Chapter 16 - Nora’s Apartment
Nora had left the federal office twenty minutes earlier.
She wanted clothes from her apartment.
Two protection officers were assigned to accompany her.
Neither answered their radios.
We raced across the city.
Police vehicles blocked both ends of Nora’s street.
I could see her apartment window from below.
The curtains moved.
Agent Frost refused to let me enter.
Then my phone rang.
Nora.
I answered immediately.
Ramirez spoke.
“Come upstairs.”
Frost shook his head.
Ramirez continued.
“Or your sister goes out the window.”
My entire body went cold.
“Let me hear her.”
Nora’s voice appeared.
“Mara, don’t—”
The call cut.
Frost began preparing a tactical entry.
I stared at the building.
Fourth floor.
Rear fire escape.
Nora’s bedroom faced the alley.
I knew the apartment better than Ramirez did.
“There’s another way.”
Frost looked at me.
I explained the neighboring building shared a rooftop access point.
Officers moved.
Three minutes later, a tactical team crossed the roof.
Ramirez never saw them coming.
The first thing I heard was a gunshot.
Then another.
Then silence.
I ran despite Frost shouting after me.
By the time I reached the apartment, Ramirez was on the floor.
Alive.
Wounded in the leg.
Nora sat against the wall, shaking.
One protection officer was unconscious in the hall.
The other had been locked inside a bathroom.
I dropped beside my sister.
She grabbed me.
“I’m okay.”
Ramirez laughed from the floor.
“You two think this is over?”
Agent Frost ordered him to stay quiet.
Ramirez looked at me.
“Diane always said you were difficult.”
“Where is she?”
His smile widened.
“Closer than you think.”
Frost searched him.
They found a burner phone.
The most recent call had been placed six minutes earlier.
To a number registered to a motel.
Police surrounded it.
The room was empty.
Inside they found clothes.
Cash.
A photograph of Diane and Evan from twenty years earlier.
And a laptop.
The laptop was open.
A live video feed showed the federal command room we had left less than an hour earlier.
Someone had placed a camera inside.
Diane could see the investigators.
She could hear them.
She still had someone inside the operation.
Then the feed shifted.
Another camera activated.
This one showed my hotel room.
My empty bed.
My suitcase.
And the bedside table.
Someone entered the frame.
A woman.
She wore a hospital employee badge.
I recognized her immediately.
The nurse who had brought the flowers to my room the first night.
She placed a small object beneath my pillow.
May you like
Then looked directly into the hidden camera.
And smiled.
