Chapter 4 - The Underground Platform and the Woman Who Was Supposed to Be Dead
The old station existed beneath a condemned theater.
No one used it.
No one even remembered it.
That was precisely why Gabriel had used it for years to move people and information without digital records.
Claire followed him down the concrete steps at three in the morning.
Elias stayed behind them.
The tunnels smelled of rust and rainwater.
Gabriel carried no visible weapon.
Claire knew better than to assume that meant he was unarmed.
“You're afraid,” she said.
“No.”
“You are.”
He looked at her.
“I'm calculating.”
“Same thing with a better vocabulary.”
A brief smile appeared.
It disappeared quickly.
They reached the platform.
A single light flickered overhead.
Someone was waiting.
A woman stood at the far end of the platform wearing a dark blue coat.
Claire stopped.
Her heart stopped with her.
Gabriel whispered one word.
“Impossible.”
The woman turned.
Claire knew her face.
She had seen it in photographs.
Again and again.
Her mother.
Evelyn Bennett.
The woman Claire had believed died before Claire was born.
Claire couldn't breathe.
“No.”
The woman looked at her.
“Claire.”
Her knees nearly gave out.
“You're alive.”
Evelyn stepped forward.
“I've been alive for thirty-one years.”
Claire stared at her.
“You left me.”
“I left you to protect you.”
“That is what everyone says.”
Evelyn's eyes filled with tears.
“I know.”
Claire looked at Gabriel.
“You knew?”
He didn't lie.
“Yes.”
The betrayal hurt almost more than the revelation.
“How long?”
“Six months.”
Claire felt something inside her crack.
“You knew my mother was alive for six months.”
“I was trying to bring her somewhere safe.”
“You had no right.”
“No.”
Gabriel's voice was quiet.
“You're right.”
Evelyn touched Claire's shoulder.
Claire stepped away.
“Why?”
Her mother looked at Gabriel.
Then back at her.
“Because your father found out who ordered Richard Mercer's murder.”
Claire froze.
“Who?”
Evelyn swallowed.
“Senator Hollis.”
The tunnel seemed to echo.
“He was young then,” Evelyn said. “Not a senator. He was an attorney working for a shipping consortium. He discovered your father had access to documents that could expose a weapons-smuggling network running through several American ports.”
Claire whispered, “Why would my father help them?”
“He didn't.”
“Then why was he involved?”
“Because he infiltrated it.”
Claire looked at Gabriel.
He nodded.
“My father suspected a traitor within our organization.”
Evelyn continued.
“Thomas became his translator, then his investigator, then his secret keeper.”
Claire remembered her father's words.
Language is what people say when they think you cannot hear them.
She understood them now.
Gabriel moved closer.
“Your father didn't work for criminals.”
Evelyn corrected him.
“He worked against them.”
Claire stared.
“Then why did everyone think he was one?”
“Because the safest place to hide a witness was inside the story everyone already believed.”
A gunshot exploded.
Evelyn screamed.
Gabriel shoved Claire behind a concrete pillar.
Elias returned fire.
Men appeared at the far end of the platform.
Gabriel moved with terrifying speed.
Claire saw only fragments.
A flash.
A body falling.
Elias shouting.
Evelyn pulling Claire lower.
Then silence.
Gabriel came toward them.
Blood darkened his sleeve.
Claire panicked.
“You're hurt.”
“Not badly.”
She grabbed his arm anyway.
The wound was shallow.
But there was another problem.
Evelyn had been hit.
Not by a bullet.
By debris.
She had cut her forehead.
Claire pressed a handkerchief against it.
Her mother smiled weakly.
“I always imagined meeting you would be quieter.”
Claire laughed through tears.
“You have terrible timing.”
“So did your father.”
Evelyn looked at Gabriel.
“He would have liked you.”
Gabriel lowered his eyes.
“I know.”
Then he noticed something beside the dead attacker.
A silver serpent pin.
And a photograph.
The photograph showed Gabriel.
Claire.
And Evelyn.
Taken less than forty-eight hours earlier.
Gabriel went cold.
“They've been watching us.”
Elias crouched beside him.
“There is something else.”
“What?”
Elias turned the photograph over.
A message was written across the back.
THE LAST BENNETT MUST OPEN THE DOOR.
Claire stared.
“What door?”
May you like
Gabriel looked toward the tunnel.
“The one your father spent his life hiding.”
