Chapter 53 SCARED

Chapter 53 SCARED
I did not move from the doorway.

The man standing in the corridor was nobody I had ever seen before. Dark jacket, average height, eyes that went straight past me to the box sitting open on the floor behind me.

He had not knocked. Had not called out. Had just stopped right outside the unit like he had a map.

"Wrong unit." His voice was flat.

"There is no other open unit in this corridor." I kept my body in the doorway. "You walked straight here."

He looked at me.

I looked back at him and my heart was going very fast but my face was doing something different from what my heart was doing and I was grateful for that gap between the two.

He took one step toward me.

I pulled my phone out and held the screen up so he could see it clearly. Elias's name. An open call. The seconds ticking up in the corner.

He stopped.

"He picked up four minutes ago." I kept the phone up. "Before you got here."

The man stood there for a moment. His eyes moved from the phone to my face to the box behind me and back to my face again.

Then he turned around and walked back down the corridor. Not running. Just walking, quicker than he came.

I stood in the doorway and listened until his footsteps were gone.

Then I went back inside and sat down on the floor with my back against the crates and my legs not quite working properly anymore and my hands shaking in a way they had refused to do while he was standing there.

"Nova." Elias's voice came through the phone. "Talk."

"He left." My voice came out smaller than I wanted it to. "He saw the call and left."

"Did he touch you?"

"No." I looked at the box. "He wanted the box. He knew exactly which unit."

"How long ago did you leave the house?"

"Maybe an hour." I pressed my back into the crates. "I only told Riley."

He didn't say anything for a second and that second was loud.

"Stay in that unit." His voice had changed, dropped into something I didn't hear from him often. "Close the door. I am already in the car."

"Elias I'm okay—"

"Close the door, Nova."

I got up and pulled the rolling door down until there was just enough gap to hear the corridor. Then I sat back down on the floor and pulled the box closer to me like it did anything useful.

"The box was open when he came." I said it to fill the silence. "He saw what was inside."

"What's in it?"

"USB drives. A ledger. Documents." I picked up the photograph from where it had slid off the top. "And a photograph of my mother with Castellano. Before she married Richard. Four years ago."

Nothing from his end for a moment.

"Say that again," he said.

"There is a date on the back. She knew him before Blackthorn Estate. Before any of it." I turned the photograph over and looked at her face. That smile wasn't her real smile. "She didn't fall into this accidentally Elias. She walked into it."

"Nova." His voice came through carefully and low. "We don't know what that means yet."

"I know what it looks like."

"Looking like something and being something are different." He paused. "Don't decide what her story is before you have read all of it."

I sat with that.

The unit was cold and smelled like dust and old cardboard and faintly like her perfume which was impossible but kept happening anyway every time I came here.

"Someone told that man I was coming." I said it out loud because saying it made it real and real things could be dealt with. "Either Riley or my phone."

"Or both." His voice was flat. "Matthias has had access to you for weeks."

I thought about Matthias's hand on my jaw at the gate last night. His mouth is mine. Goodnight, beautiful.

My stomach turned over slowly.

"How close are you?" I asked.

"Fifteen minutes." The sound of his car came through the phone, engine and road noise and somewhere in the background Callum's voice saying something I couldn't make out. "Callum is pulling the entrance camera footage."

"Okay." I looked at the photograph one more time.

My mother was smiling at a man who would spend the next twenty years burning everything she built.

Four years before she walked into Blackthorn Estate and changed all of our lives.

"Elias."

"Still here."

"She was playing a longer game than I understood." I set the photograph down. "Whatever she was doing, she planned it."

He was quiet for a moment.

"Yeah." His voice came out low. "I think she was."

His footsteps hit the corridor eleven minutes later, faster than a walk, and the rolling door went up and he was crouching in front of me before I had fully processed that he was there.

He looked at my face. I looked at my hands. I looked at the box.

Then he sat down on the floor next to me without saying anything and picked up the photograph and looked at it for a long time.

"That's him?" He turned it over. Read the name. "Castellano."

"Yes."

He put it down and leaned his head back against the crates and let out a long slow breath through his nose.

"We're not waiting two days." He said it to the ceiling. "We move tonight."

"Tonight." I looked at him. "What does that mean exactly?"

He turned his head and looked at me and his eyes were doing something I didn't have a name for yet.

"It means Matthias Hale just ran out of time." He pushed himself up off the floor and held his hand down to me. "Come on. Callum is waiting."

I took his hand and he pulled me up and I grabbed the box and we walked out of that unit and down the corridor and out into the grey morning light together.

I did not look back.