Chapter 7 - The Road to Lake Geneva Was Already a Trap

Nadia read the message until the handwriting blurred.

Three days earlier.

Elias had been alive three days earlier.

That fact should have felt like hope. Instead, it felt like a hook buried under her ribs.

“They know where we’re going,” Matteo said.

“Then we turn around,” Luca answered.

Nadia looked at him. “No.”

“The photograph changes the situation.”

“It proves Elias is alive.”

“It proves someone wants me at the lake.”

“And my brother is their leverage.”

Luca met her stare. “Which is why walking into the location they chose is not rescue. It is compliance.”

For ten minutes they argued beside the service road while rain moved through the pine trees in silver sheets. Finally Nadia forced herself to separate the message from the destination.

“Elias chose the lake before they did,” she said. “His drive is there regardless of this photograph.”

Matteo nodded slowly. “We don’t go to the cabin. We go to the storage location first.”

Luca considered it.

Nadia added, “And we do not bring a parade of armed men that announces exactly where we are.”

Matteo almost smiled. Luca did not.

They changed vehicles at a truck stop and divided the security team. Nadia and Luca continued in an ordinary gray sedan with Matteo driving. The rest moved separately.

By sunset, Lake Geneva lay dark beneath a low sky.

The Reiss family cabin had been sold years ago, so Nadia directed Matteo to the public beach two miles away. The pier where she had taught Elias to swim had been rebuilt, but the old concrete changing house still stood near the parking lot.

“The place where you taught me not to be scared of deep water,” Nadia repeated.

She walked past the pier toward a row of weathered lockers built into the back wall of the changing house.

When they were children, their mother had rented locker fourteen every summer because July 14 was her birthday.

Locker fourteen was rusted shut.

Nadia used a coin to pry away paint around the keyhole.

The brass key from Elias’s video would have fit perfectly.

Except they did not have it.

“He showed the key,” Luca said. “He didn’t say you needed the key.”

Nadia stared at the locker.

As children, Elias had once lost the key while swimming. Their mother, annoyed and sunburned, had shown Nadia a maintenance latch accessible through the narrow vent at the top.

Nadia found a piece of wire in Matteo’s emergency kit and worked it through the opening.

The latch clicked.

Inside lay a waterproof pouch.

Nadia’s knees weakened.

The pouch contained a small encrypted drive, an old Polaroid of Nadia and Elias as children, and a handwritten note.

Nad—Trust the time stamps, not the signatures.

Behind them, a car door slammed.

Matteo turned first.

A man stood at the edge of the parking lot with both hands visible.

Victor Salvi.

Nadia knew his face from photographs: early forties, black hair silvering at the temples, expensive coat, the polished appearance of a man who preferred other people to make messes for him.

Luca stepped in front of Nadia.

Victor stopped ten yards away.

“If I wanted you dead,” he said, “I would not have thrown an envelope at your windshield.”

Matteo’s hand stayed under his jacket.

Luca’s voice was flat. “You expect me to thank you?”

“I expect you to stop blaming me long enough to survive your own family.”

Nadia saw Luca’s shoulders tighten.

Victor looked at her. “Your brother came to me eight months ago.”

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know.”

“You sent the photograph.”

“I sent the photograph because one of Kroll’s men was carrying it.”

Nadia stepped around Luca. “Then why write that message?”

“To get Luca here without using a phone his uncle monitors.”

Rafael.

Victor continued, “Elias discovered something that scared Kroll enough to betray everyone. Kroll has been selling pieces of the truth to Rafael, the hospital board, and federal investigators. He intends to be the last man standing.”

Luca said, “Convenient story.”

Victor’s mouth tightened. “Ask yourself who knew about your meeting location before you were shot.”

“Rafael did.”

“And who insisted I be blamed before the blood on your shirt was dry?”

Luca said nothing.

Victor looked at the drive in Nadia’s hand.

“Whatever Elias hid there is why people keep dying.”

A red dot appeared on Victor’s chest.

Nadia saw it first.

“Down!”

Luca hit Victor from the side as the shot cracked across the parking lot.

The bullet shattered the locker door behind them.

Matteo dragged Nadia behind the concrete wall.

A second shot struck the pavement.

And from somewhere beyond the trees, a familiar voice shouted her name.

“Nadia!”

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Elias was there.

The gunshot echoed over the lake a second time, and Nadia tightened her grip on the waterproof pouch. Whoever had staged the meeting wanted both Luca and the drive in the same place. Now Elias’s voice had entered the trap as well. She could not tell whether that made rescue closer or whether it meant the trap had just closed around all three of them.