Chapter 6 - The Secret Helen Bell Kept for Twelve Years
Helen Bell looked nothing like the woman I had imagined from Orson's mother's note.
I expected someone severe.
Secretive.
Maybe frightened.
Instead, she looked tired.
Not the tiredness of one bad night.
The tiredness of someone who had been carrying the same terrible truth for years and had forgotten what it felt like to put it down.
Aldric stood by a steel table across from me.
We were inside a warehouse office. I could hear trucks somewhere outside, but no traffic, no voices, nothing that told me where we were.
My wrists were tied behind the chair.
My ankles were bound.
Helen sat three feet away, unrestrained.
"Why am I here?" I asked.
Aldric poured himself a glass of water.
"Because my nephew has become emotional."
"Orson doesn't strike me as emotional."
"You haven't known him long enough."
"Apparently neither have you."
His eyes lifted.
I had learned something useful over the previous twenty-four hours.
Men who were accustomed to fear did not know what to do with irritation.
Aldric put down the glass.
"Walter had the same mouth."
"Did he also make you this uncomfortable?"
Helen almost smiled.
Aldric noticed.
"Don't," he told her.
The smile disappeared.
He turned back to me.
"Where is the casing?"
"You already tried burning my shop for it. You should know."
"Where is it?"
"Somewhere safe."
He walked closer.
"There is no safe place in Chicago I cannot reach."
"That's exactly the kind of sentence men say right before discovering they were wrong."
His hand struck the back of my chair.
I flinched despite myself.
He smiled.
"There you are."
I hated that he had seen the fear.
Then Helen spoke.
"Leave her alone."
Aldric looked at her.
"You don't get to give instructions anymore."
"Neither do you. Not for much longer."
Something passed between them.
Old hatred.
Old grief.
Aldric leaned down until his face was close to mine.
"Orson will bring me the evidence. He will bring me the ring. And then all of this ends."
"He won't trade proof for me."
Aldric laughed softly.
"That's where you're wrong."
I wanted to believe him wrong.
I wanted to believe Orson would choose logic, evidence, strategy.
Instead, I remembered the way he had thrown himself over me when the office window shattered.
The way he had stood outside my grandfather's burned workshop because the dead man's letter said I should read alone.
The way he had said stay beside me as if it were an order and a promise at once.
My chest tightened.
Aldric saw too much in my face.
"Interesting," he murmured.
Then a guard entered.
"Call came in."
Aldric took the phone.
"Yes?"
Orson's voice was faint but unmistakable.
"Put Rosie on."
Aldric smiled.
"Not yet."
"If I don't hear her voice, you get nothing."
Aldric looked at me and held the phone near my mouth.
"Talk."
"Orson?"
His answer came immediately.
"Are you hurt?"
Not where are you.
Not what did he say.
Are you hurt?
"No."
Aldric pulled the phone away.
Orson's voice hardened.
"I have the casing, the sample, and the ring. You release her first."
"You don't set the terms."
"Then kill me and be done with it."
Aldric's smile vanished.
"What?"
"You wanted control nine years ago. You wanted it again tonight. So stop hiding behind women, surgeons, old men, and hired guns. Tell me where to come."
I stared at the phone.
Aldric's eyes darkened.
"You think this is courage?"
"No. I think you taught me something useful when I was a boy. Never threaten a man with the thing he has already accepted losing."
Aldric ended the call.
His hand shook.
Just once.
Helen saw it too.
"He isn't afraid of you anymore," she said.
Aldric slapped her.
The sound cracked through the room.
I lunged against the ropes.
"Don't touch her!"
Helen turned her face back slowly.
A red mark spread across her cheek.
But her eyes were steady.
"That," she whispered, "is exactly how his father looked at you the night he died."
Aldric froze.
I stopped moving.
Orson's father.
Aldric stepped toward her.
"Careful."
Helen laughed, a small broken sound.
"Why? You going to kill me too? You should have done it twelve years ago."
"Helen-"
"Rosie deserves the truth. Orson deserves it. And I am too old to spend another year helping you keep it buried."
Aldric's jaw tightened.
He turned to the guard.
"Watch them."
Then he left.
The door locked.
For several seconds, neither of us spoke.
Then Helen looked at me.
"Can you get your hands free?"
"Not unless you have a file hidden in your shoe."
"No. But Walter taught me a trick once."
My heart jumped.
She reached up and removed a thin gold hairpin.
"He said every lock is just a machine waiting for someone patient enough to understand it."
"That sounds like him."
Helen crossed the room and began working on the knot behind my wrists.
"You knew my grandfather well?"
"Very."
"Then tell me the truth."
Her hands stopped.
"Which truth?"
"All of it."
Helen exhaled slowly.
"Walter saved Marcella Dramore's life in 1998."
"Orson's mother."
"Yes. Aldric's men followed her after she discovered money disappearing from the family businesses. She came into your grandfather's shop because she knew him through my husband, Hector. Walter hid her in the basement and told the men she'd gone out the alley."
