Chapter 4 - THE WOMAN IN THE PHOTOGRAPH
The safe-deposit box had been opened twenty-three minutes before the sniper fired into Niko’s penthouse.
That detail changed everything.
Someone had known the key existed.
Someone had known where I kept it.
And whoever entered the vault had used my name, my identification number, and a signature close enough to mine to fool a bank employee.
By three in the morning, Niko’s security team had photographs of the woman who impersonated me.
She wore a baseball cap, dark glasses, and a blonde wig.
It didn’t matter.
When Marco enlarged one frame, Arthur stopped breathing.
“You know her,” Niko said.
Arthur looked sick.
“Helena Vale.”
The woman who made my wedding dress.
I stared at the screen.
“She knew my mother?”
“She worked with her for almost ten years,” Arthur said.
“Then she’s working for Vescari?”
“I don’t know.”
Niko’s gaze hardened.
“She sewed a transmitter into Sloane’s wedding dress and emptied her safe-deposit box. I’m comfortable making the assumption.”
Something didn’t feel right.
“Why track me after stealing the key?”
Niko looked at me.
I continued.
“If the key was what they wanted, why attack the penthouse afterward?”
Arthur frowned.
“Maybe to kill you.”
“Then why search my apartment?”
No one answered.
I pointed toward the photograph.
“They still need something.”
Niko’s expression shifted.
“What did the key open?”
“I don’t know.”
“But Helena might.”
I stared at the woman on the screen.
There was something familiar about her posture.
Not her face.
The way she held her handbag.
Close to her body, fingers wrapped around both handles.
A memory surfaced.
My mother standing in our kitchen.
Another woman beside her.
I had been five or six.
“Wait.”
I moved toward Arthur’s bookshelf.
“Do you still have Mom’s old photo albums?”
My father frowned.
“Upstairs.”
“Get them.”
Twenty minutes later, we covered the library table with photographs.
Birthdays.
Vacations.
Campaign events.
Christmas mornings.
My mother appeared in almost every early picture, smiling so brightly that looking at them hurt.
Then I found it.
A photograph taken at our Hamptons house.
My mother stood beside three women.
One was Niko’s mother, Lucia.
The second was Helena Vale.
The third woman was unfamiliar.
On the back, written in my mother’s handwriting:
Catherine, Lucia, Helena, Rebecca.
Four impossible women. August 2008.
Niko picked it up.
“Rebecca who?”
Arthur stared at the photograph.
“I don’t know.”
“You were married to Catherine.”
“She had parts of her life she kept separate from politics.”
“Apparently.”
I looked at Niko.
“If Helena wanted me dead, she had two days when she came to my building.”
“Correct.”
“She also knew my measurements.”
“Yes.”
“She could have planted something more dangerous than a tracker.”
Niko understood first.
“You think she wanted someone else to find you.”
“I think maybe she wanted you to find the tracker.”
Arthur shook his head.
“That makes no sense.”
“Unless she knew Niko would recognize it wasn’t his.”
Marco leaned over the table.
“A warning.”
“Exactly.”
Niko stared at the wedding dress evidence.
“Or misdirection.”
“Either way,” I said, “we need Helena.”
By sunrise, every Santoro contact in New York was looking for her.
At seven seventeen, we got an answer.
She had checked into a small hotel near Grand Central under the name Helen Vance.
At seven forty, we arrived.
Niko insisted I stay in the vehicle.
I lasted approximately ninety seconds.
Then I followed him.
He glared when he saw me step into the elevator.
“You were told to stay downstairs.”
“I heard you.”
“That wasn’t a suggestion.”
“I thought we settled your authority problem.”
Marco looked straight ahead with the concentration of a man desperately pretending not to hear his employer arguing with his wife.
Niko lowered his voice.
“If Helena is dangerous—”
“She knew my mother.”
“That doesn’t make her safe.”
“It makes her my problem too.”
The elevator doors opened.
Niko muttered something in Italian.
I didn’t need translation.
Room 814 stood open.
That was the first bad sign.
The second was blood on the carpet.
Niko shoved me behind him.
“Stay.”
This time I did.
Marco entered first.
Then Niko.
A moment later, his voice came from inside.
“Sloane.”
I entered.
Helena Vale sat on the floor against the bed.
Blood stained the side of her blouse.
A bullet had entered near her shoulder.
Her face was gray.
But she was alive.
When she saw me, she began crying.
“Oh, Catherine.”
I dropped beside her.
“No. I’m Sloane.”
“I know.”
Her shaking hand reached for mine.
