Chapter 7 - The Woman in the Locked Room
The photograph of Celeste had been taken less than an hour before the message arrived. Sofia noticed a small detail behind the chair: a safety sign with a manufacturer logo that had gone out of business nine years earlier.
I recognized the sign. My father had used the same model in industrial refrigeration plants.
“That's a cold-storage facility,” I said. “And if it's still operating, it has a huge electrical load.”
Investigators narrowed the search using records of properties tied to Vittorio's shell companies. One was an abandoned refrigerated warehouse near the river. Officers prepared a rescue operation. Dominic was instructed to stay away.
He agreed, then paced his kitchen like a caged animal.
“Celeste was the only one who kept telling me Mercer couldn't be trusted,” he said. “I dismissed her for years.”
“You can apologize when she comes home.”
“And if she doesn't?”
“Then you will still have done the right thing by not making a rescue harder.”
He looked at me. “You're very difficult.”
“Professionally.”
The police entered the warehouse shortly before dawn. They found Celeste alive in a locked office. She had a bruised wrist and a furious expression. The room had been rigged with a faulty space heater and a damaged extension cord, apparently intended to start a fire if the kidnappers abandoned the building.
The officers cut power safely and brought her out.
Vittorio wasn't there.
Neither was Mercer.
But Celeste had heard their argument. Vittorio wanted to flee. Mercer insisted the trust documents would still work if Dominic suffered one final episode. They had been planning something for the charity gala scheduled that weekend.
“Why would they try it in public?” Dominic asked.
“Because if you collapse in front of donors and board members,” Sofia said, “there are witnesses to your supposed incapacity.”
Dominic canceled the gala's private security contract, replaced the event's electrical contractor, and informed police of the threat. The charity board considered canceling. Instead, they postponed the event until a full safety review could be completed.
That disappointed Mercer. It also forced him to improvise.
He sent me a message that evening.
YOUR FATHER BEGGED TOO.
I stared at the words until my hands stopped shaking. Then I forwarded them to the detective.
Dominic found me in the workshop, sitting on a stool beneath my father's wrench.
“I keep imagining the last minutes of his life,” I said. “I hate that I can't stop.”
Dominic sat on the floor beside me. He looked absurd in his expensive coat among the extension cords and boxes of wire nuts.
“My father died when I was twenty-seven,” he said. “I spent years imagining that if I'd been smarter, stronger, more feared, I could have saved him. I made myself into a man nobody would challenge. And all that time I was letting Mercer tell me what to believe.”
“You didn't know.”
“I should have asked.”
“We can both wish we'd asked more questions. That doesn't mean we caused what happened.”
He reached for my hand and stopped just short. “May I?”
I threaded my fingers through his.
It was such a small thing. No grand promise, no dramatic kiss. Just a man asking permission and a woman deciding she wanted to say yes.
At nine the next morning, the detective called with news: Mercer had crossed into Wisconsin using a false identity. Vittorio had been spotted near a private airstrip.
Then Sofia found a payment scheduled to clear that afternoon, addressed to a contractor under a name I knew.
Jo Ellis. My apprentice.
I called her immediately.
She answered in a whisper. “Penny, I'm sorry. They said they'd hurt my brother if I didn't help.”
May you like
Behind her, a man said, “Tell your boss the next repair is already scheduled.”
The line went dead.