"That's why she saved the shop."
"She paid his mortgage anonymously. Walter found out anyway. He hated owing people."
I smiled through sudden tears.
"That sounds like him too."
Helen loosened the rope.
"Hector was a metallurgist and gunsmith. Brilliant, foolish, proud. He designed specialty alloys for collectors. The three waves and diamond were his mark. Three waves for our three children who died before birth. The diamond for me."
I swallowed.
The symbol that had frightened me for thirteen years had once been a love mark.
Then Aldric turned it into something else.
"He made the bullet?"
"He made the alloy. Not willingly. Aldric forced him to modify one batch so it would splinter near bone and nerves. Hector refused at first. Aldric threatened me."
"And my grandfather inspected it."
"Hector trusted Walter. He took him a sample secretly and asked if there was a way to identify it later. Walter cut the test notch. They were building evidence together."
"Against Aldric?"
"Against what Aldric had already done."
The rope came loose.
I pulled my hands free.
"What had he done?"
Helen sat back.
"Killed Orson's father."
The words landed heavier than anything else.
"How?"
"Warehouse accident, they called it. A collapsed loading platform. But Hector fabricated the replacement support pin. After the accident he examined the broken one and knew it had been cut beforehand. Aldric wanted control of the family while Orson was young. Marcella suspected. Hector proved it. Walter helped him document the tool marks."
"Then why wasn't Aldric exposed?"
"Because Hector died before he could deliver the evidence."
"How?"
Helen's eyes filled.
"Hit-and-run. Eleven years ago."
Another accident.
Another dead man.
"And Orson's mother?"
"Marcella hid copies. She put one clue in her ring. Two months later her brakes failed on Lake Shore Drive."
I closed my eyes.
Aldric had built his power on graves.
"Where is the evidence now?"
Helen looked at me.
"Walter kept the last complete set."
"The box only had the casing, sample, photograph, and letter."
"Then you haven't found it."
"Found what?"
"Hector's ledger. Every alloy batch. Every commission. Every payment. Including the batch Aldric ordered before Orson was shot."
My heart raced.
"Where?"
"Walter told me only one thing. He said, 'If Rosie ever needs the truth, she already knows where to look.'"
I stared at her.
That was not helpful.
Then I heard my grandfather's voice in memory.
Rosie, the safest place in a jewelry store isn't the safe. Thieves always look in the safe.
I had been eleven.
He had been teaching me to hide my birthday present from my father.
Where had he put it?
Inside the base of the old polishing machine.
The same polishing machine I could not afford to repair.
My breath stopped.
"I know where it is."
A gunshot exploded outside.
Helen flinched.
Another shot.
Then shouting.
I pushed her behind the steel table and grabbed the chair with both hands, ready to swing it at whoever came through the door.
The lock burst inward.
A man entered.
Black coat.
Gun raised.
I swung.
He ducked.
"Rosie!"
I froze.
Orson.
He caught the chair with his left hand.
"Are you trying to kill me?"
"I thought you were one of them!"
"You attack kidnappers with furniture?"
"I work with what I have."
For one second, he simply looked at me.
Then he pulled me against him.
Hard.
His left arm wrapped around my shoulders.
His damaged right hand pressed awkwardly against my back.
I felt the tremor in it.
I also felt his heart hammering.
"You came," I whispered.
"Of course I came."
"You brought the evidence?"
"No."
I pulled back.
"Then how-"
Kellen appeared in the doorway.
Blood ran from a cut above his eyebrow.
"We traced the van from the garage cameras."
Helen stood.
Kellen stared at her.
"Helen Bell?"
"Unfortunately."
Orson looked around.
"Where's Aldric?"
Kellen shook his head.
"Gone. Rear exit. He left his men to slow us down."
Orson's face hardened.
I grabbed his sleeve.
"Let him go."
He looked at me as if I had spoken another language.
"For now," I added. "I know where the ledger is."
Everything changed in his eyes.
"Where?"
"My shop."
Orson looked at my face, then at my wrists where the ropes had left red marks.
"We're not going anywhere until a doctor sees you."
"I am fine."
"You were kidnapped."
"You were shot at twice today."
"That isn't the same thing."
"Why? Because you're used to it?"
Kellen muttered something under his breath and walked away.
Helen smiled faintly.
Orson stared at me.
Then his gaze dropped to my mouth.
The room became very quiet.
For one impossible second, I thought he was going to kiss me.
I think he thought it too.
Instead, he touched my cheek with the back of his left fingers.
Gentle.
Almost careful.
"You scared me," he said.
The admission was so unexpected that I forgot how to breathe.
Orson Dramore, who feared no one in Chicago, looked angrier about those three words than any threat Aldric had made.
I covered his hand with mine.
"Then don't lose me."
May you like
His eyes locked on mine.
"I don't intend to."
