Chapter 6 - THE NIGHT PATRICK MERCER DIED
Adrian’s voice went flat.
“Tell me.”
Gabriel rubbed one hand over his face.
“I spent twenty years hoping you’d never ask that question.”
“That was your mistake.”
Preston stood motionless beside the table.
Evelyn held Patrick’s photograph between both hands.
Gabriel pulled out a metal folding chair.
He sat.
“The restaurant meeting wasn’t supposed to be business.”
Adrian remained standing.
“What was it?”
“Patrick wanted Franklin to sign off on the forty-two-family fund.”
Preston looked toward him.
“My father attended?”
“Yes.”
“I was told he was in Atlantic City.”
“He wasn’t.”
The lie had survived two decades.
Gabriel continued.
“Patrick brought copies of the reserve calculations. Franklin refused.”
“What happened?”
“They argued.”
“That doesn’t explain a shooting.”
“No.”
Gabriel looked at Adrian.
“Patrick told Franklin that if he wouldn’t help repair the damage, Patrick would expose the old reserve scheme himself.”
Adrian’s jaw tightened.
“And destroy both companies.”
“Yes.”
“Thousands of jobs.”
“Yes.”
“Federal charges.”
“Probably.”
Preston gave a bitter laugh.
“My father would’ve considered that a death threat.”
Gabriel looked at him.
“He did.”
Evelyn felt the old hall become colder.
“Did Franklin order Patrick killed?”
“I never heard him say it.”
“Gabriel.”
“I won’t give you certainty I don’t have.”
That answer mattered.
Too many men in their world built entire wars around assumptions.
Gabriel continued.
“Franklin left angry. Twenty minutes later, two men entered through the restaurant kitchen.”
Adrian’s eyes hardened.
“Both shooters were found dead a month later.”
“Yes.”
“My father’s people killed them.”
“Yes.”
“Did they know who hired them?”
Gabriel shook his head.
“They claimed they didn’t.”
“Convenient.”
“Very.”
Preston put both hands on the table.
“My father never told me.”
“No,” Gabriel said. “But your mother suspected.”
“That’s why she paid the families.”
“I think so.”
Preston looked sick.
Evelyn asked, “And my father?”
“Joseph never reached the restaurant.”
“Why?”
“Patrick told him not to.”
Gabriel looked at the rosary in Evelyn’s hand.
“Patrick gave him the watch and the rosary first. Told him to go home and stay away from the waterfront until things settled.”
“And six days later he died at a warehouse.”
“Yes.”
Adrian spoke carefully.
“Franklin’s warehouse?”
Gabriel shook his head.
“Mercer property.”
That was worse.
Evelyn felt her anger shift.
Not toward Preston.
Toward Adrian.
Toward the name he carried.
Toward the offices and warehouses that had paid her salary for two years.
“Was the lift defective?”
“Yes.”
“Had it been reported?”
Gabriel hesitated.
Evelyn understood before he answered.
“Had it?”
“Twice.”
She closed her eyes.
Her father had not been murdered.
That should have brought relief.
It did not.
Because the truth was somehow uglier in its ordinariness.
A broken lift.
Two safety reports.
Ignored maintenance.
A company too careless because workers were cheaper than repairs.
Joseph Monroe had survived powerful men trying to silence him.
Then died because somebody didn’t replace a hydraulic line.
Evelyn looked at Adrian.
“My father died in one of your family’s buildings.”
Adrian did not look away.
“Yes.”
“After he’d spent weeks trying to make your father fix what that family had done.”
“Yes.”
“You hired me.”
The words came out differently.
Adrian became very still.
Gabriel looked between them.
Evelyn remembered the first interview.
Adrian watching her across that enormous desk.
His strange interest in where she had grown up.
What her father had done.
Which waterfront district.
At the time she had thought he was deciding whether she belonged.
Now another possibility opened.
“How long?”
Adrian’s expression changed.
“Evie.”
“How long did you know my father’s name?”
Preston looked sharply at Adrian.
Gabriel lowered his eyes.
Evelyn’s stomach dropped.
“Adrian.”
He answered.
“Before I hired you.”
The old union hall disappeared around her.
She heard only that sentence.
Before I hired you.
“You knew?”
“I knew Joseph Monroe’s name.”
“And you knew he was my father.”
“Not at first.”
“When?”
“The second interview.”
Evelyn laughed once.
It was a small, broken sound.
“You asked what he did for a living.”
“Yes.”
“You asked where.”
“Yes.”
“You already knew.”
“I suspected.”
She pushed back from the table.
Adrian stepped toward her.
“Don’t.”
He stopped.
For two years she had trusted him with secrets capable of destroying his organization.
He had trusted her with numbers nobody else saw.
They had worked nights together.
Shared meals.
Argued over acquisitions.
Sat beside each other at his mother’s memorial dinner while Adrian said almost nothing for three hours.
He knew how she took coffee.
She knew which old injury made him favor his right shoulder when he was tired.
And beneath all of it had been this.
“You hired me because of my father.”
“No.”
“Don’t insult me.”
“I hired you because you found a seven-million-dollar theft in three weeks.”
“After interviewing me because of my father.”
Adrian said nothing.
The silence answered.
Evelyn reached for her coat.
“Evie.”
“No.”
“I was trying to understand—”
“What? Whether I knew something?”
“Yes.”
“At least you admit it.”
Adrian’s face showed something she rarely saw.
Fear.
Not of violence.
Of losing something he could not order back into place.
“I kept you because you were better than anyone I had.”
“That does not erase why you looked at me in the first place.”
“I know.”
“And you never told me.”
“I should have.”
“Yes.”
“I thought the connection was dead.”
She lifted the old freight ticket.
“My father isn’t a connection.”
“I know that too.”
“No. Tonight you know it.”
That landed.
Adrian took it without defending himself.
Preston looked away.
Even Gabriel seemed uncomfortable.
Evelyn put on her coat.
“I’ll finish finding the thirty-four million.”
Adrian stared at her.
“And after?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you leaving Mercer Atlantic?”
“I said I don’t know.”
She turned toward the exit.
Then stopped.
Something on the forty-two-name list had caught her attention.
One notation.
She moved back to the table.
The final name was crossed out differently than the others.
Not with ink.
With pencil.
Beside it was a date from six months earlier.
Evelyn frowned.
“This person is still alive.”
Gabriel leaned closer.
“Who?”
“Samuel Pike.”
Preston’s face tightened.
Evelyn noticed.
“You know him.”
Preston did not answer.
Adrian looked at him.
“Preston.”
He exhaled.
“Pike was my father’s controller.”
“The man who managed the reserve?” Evelyn asked.
“Yes.”
“Where is he?”
Preston looked down at the list.
“He retired twelve years ago.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“He lives outside Cherry Hill.”
Gabriel looked stunned.
“You knew he was alive?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because six months ago he came to me.”
Evelyn stared.
“What did he want?”
Preston reached into his wallet again.
He removed a small brass key.
Stamped into it were two words.
SAFE 42.
“He gave me this.”
Adrian’s eyes narrowed.
“What does it open?”
Preston looked at Evelyn.
“I never found out.”
She took the key.
Then noticed the tiny mark scratched below the number.
May you like
The same little ship her father had engraved onto her bracelet.
---