“You look exactly like her.”
Niko crouched on the other side.
“Who shot you?”
Helena’s eyes found him.
“Lucia’s boy.”
Niko froze.
“You knew my mother?”
“She loved you more than anything.”
“Who shot you?”
Helena swallowed.
“Gabriel.”
Niko’s eyes hardened.
“Where’s the key?”
“Gone.”
“You stole it.”
“I took it before they could.”
“Why?”
Helena began coughing.
I squeezed her hand.
“Where does it lead?”
Her eyes returned to me.
“Your mother knew she was being followed. She knew Arthur had compromised himself.”
My father’s shame flashed in my mind.
“She didn’t trust banks,” Helena continued. “Didn’t trust police. Didn’t trust prosecutors.”
“So what did she do?”
“She divided everything.”
“What does that mean?”
“The key is useless alone.”
Niko leaned closer.
“What else do we need?”
Helena smiled faintly.
“You.”
I stared.
“What?”
“Catherine always said men who wanted power looked for objects. Papers. Money. Weapons.”
Her fingers tightened weakly around mine.
“She hid the truth inside memories.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You will.”
“Helena, please.”
She looked at Niko.
“Your mother had the other half.”
His face changed.
“What other half?”
“Lucia had the location. Catherine had the key.”
“Where did my mother put it?”
Helena’s eyes filled with sorrow.
“I don’t know.”
Niko stood abruptly.
“Call medical.”
Marco was already doing it.
I stayed beside Helena.
“Who is Rebecca?”
Her entire body went still.
“What?”
I pulled the photograph from my coat pocket.
“The fourth woman.”
Helena stared at it.
Fear entered her eyes.
“Where did you get that?”
“My father kept it.”
“Destroy it.”
“Who is Rebecca?”
“Destroy it.”
“Helena.”
Her grip suddenly became surprisingly strong.
“Rebecca Vescari.”
The name landed like an explosion.
“Luca Vescari’s wife?”
“His sister.”
Niko turned.
Helena whispered, “She helped us.”
“Helped you do what?”
“Copy everything.”
“Where is she now?”
Helena looked toward the hotel window.
“Dead.”
“Another accident?” I asked bitterly.
“No.”
Helena’s eyes found mine.
“Your father killed her.”
I recoiled.
“That’s not true.”
“I watched him.”
“No.”
“He had no choice.”
“That makes no sense.”
“Rebecca was captured. Vescari’s men were coming. She begged Arthur not to let them take her alive.”
I stood so quickly I became dizzy.
“No.”
“Sloane—”
“No.”
Niko reached toward me, then stopped before touching.
Helena’s voice followed me.
“Your father has done terrible things.”
I turned back.
“So has my husband.”
Niko’s face went still.
Helena nodded sadly.
“Yes.”
Then she looked between us.
“That’s why your mothers chose you.”
I stared.
“Chose us for what?”
Helena’s eyes closed.
“For what comes after the truth.”
Before I could ask anything else, shouting erupted in the hallway.
Marco drew his weapon.
Niko pulled me behind the wall.
The hotel fire alarm began screaming.
Smoke poured beneath the door.
“Back stairs,” Marco ordered.
Helena grabbed my wrist.
“Wait.”
She pulled something from beneath her blouse.
A tiny silver medallion.
She pressed it into my palm.
On one side was a rose.
On the other was a single letter.
S.
“Lucia gave me this,” Helena whispered. “She said if anything happened, give it to Catherine’s daughter.”
Niko stared at it.
I turned the medallion over.
The edge separated.
Inside was a paper no larger than my thumbnail.
Three handwritten numbers.
“What do they mean?”
Helena’s eyes found Niko.
“Ask your grandfather.”
The hotel door suddenly exploded inward.
Niko covered me as smoke filled the room.
Marco returned fire.
Somewhere in the chaos, Helena screamed.
Niko dragged me toward the rear exit.
“I’m not leaving her!”
“We have to move!”
“Helena!”
I fought him.
Then a bullet struck the wall inches from my face.
Niko wrapped both arms around me and physically carried me through the door.
We reached the emergency stairwell.
As Marco slammed the metal door behind us, I heard one final gunshot from inside room 814.
Then silence.
Niko looked at the tiny piece of paper in my hand.
His face slowly changed.
“I know what those numbers mean.”
“What?”
He stared at me.
“My mother used to take me to the New York Public Library every Sunday.”
I waited.
“Forty-one,” he said. “Seventeen. Six.”
“A code?”
“No.”
May you like
His eyes met mine.
“A shelf location.”
