Chapter 7 - Ghost in the Glass
"She wasn't the only one," Natalia sobbed from the floor, her cheek pressed hard against the cold concrete as the acid fumes curled into the air. "Valerie, please! Listen to me! He was going to kill me too!"
I walked over to where she lay pinned beneath the officer’s boot. I crouched down until my face was inches from hers. The mother in me wanted to tear her throat out; the combat officer forced my voice to stay level, razor-sharp, and terrifyingly cold.
"Talk, Natalia. You have ten seconds before I tell these officers to step outside and let us have a private conversation."
Natalia’s pupils dilated in pure, primitive terror. She looked at the bloodstained combat ribbons on my chest, looked into eyes that had stared down suicide bombers, and she broke completely.
"It started two years ago," she gasped, her tears cutting tracks through the soot and sweat on her cheeks. "Fernando... he lost everything in the crypto collapse. But he had investors. Cartel people from Tijuana. They laundered forty million through his real estate firm. When the money vanished, they told him they would skin him alive if he didn't pay it back."
"The trust fund," I said.
"Yes! He tried to get the trust broken in court, but your father’s lawyers had it locked down like iron! The only way out was Sophia's death!" Natalia wept hysterically. "He told me if I helped him, we’d take the money and flee to Dubai. He said he had a contact in the state department who would give us new identities."
"Who helped him with the medications?" I demanded, pressing the edge of my boot against her shoulder. "Rocuronium is a Schedule II controlled paralytic. You can't buy that on the street."
"Dr. Vance!" she screamed. "And Morales, the mortician! Morales has an illegal crematorium in the basement of San Gabriel! He’s done this before! He disposes of bodies for the syndicates! Fernando paid him half a million to burn Sophia’s casket without logging it into the state registry! The furnace was already hot when you showed up, Valerie! It was supposed to be over by noon!"
My stomach heaved with violent, volcanic nausea.
If I had arrived at that funeral home ten minutes later...
If I hadn't leaned down to whisper that final goodbye...
If Sophia hadn't mustered the last ounce of strength in her poisoned body to say *Mommy, I'm cold...*
"Miller," I said, standing up, my voice dead. "Get your tactical teams to San Gabriel Funeral Home right now. Arrest Morales. Secure the furnace. And get a warrant for Dr. Harold Vance before he boards a flight."
Miller tapped his radio immediately, barking orders at the precinct watch commander.
While he spoke, I walked past the child’s bed toward a small recessed closet at the rear of the bunker. I pulled open the louvered door, expecting to find more drugs or forged paperwork.
Instead, I found a row of dresses.
Not Sophia’s dresses.
They were adult women’s clothes. Old, faded, smelling of mildew and decades of dampness. And taped to the inside of the closet door was a framed black-and-white photograph of a young woman holding a baby in front of the very same estate.
The woman was Fernando’s older sister, Elena Holloway.
May you like
The sister who had allegedly committed suicide twenty-two years ago by jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge—the sister whose body was never found, and whose multi-million-dollar life insurance policy had funded the launch of Fernando’s father’s real estate empire.
***
