Chapter 10 - The Photograph That Proved Someone Had Been Lying for Years

Elias Creel did not sound like a dead man.

He sounded tired.

“Vivien,” he said. “I am sorry.”

She gripped the edge of the control desk. “Three years.”

“I know.”

“No. You don’t get to say that. You don’t know.”

Silas reached for the phone.

Vivien slapped his hand away with her good one. “Don’t.”

He stepped back.

Mave noticed.

Elias gave them an address outside the city, an old observatory closed to the public for renovations. He claimed it was neutral ground. Nobody trusted him.

They went anyway because every alternative had already burned.

The observatory sat beneath a low gray sky, its dome streaked with rust. Teresa checked the building first. Voss insisted on entering unarmed. Silas refused until Mave asked one question.

“If Elias wanted us dead, why call?”

“To bring us somewhere controlled,” Silas said.

“Then guns won’t make it uncontrolled.”

He looked at her for a long second and lowered his weapon.

Elias waited in the planetarium.

He was thinner than the photographs Vivien had once shown Silas, his dark hair mostly silver now, one leg supported by a cane. Vivien stopped ten feet away.

Neither moved.

Then she crossed the distance and struck him across the face.

Mave almost smiled.

Elias accepted it without protest.

“I deserved that.”

“You deserve three years of them.”

“I know.”

“Stop saying that.”

He did.

Silas wasted no time. “Northstar.”

Elias looked at Mave. “You decoded Celia’s scores.”

“You used my mother.”

“Yes.”

At least he did not decorate the answer.

“Did Renato kill my father?”

“I believe so. Northstar contains the proof.”

“Then open it.”

“I can’t.”

Mave laughed once. “Of course.”

Elias removed a small brass key from inside his coat. “I have the physical key. You have authority. But the archive location encoded in Celia’s music is incomplete.”

“We decoded Northstar.”

“That identifies the trust, not the vault.”

“What completes it?”

Elias looked at Vivien.

She stared back. “No.”

He said nothing.

Vivien’s voice sharpened. “You told me that photograph was destroyed.”

Mave looked between them. “What photograph?”

Elias opened a leather folder.

Inside was an old picture taken at a church fundraiser. Celia Holloway stood beside Elias Creel near a piano. Father Rainer was behind them. Daniel Voss was carrying folding chairs.

And at the far edge of the frame stood Renato Carbone.

Mave leaned closer.

Renato was not looking at Elias.

He was looking at Celia.

On the back, her mother had written a sentence in blue pencil.

When the north star disappears, follow the man who watches the music.

Silas swore softly.

Mave studied the background. A stained-glass window showed Saint Cecilia, patron saint of music, holding a small organ.

Beneath it was a plaque.

ST. CECILIA’S MEMORIAL CRYPT.

Father Rainer’s church.

The safe house had burned, but the church itself still stood.

“The vault is under the church,” Mave said.

Elias nodded.

“Why didn’t you retrieve it?”

“Because only the beneficiary could enter the final compartment without triggering destruction of the originals.”

“Very dramatic.”

“Very necessary.”

Vivien still stared at the photograph.

“What?” Mave asked her.

Vivien pointed to the date printed on the bottom corner.

Mave read it.

The photograph had been taken fourteen years ago.

Two years before Celia supposedly met Elias through the church program.

Mave looked at him.

“You lied about when you knew my mother.”

Elias’s shoulders lowered.

“Yes.”

Silas stepped forward. “Why?”

Elias’s gaze remained on Mave.

“Because Thomas Holloway introduced us.”

Mave felt the floor tilt.

“My father knew you?”

“He came to me after his reports disappeared. He believed the police contact assigned to his case was compromised. He had evidence against Northstar’s precursor accounts.”

“So my parents were involved before his death.”

“Yes.”

“You let me believe my mother was recruited afterward.”

“I was trying to protect their choice.”

Mave’s laugh was brittle. “Everyone in this room has a religion. Yours is apparently deciding what other people deserve to know.”

Elias accepted that.

Then Teresa’s phone buzzed.

She checked the message and looked at Silas.

“Father Rainer is alive.”

Relief moved through the room.

Teresa continued.

“He was pulled from the building before the fire.”

“By who?” Silas asked.

She turned the screen toward them.

A traffic camera showed two men forcing Rainer into a sedan.

The driver’s face was visible.

Silas stared at it.

Mave knew the answer before he spoke.

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“My uncle,” he said.

Mave folded the photograph closed and slid it back into the leather folder. She did not want another revelation until the first ten had found somewhere to land. But there was no pause available. Renato had Rainer, the archive location was no longer theoretical, and Elias’s return changed every alliance in the room. The dead had started talking, the living had started admitting lies, and daylight was still hours away.