Chapter 116 - The Chicago Rendezvous
The storm that hit Chicago on Tuesday evening was the worst the city had seen in a decade.
Lake Michigan churned with black, violent waves, throwing freezing spray over Lake Shore Drive as sleet turned the asphalt into a sheet of polished glass. The city was paralyzed—flights grounded at O'Hare, transit lines delayed, emergency sirens wailing faintly in the distance like dying animals.
I stepped out of a nondescript Ford sedan onto the cracked gravel of an abandoned freight yard near the Chicago River, just south of the Stevenson Expressway.
A single set of tire tracks cut through the fresh snow, leading toward a rusted metal shed once used for switching rail cars.
I walked with my coat collar turned up, my hat pulled low against the stinging wind. My hand rested inside my right pocket, fingers wrapped around the textured grip of an untraceable Sig Sauer P320 I had purchased three hours earlier from an off-duty dockmaster in Calumet.
The shed door creaked open. Inside, illuminated by the harsh yellow glow of a single halogen work lamp hooked to a car battery, sat three women.
Beatrice was wrapped in two heavy military blankets, her lips still carrying a faint, bluish tinge from severe hypothermia, her fingers bandaged where frostbite had begun to blister the skin. Beside her sat Eleanor, her eyes swollen, wearing an oversized winter coat that looked like it had been pulled from a donation bin.
Between them, sitting on an upturned wooden crate, was Margaret Vance’s carbon-fiber server box.
Standing near the door, his arms crossed over a bulletproof vest, was Marcus Vance—my estranged cousin, an ex-Marine whom our family had cast out eight years ago after he refused to participate in Arthur’s real estate kickback scheme.
"You took your time getting out of Europe, cousin," Marcus said, nodding toward me with grim approval. "Heard Interpol had your picture on the evening news."
"The border patrol in Vermont was looking for a corporate executive in a bespoke suit," I said, stepping into the circle of light. "Not a diesel mechanic in a surplus jacket."
I looked down at Beatrice.
She couldn't meet my eyes. She stared at the concrete floor, her shoulders trembling with silent, convulsive sobs.
"Julian... I didn't know," she whispered, her voice cracked and raw. "Thomas swore he just wanted the LaSalle holding company. He told me he was going to split the trust equally between the three of us. He said you were getting too powerful, that you were going to freeze us out completely after the wedding..."
"You believed a man who faked his own death in a federal prison infirmary?" I asked, my voice utterly devoid of pity. "You believed a father who let our mother die in an unlicensed hospice care home while he laundered fifty million dollars through Geneva?"
"He has Clara," Eleanor interrupted, her voice breaking into a desperate plea as she grabbed my sleeve. "Julian, please. Don't fight with her now. He took Clara to the LaSalle Street tower. His lawyers filed an emergency guardianship petition. In twelve hours, the court opens, and he will legally adopt her as his dependent, making her the sole beneficiary of the newly reconstituted Vance Trust. If that happens, he can liquidate the entire estate under her name and vanish to a non-extradition territory before the probate court figures out who’s alive and who’s dead."
I looked at the server box on the crate.
"Did you open Margaret’s drives?" I asked Marcus.
Marcus shook his head. "They're biometric-locked, Julian. But not with a thumbprint. It’s an optical retinal sweep coupled to an active neural cipher. Thomas couldn't open it in Naperville, which is why he left it behind to come back for later with the laboratory team. He thought he had forty-eight hours before anyone found Beatrice."
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I approached the crate and ran my hand over the cold carbon-fiber lid.
"He didn't leave it behind because he couldn't open it," I murmured. "He left it behind because he knew I was the only one who could."
