Chapter 2 - THE SECOND VERSE
The detectives did not tell me when they would go into the warehouse. I understood why and hated it anyway.
I sat in the same armchair until the fabric left a pattern on the backs of my legs. Outside the sitting-room windows, the last of Declan's birthday guests drove away in long black cars. At three in the morning the mansion looked like a theater after the audience had gone home. Empty glasses sat on trays; silver balloons sagged in the corners. I had spent the previous afternoon polishing the floors for those guests. Now I could barely remember their faces.
Ruth returned with a folded blanket. "The police are checking two sites," she said. "They asked that you stay near your phone."
"I wasn't planning to go anywhere."
She draped the blanket over the chair. "You can be scared and still be allowed to be warm."
I pulled it around my shoulders. No one in Arthur's part of the household had ever spoken to me that way. There had always been a condition behind every kindness: extra shifts, lowered eyes, silence.
Declan appeared with two cups of tea. His expression suggested he'd spent a lifetime delegating tea-making to people he couldn't remember to thank. He set one cup on the table without asking me to drink it.
"Your mother worked for Knox Maritime," he said after a moment. "Do you know when?"
"Until I was fourteen. She died the following spring."
"Her name?"
"Evelyn Davies."
He closed his eyes. When he opened them, a kind of recognition had settled over his face.
"I knew an Evelyn Davies. I was twenty-three. She worked in a little accounts office near Pier Twelve. She brought a tin of biscuits to the night crews during a blizzard."
I gripped the cup. "She baked cinnamon biscuits."
"Yes." His voice went rough. "I remember."
I looked away before he could see how badly that detail hurt. My mother had been reduced in my memory to hospital smells, paperwork, and the sense that our apartment was slowly shrinking around her illness. It was unbearable to think a stranger carried a cheerful memory I had almost lost.
"Did you know she reported something?" I asked.
He shook his head. "My father ran the company then. I was kept out of the books. Arthur was one of his operations managers."
"Maybe she was afraid of him."
Declan held my gaze. "Maybe she had good reason."
The detective called just before dawn. They'd identified the likely warehouse and were arranging an approach. She asked me to repeat the childhood phrase I'd described, then explained they might call on speaker if it was safe. She did not promise an immediate rescue. I was grateful for that, though I hated how careful every word sounded.
At six-thirty my phone rang from an unfamiliar number.
Detective Brooks stood beside me and nodded. An investigator connected a recording device with my permission. I answered, my mouth so dry I could scarcely form a word.
"Hello?"
"You want your brother?" The speaker was a man whose voice I didn't recognize. "Bring the Davies notebook. No cops. You have one hour."
The detective wrote on a pad: ASK PROOF ALIVE. KEEP CALM.
"Let me hear Tommy," I said.
"You heard him already."
"I heard a recording. Please. I have to know he's all right."
The line rustled. There were several quiet voices in the background and a metallic bang. Then someone said, "Talk."
"Clary?"
My heart nearly stopped. "Tommy."
"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I should have told you everything."
"We'll talk when you come home."
He made a strangled sound. "The second verse is missing."
I pressed my fist against my lips. It was him. It was my ridiculous little brother who used to climb into my bed during thunderstorms and pretend he was only checking whether I was afraid.
"I remember the words," I whispered. "Hold on to them."
The man came back on. "The notebook, girl. You understand?"
"I don't have it with me," I said truthfully.
"Then find it."
The line went dead.
Detective Brooks took one look at my face and said, "You did well."
"Don't say that until he's safe."
"Fair."
She left to coordinate with her team. I stayed in the sitting room, rocking forward and back with both hands around the tea I'd forgotten to drink. Every moment stretched until it seemed impossible that an hour could contain only sixty minutes.
Ruth brought food at eight. I ate half a banana because she told me my body needed fuel to keep shaking. At eight-fifteen we heard that officers had secured the perimeter around a building near Harbor Nine. At eight-forty, the detective asked me to stay away from all windows. Declan stood across the room and refused to answer the stream of calls coming into his phone from men who wanted to know why he had allowed police into Knox business.
He told one caller, "A young man was kidnapped by people on my payroll. That takes priority over your feelings."
At nine-twelve, Detective Brooks called again.
"Clary," she said, "Tommy is out. He's conscious. An ambulance is bringing him to Mercy General."
