[COMPLETED] The Quiet Man in Booth Seven Knew Why My Father Died

Silas Kane's funeral home looked respectable enough to make Avery angrier.

White columns. Black awning. Tasteful brass lettering. The kind of place where families trusted strangers with the last physical proof that someone they loved had existed.

Ortiz obtained a warrant for the sedan records, not the building. Kane had reported the car stolen two days earlier. Convenient, but not impossible.

"You don't go near him," Dom said.

They stood outside Rosa's apartment after moving her to a hotel under police protection.

Avery gave him a tired look. "You say that like you get to decide."

"I say it because Kane is dangerous."

"So are you."

Dom did not react defensively. "Yes."

The answer stopped her.

Avery had expected denial. Instead Dom leaned against the hallway wall and looked suddenly older than thirty-seven.

"My father built an organization where danger was currency," he said. "I inherited debts I didn't create and power I didn't want to use the way he used it. That doesn't make me innocent. It makes me responsible for what I do next."

"Is that why you sat in my booth?"

"Partly."

"What's the other part?"

He looked at her for too long.

Avery understood before he spoke and resented understanding.

"Don't."

Dom's jaw tightened.

"Whatever this is," she said, "whatever you think you feel because my father asked you to protect me, don't turn it into something romantic. I need the truth, not another person deciding what my life means."

"You're right."

Again, no argument.

The next morning Ortiz called with the funeral home's vehicle GPS records. The stolen sedan's tracker had been disabled, but previous routes showed repeated trips to a warehouse in Red Hook owned by a Vescari subsidiary.

Pier 14 was six blocks away.

Avery insisted on going only after Ortiz agreed they would observe from a public street.

The warehouse looked abandoned.

Then Avery saw Bradley Hayes walk out.

He was not alone.

A tall man with silver hair followed him to the curb.

Dom swore softly.

"Gabriel Vescari."

Avery studied the man from behind the windshield. Vescari looked less like a criminal mastermind than a retired professor. He wore a camel coat and moved carefully, one hand resting on a cane.

Bradley handed him a folder.

Vescari opened it, read one page, and struck Bradley across the face.

The gesture was quick, almost casual.

Bradley staggered.

Avery felt no satisfaction.

Vescari pointed toward the warehouse and said something they could not hear. Bradley argued. Vescari's driver moved closer. Bradley stopped talking.

Ortiz photographed every exchange.

Then Vescari turned his head.

For one impossible second, Avery thought he was looking directly through the tinted windshield at her.

He smiled.

"Drive," Dom said.

Ortiz pulled away.

They had gone three blocks when Bradley called Avery.

She nearly dropped the phone.

"I need to talk," he said.

"You threatened Rosa."

"I didn't."

"The note at the diner?"

"Not me."

"Then who?"

A pause.

"Kane."

Avery looked at Dom. She put the call on speaker.

Bradley's breathing was ragged.

"My father worked for Vescari. I inherited the contracts and the debt. I went to the diner because I was told to make Rosa sell. The coffee thing—" He swallowed. "I was angry. I was an ass. But I didn't know who you were until Moretti stood up."

"Who am I?"

"You're the name Bellweather was built around."

"I know that."

"No, you don't understand. The company wasn't just a laundering shell. It held voting rights."

Dom straightened.

"Voting rights in what?" he asked.

Bradley recognized his voice and went silent.

"Bradley," Avery said. "If you're calling because you're scared, give me something useful."

He whispered, "Moretti Harbor Holdings."

Dom's face changed.

Avery looked at him.

"What is that?"

"The company that controls Pier 14 and three adjacent shipping properties."

Bradley continued quickly. "Bellweather still owns eight percent. The shares were never dissolved. They transferred to Avery when she turned twenty-one."

Avery felt dizzy.

"Why would anyone do that?"

"Because eight percent is enough to block a sale if two other minority holders join you."

Dom stared through the windshield.

"Vescari has been trying to buy the harbor properties for years."

Bradley gave a frightened laugh. "Not buy. Take."

A horn sounded in the background of his call.

Then Bradley said, "I found where Preston Vale is."

Avery gripped the phone.

"Where?"

Bradley started to answer.

A sharp impact exploded through the speaker.

Metal screamed.

The call went dead.

Ortiz later showed Avery the photographs she had taken outside the warehouse. In one frame, Vescari's cane was lifted enough to reveal he did not actually need it for balance. In another, Bradley's folder showed a red tab with the word BELLWEATHER printed across it.

The meeting had not been general business.

It had been about her.

Avery felt the old instinct to disappear, to make herself smaller until powerful people lost interest. That instinct had kept her alive after Enzo died. It had also kept her uninformed.

She opened her notebook and wrote a sentence across a fresh page:

If they built a plan around me, I get to understand the plan.

Dom read it upside down.

"Your father would approve."

"Stop telling me what my father would approve."

"Fair."

She added another sentence below the first.

And nobody gets to speak for the dead unless they have evidence.

Dom read that one too.