Part 6
Rosie’s shoe lay beside the upstairs banister.
Nico saw it before he saw the blood.
Her room was empty. The covers in Hannah’s adjoining bed were still warm. A trail crossed the runner toward the rear stairs, where Walter knelt beside Rook.
The dog had made it nearly forty feet.
Nico dropped to his knees and slid a hand beneath the enormous head. Rook’s breath came quickly, with pauses that made Nico hold his own.
“Rook,” he said in Italian. “Look at me.”
An amber eye opened. The dog pushed his nose into Nico’s palm.
Then he tried to get up.
Walter caught his chest. Rook braced his front paws and pulled toward the stairs, ignoring the leg that would no longer hold him.
“Stay,” Nico whispered.
Rook dragged himself another inch.
Nico looked down the steps. Beyond them lay the service passage and the route Everett had used.
“Call Hale,” he told Walter. “Tell him to prepare here.”
He stripped off his jacket and pressed it around the wound while Walter fetched a field dressing. Then he put both arms beneath Rook and lifted him.
The dog was too heavy to carry easily. Nico nearly lost his footing on the first turn, caught himself against the wall, and kept going.
At the garage, Walter opened the car door.
“We find where he took them,” Nico said. “Rook comes with us.”
The cameras had caught the SUV leaving the drainage lane. A municipal contact could place a vehicle matching it near the northern freight district, but beyond that the trail broke among dark yards and closed loading bays.
Nico’s men headed for the roads between the river and the old harbor buildings. Two vehicles followed his sedan. Walter drove; Rook lay supported across the front passenger seat, his injured leg bandaged and his muzzle near the partly opened window.
They stopped at intersections and entrances, giving him time to test the air.
At the first two, he offered nothing. At a third, his head lifted.
Walter looked back.
“Slowly,” Nico said.
They turned toward the freight yards.
While they moved, Nico called the financial investigator in Vienna who had helped unravel overseas accounts for him before. Julian had already sent the verified records and recording through secure channels. The investigator had reached bank compliance officers and prosecutors overnight.
By 4:20, three accounts linked to Everett were blocked from outward transfer. Six minutes later, Julian confirmed an emergency preservation order over the company holding the harbor warehouses.
Everett’s money could no longer buy the clean departure he had planned.
Nico ended the call and rested his hand on Rook’s uninjured shoulder.
The dog leaned into it briefly, then returned his nose to the window.
At the warehouse, Everett’s tie hung loose.
He had chosen the building because he knew every exit. Eleven years earlier, he and Nico had waited there with a smuggled shipment, drinking burnt coffee from paper cups while rain hammered the loading doors.
Now Hannah sat on an overturned crate against the wall, Rosie held close in her lap. Two men watched the loading entrance. A third stood by the service door.
Everett spoke into his phone.
“Four million. Cash. You collect the child and I leave safely. The woman comes with her.”
He turned away to listen.
“The old warehouse at berth twenty-four. Seven. Don’t be late.”
Hannah bent close to Rosie’s ear.
“Remember his party?”
Rosie nodded against her.
“The hat kept falling off. You fixed it for him. Stay there in your mind, sweetheart. Stay at that table.”
Rosie opened her hand just enough to look at the small silver star she carried. Hannah had fastened it to Rook’s collar for the first tea party. Later, Rosie had kept it beside her bed; in the confusion upstairs, she had closed her fingers around it before her mother lifted her.
She pressed it back into her palm.
On the harbor road, Rook began to growl.
Walter stopped without being told.
Beyond the windshield, a narrow lane ran between corrugated warehouses toward the river. The dog shifted forward, trying to rise despite the bandage, his nose working toward the open window.
Nico raised a fist through the rear window. The following vehicles went dark and eased onto the shoulder.
They were less than half a mile from the old berth.
Bruno came forward with the other men. Nico divided them into pairs, sending one team toward the loading entrance and Vincent toward the exterior stairs leading to the roof.
“Walter and I take the service side. Nobody fires while he’s holding the child.”
He made each man repeat the condition.
Rook stood on three legs beside him. Nico had fitted the heavy lead loosely over his head so it wouldn’t press against the shoulder dressing. The dog leaned toward the lane, determined enough that Nico had to brace his wrist.
Walter looked at the darkening bandage.
“He’s got almost nothing left.”
“He comes,” Nico said. “I won’t leave him behind.”
Inside, Everett checked his phone again.
The expected assurances had stopped coming. His bank had rejected a transfer. Serrani’s people had begun giving shorter answers.
“What does that mean, ‘wait’?” he demanded into the handset. “I’ve been waiting.”
He ended the call and turned toward Hannah.
“Your husband. All those quiet little evenings with his pencil.” He walked toward her. “Four years’ work, and he found it in six weeks.”
Hannah kept one arm across Rosie’s back.
“He could have kept his mouth shut,” Everett said.
She lifted her face.
“He died honest. You won’t.”
Everett raised the pistol to her forehead.
Rosie slid from her mother’s lap and wrapped both arms around her legs…
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