Chapter 35: The recording

"What recording?" I said.

Bruno put his coffee down on the windowsill. He did not look at me for a moment. He looked at the river between the buildings and his jaw moved once.

"Daniel was there the night our father died," he said. "I was not. I was in Geneva closing a deal our father asked me to close." He turned and looked at me. "Our father fell down the stairs. That was the official version. That was what Daniel told the police and what I believed for eight years."

"And the recording changes that," I said.

"Richard has audio from inside the house that night," Bruno said. "Daniel's voice. Our father's voice." He stopped. "And sounds that do not match a fall."

I looked at him.

"Daniel didn't fall," I said. "Your father didn't fall."

"No," Bruno said.

The kitchen was warm and the eggs were done and ten minutes ago I had laughed against his mouth and the morning had been good and ordinary and now we were here.

"Richard has held this for eight years," I said.

"Since before Monaco," Bruno said. "Before Sara. Before any of it." He picked his coffee back up and put it down again without drinking. "Daniel didn't sell me to Richard. Richard recruited him. There is a difference."

"Richard found the recording first," I said.

"Yes. Came to Daniel with it. Told him what he needed and what Daniel would lose if he said no."

"His freedom," I said.

"His freedom. His name. Everything." Bruno looked at the window. "Daniel had no way out. He put Harlan in front of me because Richard told him to and because the alternative was a recording landing on a detective's desk."

I crossed the kitchen and stood in front of him.

"Look at me," I said.

He did.

"This is not your fault," I said.

"My brother"

"Was blackmailed by the same man who put my name on a forty million dollar fraud claim before I knew any of this existed." I held his gaze. "Richard finds the thing that breaks each person and he puts his foot on it. That is what he does."

Bruno looked at me for a long moment.

His hand came up and covered mine where it rested against his chest.

"The recording is the problem," he said. "As long as Richard has it, Daniel cannot testify fully. He cannot give the investigators everything they need without that recording surfacing."

"Then we get the recording first," I said.

"Richard is gone," Bruno said. "Nobody knows where he is."

"Sara knows," I said.

Bruno went very still.

"Sara has been with Richard since she walked out of that hotel room with the investigators," I said. "She knows where he is. She has always known where he goes when things collapse because she has been the person he calls when things collapse."

"She won't tell us," Bruno said.

"She told us about the airfield," I said. "She called me from a locked room and gave us Voss and the flight time." I looked at him. "She is not loyal to Richard. She is afraid of him. Those are different things."

Bruno was quiet.

"I can reach her," I said.

"On what number?"

"The prepaid," I said. "She kept it. She used it to warn me about the journalist piece. She will still have it."

Bruno pulled away from the windowsill and stood straight.

"If Richard sees her contact you—" he said.

"Richard is running," I said. "He is on a boat somewhere with Harlan and a court document he thinks will finish me. He is not watching Sara's prepaid."

Bruno looked at me for three full seconds.

"Call her," he said.

I found the number in my recent calls and dialed.

It rang four times.

I pulled the phone from my ear.

Bruno shook his head once.

Then the call connected.

No voice. Just open air and the sound of wind and what might have been water moving.

"Sara," I said.

Nothing for two seconds.

Then her voice, low and fast and close to the phone.

"He is right here," she said. "I cannot talk."

"The recording," I said. "Daniel Blackfield. Eight years ago. Where does Richard keep it?"

The wind on the line.

"Sara," I said.

"It is not a recording," she said. "It was never a recording." Her voice dropped further. "It is a witness. Someone who was in that house. Someone Richard has been paying to stay quiet for eight years."

My hand tightened on the phone.

"Who?" I said.

The line went dead.

Bruno was already looking at me.

"Not a recording," I said. "A witness."

Bruno's face changed completely.

"Someone Richard has been paying," he said.

"For eight years," I said. "Someone still alive and it's who can be found."

Bruno crossed to the table and picked up his jacket.

"I know who it is," he said.

I waited and he did not move toward the door immediately. He stood with his jacket in his hand and looked at the kitchen floor and I could see him deciding how much to say and in what order.

"Sit down," I said.

He sat at the kitchen table and I sat across from him and put my coffee between my hands and waited.

"The week our father died," Bruno said, "Daniel called me in Geneva. It was late. He was not making sense. He said there had been an accident and I needed to come home." He looked at the table. "By the time I landed the police had already closed the scene. Fall down the stairs. Accidental. The housekeeper had given a statement confirming she heard nothing unusual."

"Rosa," I said.

"Yes." He looked up. "She was in the house that night. She was always in the house. She lived in the small room off the kitchen and she had been with our family since before Daniel and I were old enough to remember." He stopped. "She gave a statement that protected Daniel. And then she was gone."

"Richard found her statement," I said.

"Richard found her," Bruno said. "Before she could change her mind or speak to anyone else. He found her and he made her an offer and she took it because she was alone and frightened and Daniel had asked her to say what she said and she had done it out of loyalty and then discovered loyalty had a price she had not agreed to pay."

I sat with that.

"She protected Daniel," I said. "And Richard turned that protection into a chain around both of them."

"Yes," Bruno said. "That is exactly what he did."

I reached across the table and covered his hand with mine.

He looked at our hands and then at me.

"Your father deserved better than this," I said.

"Yes," he said quietly. "He did."

We sat in the kitchen for a moment without moving, the morning light coming through the window and the city going about its business outside and the coffee going cold between us.

Then Bruno stood.

"Rosa can end this," he said. "All of it. Daniel's part in it, Richard's hold over him, the recording that was never a recording." He picked up his jacket. "We find her before Richard does."