Chapter 9 - THE MAN ABOVE
The hidden shooter was dead before Belle saw his face.
Federal agents found him on the catwalk.
Former Boston detective named Neil Carden.
Retired five years earlier.
Still carrying a police badge.
Renick survived.
The bullet passed through the muscle above his ribs.
Painful.
Not fatal.
Belle was angry at him for being alive in a hospital bed.
That made no sense.
She did not examine it.
Brinley sat beside him holding three fingers.
Not his whole hand.
Three fingers.
Renick seemed afraid to move.
Micah ate crackers from a vending machine.
He offered Renick one.
Renick took it.
“It’s stale.”
Micah shrugged.
“Hospital.”
Belle laughed before she meant to.
Renick looked at her.
She stopped.
Then laughed again.
The tension broke badly.
Perfectly.
Sebastian survived the extinguisher too.
He lawyered up.
No confession.
But Thomas’s drives kept opening.
One showed payments from Sebastian to Neil Carden.
Another showed the order to sabotage Maeve’s SUV.
Another showed the warehouse fire payment.
Thomas had documented his own murder before it happened.
Belle stared at the transaction.
$40,000.
That was what Thomas’s life had cost them.
She hated the number.
Too small.
Too specific.
Renick noticed her staring.
“Don’t do that.”
“What?”
“Put a price on him because they did.”
Belle looked at him.
He understood more than she wanted him to.
Then Declan arrived with the final decrypted file.
It was not about Sebastian.
It was about Renick.
Maeve had recorded a message for him.
Renick watched alone.
Then asked Belle to watch.
Maeve said.
“If you’re seeing this, you probably turned Boston upside down.”
Renick almost smiled.
She continued.
“Don’t.”
“Brinley doesn’t need a war.”
“She needs a father who comes home.”
Renick looked away.
Maeve explained Sebastian’s plan depended on Renick responding with violence.
Every retaliation created another enemy.
Another scared family.
Another future Sebastian could use.
Then Maeve said.
“End it differently.”
Belle watched Renick hear the one instruction his whole life had not prepared him to obey.
The next morning, Sebastian was moved to federal detention.
Before transport, he asked to speak to Renick.
Renick refused.
Sebastian laughed.
Then said something through his attorney instead.
“Ask Belle why Thomas really joined us.”
Belle froze.
May you like
Because she did not know either.
