Saint Anne’s at Midnight
Chapter 08 - Saint Anne’s at Midnight
There are places built to make grief quiet.
Saint Anne’s Hospice was one of them.
The lobby smelled of waxed floors, lilies, and the kind of institutional soup served to people no longer expected to complain. A statue of the Virgin Mary stood near the reception desk, palms open, eyes lowered. Beneath her, a security camera blinked red.
Vincent saw it before I did.
“Varga will be watching,” he murmured.
“Then stand up straight.”
He looked at me.
“You’re giving presentation notes?”
“You’re pale.”
“I was poisoned yesterday.”
“And yet here you are, ignoring medical advice in a hospice basement.”
“Your sympathy overwhelms me.”
“It should. I ration it.”
Gabriel made a low sound behind us that might have been a cough or a laugh dying for professional reasons.
We had not come alone. Men were positioned outside, inside, above, and according to Gabriel, somewhere in a laundry truck across the street. I had stopped asking how many laws were being bruised. My threshold for moral complexity had suffered in the past twenty-four hours.
A night nurse led us to the lower level after Gabriel showed her identification I was fairly certain belonged to no legal agency.
Sublevel records smelled different.
Dust. Damp paper. Rust behind pipes.
Dr. Whitmore waited in a narrow room between two metal shelves, looking fifteen years older than he had in Vincent’s suite. His white coat was gone. His tie hung loose. One side of his face bore a bruise.
I felt no pity at first.
Then I remembered he had once been someone’s young doctor, probably believing knowledge made him useful and useful people mattered.
“What happened to your face?” Vincent asked.
Whitmore flinched. “Varga’s men.”
“Good.”
“Vincent,” I said.
“What? It’s honest.”
Whitmore looked at me. “I didn’t mean for your mother to die.”
“No one ever does when they’re signing papers that make them rich.”
He closed his eyes.
Fair. Maybe unfair.
I no longer cared.
He led us to a locked file cabinet and handed Gabriel a key.
“These are duplicates. Trial records. Payment schedules. False death reviews. Varga kept originals overseas, but these are enough to reopen cases.”
“Why keep them?” I asked.
“Because fear makes people stupid.” Whitmore’s mouth trembled. “And I was always afraid he’d turn on me.”
Vincent stepped closer. “He did.”
Whitmore looked at him. “You need to know something. The poisoning wasn’t only about the foundation.”
The lights flickered once overhead.
Gabriel touched his earpiece.
No response.
He looked at Vincent.
“Signal’s jammed.”
Of course it was.
Whitmore began speaking faster. “Varga doesn’t just want the foundation. He wants the old shipping corridor your father refused to sell. Medical supply routes. Controlled cold storage. Organ transport contracts.”
I stared at him.
“Organ transport?”
Vincent’s expression changed.
Gabriel said a word I had never heard and did not need translated.
Whitmore swallowed. “Some legitimate. Some not. Carlo discovered enough to stop him. That’s why he died.”
“And my mother?” Vincent asked.
“Eleanor still has voting power in three trusts. If she was declared incompetent—”
“You helped make her look incompetent.”
Whitmore did not deny it.
The lights flickered again.
This time, they went out.
For one second, the room became absolute black.
Then emergency lighting washed everything red.
A shot cracked somewhere above us.
I hit the floor because Gabriel pushed me there.
Vincent did not fall.
He dragged Whitmore down by the collar with one hand and shoved me behind a row of shelves with the other.
“Nobody heroic,” he said.
“Take your own advice.”
“I dislike advice.”
“I’ve noticed.”
Footsteps pounded in the corridor.
Gabriel moved to the door. Vincent reached for the metal file box and nearly swayed. I caught it before it fell.
“You’re not carrying evidence while hypotensive,” I whispered.
“I am not hypotensive.”
“You are absolutely hypotensive.”
Another shot.
The lock blew off the outer door.
Whitmore whimpered.
Vincent looked at him with contempt. “Now you discover consequences?”
Two men entered the records room.
They did not get far.
Gabriel’s people had apparently bruised more laws than I had realized. The fight in the corridor was fast and brutal and mostly unseen through the shelving. A man crashed into the cabinet beside me, knocking folders loose around my feet.
One folder opened.
A child’s photograph slid out.
A little girl in a hospital bed.
On the tab: L. MORETTI.
I picked it up.
“Vincent.”
His head snapped toward me.
The name on the file was not his.
Lucia Moretti.
The date was twenty-nine years old.
Vincent went so still even the red light seemed to pause.
“My sister died as an infant,” he said.
I looked at the photograph again.
The child was at least six.
“No,” Whitmore whispered.
Vincent turned slowly.
“What did you say?”
Whitmore’s mouth opened and closed.
From the corridor, Gabriel shouted that we had to move.
But Vincent did not move.
He stepped toward the doctor.
“My sister died at eight months old.”
Whitmore backed into the shelf.
“Samuel.” Vincent’s voice dropped to something deadly and quiet. “Where is Lucia?”
May you like
The doctor’s eyes filled with terrified tears.
“Varga took her.”
