Chapter 4 - The Body I Never Saw
I ran to Captain Bear.
Logan tried to follow.
I stopped him with one hand.
"Stay."
The bear looked untouched.
Then I saw the seam along its back.
Someone had cut my stitching.
The Bluetooth tracker was gone.
In its place was a folded piece of paper.
Three words.
VALE IS WATCHING.
The handwriting hit me before I understood it.
David's block letters.
The D leaned left.
The W had one middle point too tall.
I sat down on the hospital floor.
Logan touched my shoulder.
"Daddy writes like that."
I looked at him.
He had been six weeks old when David disappeared.
He could not know that.
"How do you know?"
Logan pointed at the note.
"Uncle Nate has cards."
Nathan Cole.
David's best friend.
Logan's godfather.
The man who had paid my electric bill the winter after David died.
The man who still came every Sunday with pancakes.
I called Alessandro's guard.
"I need to talk to him now."
Ten minutes later, I stood beside Alessandro's ICU bed.
He looked gray.
Weak.
Alive.
I put the autopsy report on his blanket.
"The body had the wrong fracture."
He nodded.
"I know."
"Then whose body did I bury?"
He shut his eyes.
"A man named Samuel Pike."
"Who?"
"An accountant. He was supposed to meet David that night."
My legs weakened.
"Why?"
"Because they both found the same thing."
"What thing?"
"Money that belonged to everyone and no one."
I almost laughed.
"That means nothing."
"Federal seizures. Romano cash. Hospital procurement funds. Construction contracts. Somebody was skimming from all of it."
"David was an accountant for a medical supplier."
Alessandro looked at me.
"That was his cover."
The word landed harder than the gunshots.
"Cover for what?"
"Federal forensic work."
I stepped back.
"No."
"He was undercover."
"No."
"Catherine—"
"Don't say my name like you knew him better than I did."
Alessandro's monitor climbed.
A nurse moved toward us.
He lifted one hand.
"He thought I was the target."
"Were you?"
"At first."
"Then who?"
He reached toward the side drawer.
The guard helped him.
Alessandro pulled out a photograph.
Marcus Vale stood near a courthouse entrance.
Beside him was another man.
Dark hair.
Doctor's coat folded over one arm.
Silver eagle tie clip.
Nathan Cole.
My throat closed.
"That picture is fake."
"No."
"Nathan hates the mob."
"People hate a lot of things in public."
I stared.
Nathan had helped me choose David's cemetery plot.
He had held Logan during the funeral.
He had been the one to tell me David would want me to keep living.
Alessandro said, "Ask your friend why he met Vale three days before your husband's crash."
My phone buzzed.
Nathan.
I answered.
"Catherine? I heard there was a shooting at the hospital. Are you safe?"
I looked at his face in the photograph.
"Can I come over?"
A pause.
"Of course."
"I need you to look at Logan."
"Bring him."
His voice softened.
"And Catherine?"
"What?"
"Don't talk to Romano again."
I stopped breathing.
I had never told Nathan Alessandro was alive.
May you like
CUT.
