Chapter 5 - THE FRAME
Z
“You’re not going home.”
Norah looked up from the burner phone.
“Excuse me?”
Luca stood near the office door, already issuing instructions to two of his men.
“Someone has been photographing you for weeks. Until we know why, your apartment isn’t secure.”
“My apartment has three locks.”
“Locks are useful when the person outside respects doors.”
“That may be the most mafia sentence I’ve ever heard.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
She grabbed her bag.
Luca stepped in front of her.
Not touching.
Just there.
A wall in Italian wool.
“Move.”
“No.”
Norah blinked.
“Did you just tell me no?”
“Yes.”
“Do women usually find that charming?”
“I’m not trying to charm you.”
“Good, because you’re failing.”
His eyes dropped briefly to her mouth.
The look was gone so quickly she almost wondered if she imagined it.
“Someone arranged for you to be publicly blamed for a felony,” he said. “They knew your schedule. They knew your equipment. They photographed your apartment. Going home alone would be reckless.”
Norah hated that he was right.
She hated it more because his voice sounded nothing like Ryan’s used to when Ryan called her reckless.
Ryan used concern as a leash.
Luca sounded like a man presenting an engineering problem.
That distinction mattered.
“Where exactly do you expect me to go?”
“My house.”
Norah laughed.
He didn’t.
“Oh.”
“It’s secure.”
“I barely know you.”
“That is true.”
“You have armed men.”
“Also true.”
“You’re rumored to run half the criminal economy between here and Milwaukee.”
“That figure is exaggerated.”
She stared.
“That was not the part you were supposed to correct.”
Luca almost smiled.
Eventually they compromised.
Norah would not stay at Luca’s house.
She would stay in a hotel suite under a different name.
The suite happened to occupy a floor controlled by Luca’s company.
His men happened to cover both elevators.
Norah happened to decide not to ask whether that technically counted as winning.
At 1:18 a.m., after security brought her replacement clothing and room service delivered enough food to feed a suburban family, there was a knock.
Norah opened the door.
Ryan stood outside with Luca.
She immediately tried to close it.
Luca caught the door.
“He has something you need to hear.”
Ryan looked exhausted.
His hotel badge was gone.
“Two minutes.”
Norah folded her arms.
“Ninety seconds.”
Ryan stepped inside.
“I didn’t take your picture.”
“What a romantic opening.”
“I’m serious.”
“Eighty seconds.”
“The person who paid me to move the pedestal knew you.”
Norah stopped.
Ryan looked down.
“They called you Nori.”
Nobody called her that anymore.
Not since her grandmother died.
Her throat tightened.
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“Male? Female?”
“Voice changer.”
“How convenient.”
“They knew about your habits. Said you’d notice the pedestal immediately.”
Luca’s expression darkened.
“Then why move it?”
“To make sure she complained.”
Norah felt cold.
Ryan continued.
“They said you’d report it, and that would establish you as being near the display before the theft.”
“Creating motive or opportunity,” Luca said.
Ryan nodded.
“They wanted security focusing on her.”
Norah looked at him.
“And the pouch?”
“I didn’t plant it.”
“Do you know who did?”
“No.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“I expect you to believe I’m greedy, not suicidal.”
Luca’s eyebrows rose.
Ryan quickly corrected himself.
“Not that I think you’d kill me.”
Luca said nothing.
“That silence isn’t helping,” Ryan muttered.
Norah sat on the edge of the sofa.
This wasn’t random.
Someone hadn’t selected her because she was convenient.
They had chosen her because they knew how she worked.
They knew she noticed measurements.
They knew she carried a tool bag.
They knew security would find her believable as an invisible employee until they needed someone to blame.
“Why me?” she whispered.
Ryan reached into his pocket.
Luca moved instantly.
Ryan froze.
“It’s paper.”
He slowly produced a folded photocopy.
“I found this taped beneath my locker after you were taken upstairs.”
Norah unfolded it.
At first she didn’t understand what she was looking at.
An old invoice.
Bennett Exhibition Services.
Dated seventeen years earlier.
Her father’s company.
Norah’s pulse stumbled.
Samuel Bennett had died when she was nineteen.
He had built museum cases and secure exhibition structures across Chicago.
Norah had learned the trade following him through workshops that smelled like sawdust and machine oil.
At the bottom of the invoice was a handwritten project description.
BELLADONNA TEMPORARY DISPLAY MODIFICATION.
Client: G. Vale.
Norah stared.
“My father worked on the Belladonna.”
Luca sat beside her.
“When?”
“Seventeen years ago.”
“Did you know?”
“No.”
She turned the page.
A second sheet showed a technical drawing.
It was a pedestal.
Not tonight’s pedestal.
Older.
Different dimensions.
But the hidden mechanism inside it was nearly identical to the one they discovered after the theft.
Norah’s heart began pounding.
Her father had designed the original system.
Someone had copied it.
Ryan pointed to the bottom corner.
“There’s more.”
A handwritten note in Samuel Bennett’s block lettering:
CUSTOMER REQUESTED SECOND COMPARTMENT. DECLINED. SECURITY RISK. REPORT TO INSURER IF MODIFICATION ATTEMPTED.
Underneath that, another line had been added in red ink.
SAM BENNETT KNEW.
Norah dropped the paper.
For fourteen years, she had believed her father died in an ordinary highway accident during winter rain.
Luca picked up the sheet.
His face had changed.
“What?” Norah asked.
He looked at the date.
Then the client.
Then at her.
“My father died seventeen years ago too.”
Norah went still.
“How?”
“Car accident.”
The room seemed to tilt.
“Same year?”
“Same month.”
Nobody spoke.
Then Luca’s phone rang.
He answered.
“Marco.”
His expression became stone.
“Where?”
Pause.
“Don’t touch anything. I’m coming.”
He ended the call.
Norah stood.
“What happened?”
“They found my uncle’s car.”
“Salvatore?”
“Yes.”
“Was he in it?”
“No.”
Norah exhaled.
Then Luca said the part that made her wish she hadn’t.
“There was blood on the driver’s seat.”
May you like
He picked up his coat.
“And the Belladonna Diamond was sitting on the dashboard.”
