyes with me.
She stopped. “You think you won, Nora?” she spat. “You have nothing left. Your house is a crater. Your life is bankrupt.”
“I have my daughter,” I said, looking through her as if she were made of cheap glass. “And you have thirty years in a federal penitentiary for wire fraud and conspiracy to commit murder.”
Victoria’s mouth snapped shut. An agent pushed her into the back of a state cruiser.
Julian was hauled to his feet by two state troopers. His face was scraped raw from the dock boards, his charcoal coat torn, his hair plastered to his forehead with rain.
He looked at me. For the first time in ten years, I saw the true face of the man I had loved: small, desperate, and utterly hollow.
“Nora,” he wheezed, his voice pathetic now. “Please. You have to tell them it was an accident. If I go away... who’s going to provide for Lily? Think about Lily!”
“Lily is the one who knew you were a monster before I did,” I said, stepping right up to his chest. “She told me at Gate 14. She saved my life from you.”
Julian’s eyes widened with genuine shock. “She... she told you?”
“You thought you could buy her silence with a beach trip,” I whispered. “You underestimated your own child. Just like you underestimated me.”
Investigator Chen walked up, holding Julian’s leather duffel bag. Inside were three fresh Austrian passports under false names, two bearer bond certificates totaling $1.8 million, and a set of keys with a brass tag labeled: *Route 9 Self-Storage, Unit 412.*
Marcus wiped the blood from his cheek with the back of his hand, looking down at the keys. “Route 9. That’s five miles from your house.”
May you like
“Chen,” I said, turning to the investigator. “Take us there right now.”
***