I stared at the phone.
"Out?"
"He's out. Two men were arrested at the scene. Medical staff are checking him."
"Can I see him?"
"Yes. We'll arrange that. There are some questions we'll need to ask later, but right now he needs care."
I tried to thank her. Instead I began crying so hard that the phone slipped in my hand.
Declan crouched beside my chair. "He's alive."
I nodded. "He's alive."
It should have felt like the end of everything. Instead it felt like the floor returning under my feet after days spent falling. I was so exhausted that even relief hurt.
Ruth drove me to the hospital because Declan's presence would have attracted too much attention. Detective Brooks met us near the emergency entrance. Tommy was in a curtained treatment bay, his arm properly immobilized, dried blood visible at the edge of his hairline. His eyes opened when he heard my voice.
"Clary."
I crossed the room and stopped before touching him, terrified of causing pain. He solved the problem by reaching toward me with his uninjured hand.
"You idiot," I whispered, folding myself around him as carefully as I could. "You absolute idiot."
"I know."
"You scared me half to death."
"I know."
I held him until a nurse gently reminded me that he needed to be examined. His broken arm would require follow-up. He was dehydrated, bruised, and exhausted, but the doctors expected him to recover. A social worker asked whether he had somewhere safe to go once he was discharged. He looked toward me. I realized I didn't know the answer. Our apartment address was known to Arthur's people, and I no longer trusted the place where I worked.
Detective Brooks told us a victim advocate could help arrange emergency housing. Declan had offered private accommodations, she said, but she wanted us to have options that weren't controlled by him. I nearly hugged her for that sentence.
Tommy slept for a little while. When he woke, he asked for water and then for an apology he couldn't seem to finish.
"I thought I could pay it," he said. "I borrowed twenty thousand because I thought I could win back what I lost. Arthur introduced me to a man who said it was legal. By the time I knew it wasn't, they had my bank details and your schedule."
"You should have told me."
"I was ashamed."
"I was your sister before you were somebody with a debt."
He stared at the ceiling. "Arthur said the debt was paid. Then he said that didn't matter. He wanted something Mom had hidden. He said you had it."
"The songbook?"
"He called it the Davies book. He said you might not know what it was."
I thought of our mother's handwriting on every page. Little notes in the margins. Dates. A childlike drawing of a bird with one wing longer than the other. I had stored the notebook at the back of a cupboard when we moved to our last apartment. I couldn't remember whether it was still there.
"Did he tell you why he wanted it?" I asked.
Tommy looked suddenly frightened again. "Because it proves someone lied about the harbor money."
"Who?"
"He didn't say. He kept asking whether Mom ever mentioned a blue door. I thought he was crazy."
A blue door. I pictured the accounts office near Pier Twelve from a photograph my mother had once kept on the fridge. It had a blue side door. I hadn't thought about it for years.
Tommy squeezed my fingers. "There's something else. The men at the warehouse talked when they thought I was asleep. One said Arthur wasn't working alone."
"Who was he working with?"
"Somebody who sat at Declan's birthday dinner."
I went cold. Five hundred people had been inside that house. Any one of them might have shared a toast with the man ordering my brother's death.
"Did you hear a name?"
Tommy's gaze shifted toward the curtain.
"Not a name," he whispered. "A title."
"What title?"
"Chairman."
I thought about the old shipping company's board, the contracts Declan had inherited, and the men whose smiles I'd polished silverware beneath. The room seemed suddenly smaller.
"Clary," Tommy said, "don't let anyone make you think this is only about what I owe. I made a terrible choice. But Arthur chose what he did next."
I nodded, unable to speak.
Outside the curtain, a hospital trolley rattled past. Life continued around us. Nurses changed shifts. Someone laughed near the reception desk. For the first time in days, Tommy could hear all of it without wondering whether he would ever leave the room alive.
Then my phone buzzed with a message from Declan.
Naomi found your mother's name in a closed maritime audit from twelve years ago. There's a missing annex. We should talk only when you're ready.
May you like
I read the words twice. Twelve years ago. The year we buried our mother. The year Declan's father died. The year Arthur became his most trusted adviser.
I looked at my sleeping brother, then at the bright hospital windows. Whatever had been hidden in that songbook had waited a long time. I no longer believed it was waiting quietly.
