Chapter 5 - The Fire in the Archive.
Gabriel ran toward the burning wing before anyone could stop him.
Mateo cursed and followed.
The fire alarm screamed through the estate.
Smoke rolled across the ceiling of the main corridor.
Rory remained outside with two guards, sobbing and pointing toward the upstairs window.
"She was there."
Gabriel wrapped a wet cloth around his mouth and climbed the service stairs.
The heat became unbearable halfway up.
A wooden door collapsed behind him.
Mateo shouted his name.
Gabriel kept moving.
The archive corridor was almost invisible behind black smoke.
A faint pounding came from the records room.
Gabriel kicked the door once.
It did not open.
He kicked again.
The lock splintered.
Lena Hale lay on the floor with her wrists bound in plastic ties.
Her face was bruised.
She was alive.
Gabriel cut the ties with a pocketknife.
"Rory is outside."
Lena's eyes opened wider.
"Sterling has her?"
"No."
"Daniel?"
"No."
She grabbed Gabriel's sleeve.
"Then get her away from this house."
A section of ceiling crashed into the corridor.
Mateo reached them seconds later.
Together they carried Lena downstairs.
Rory broke free from the guards when she saw her mother.
"Mommy!"
Lena dropped to her knees despite her injuries and wrapped both arms around her daughter.
Rory buried her face in Lena's neck.
Gabriel turned away for a moment.
The sight made something inside him ache with unexpected force.
Paramedics arrived.
Lena refused the stretcher until Rory was allowed beside her.
As firefighters fought the blaze, Mateo approached Gabriel with a scorched metal box.
"Found near the east stairwell."
Inside was a timed incendiary device.
The fire had been deliberate.
One of Gabriel's guards ran from the gatehouse.
"Boss, we found a vehicle abandoned behind the gardens."
It belonged to Daniel Cross.
The driver's seat was empty.
Blood covered the passenger door.
Sterling was nowhere in sight.
At the hospital, Lena received stitches above her eyebrow and treatment for smoke inhalation.
Gabriel waited until Rory fell asleep against her mother's side.
Then he asked the question he had been holding back.
"Why did you come back after six years?"
Lena looked at him for a long time.
"Because Sterling found us first."
She explained that after the old theft accusation, she had fled under another name.
Sterling later tracked her down and forced her to process fake invoices.
He threatened to send her to prison and take Rory away if she refused.
"I thought you were behind it."
Gabriel's expression tightened.
"I wasn't."
"I know that now."
Lena looked toward the sleeping child.
"Rory found one of your speeches online at the public library."
Gabriel frowned.
"A speech?"
"You said no child should pay for an adult's greed."
Lena almost laughed, but there was no humor in it.
"She decided you meant it."
Gabriel looked at the little girl.
Six years old.
Hungry.
Afraid.
Yet she had walked into a room full of armed men because she believed one sentence from a stranger.
Lena reached into her hospital bag.
"There's something else you need to know."
She handed Gabriel a photograph.
It showed Daniel Cross shaking hands with a man outside a courthouse.
Gabriel recognized the second man immediately.
Arthur Voss.
May you like
His older brother.
And the man Gabriel had spent ten years believing was dead.
