Chapter 5: The Man Who Drank to Forget What He Knew
The apartment building on 31st Avenue had not improved since Sienna was a child.
The elevator still didn't work.
The hallway light on the third floor still flickered at the far end.
The door to 3C still had a small cross above the frame that her mother had put there the year before she left.
Sienna knocked.
Nothing.
She knocked again, harder.
"Dad.
It's me.
Open the door."
A long pause.
Then the sound of something being set down.
Footsteps.
The chain sliding back.
Robert Hayes opened the door.
He was 58 and looked older.
A flannel shirt, unbuttoned at the collar.
Grey at his temples and in the stubble along his jaw.
His eyes, when they found Sienna's face, were clear — which meant tonight had been a moderate night, not a bad one.
Then his eyes moved past her to Damian.
Robert Hayes went completely still.
"Dad," Sienna said.
"We need to come in."
Robert didn't move for a moment.
He looked at Damian the way a man looks at something he spent years trying to forget.
"Mr.
Hayes," Damian said.
"You've got nerve," Robert said.
His voice was low.
"Coming here."
"I know," Damian said.
"May we come in?"
Robert stepped back.
The apartment was small and clean in the way that lonely spaces become clean — everything in its place because there was nothing else to do with the evenings.
A television.
A worn armchair.
A kitchen table with one chair pulled out and a glass of water beside it, no whiskey tonight.
Robert stood in the center of the room and looked at his daughter.
"How much did he tell you?" he said.
"Enough," Sienna said.
"The task force.
The planted evidence.
Why you really lost your badge."
Robert's jaw moved.
He looked at the floor.
"I was going to tell you," he said.
"When you were older.
When it mattered less."
"It matters now," Sienna said.
"Leo is missing, Dad.
Someone used a shell company to trap him in a debt so they could use me to bring him back.
And the man behind it is Vincent Carrow."
Robert's head came up.
The name landed in the room like something physical.
"Say that again," he said quietly.
"Vincent Carrow," Damian said from near the door.
"He's been running a protection operation out of the department for at least ten years.
The warehouse fire, the forged documents, the planted evidence against my father — Carrow built all of it.
And Leo found the proof."
Robert sat down in the armchair.
Not heavily.
Carefully, the way a man sits when his legs have decided before his mind has.
"I always knew it was someone inside," he said.
"I just couldn't prove who."
"Did Carrow ever contact you after they took your badge?" Damian asked.
"Once.
He came to the door." Robert looked at Sienna.
"You remember.
You were seventeen.
I told you he was an old colleague."
"I remember," Sienna said.
"He told me the department appreciated my discretion." Robert's voice was flat.
"That was the word he used.
*Discretion.* He meant: we know you know, and we're telling you to stay quiet." He paused.
"He also told me that I had a daughter who was going to need a father around.
That if I stayed quiet and stayed out of it, nothing would happen to my family."
The room was silent.
"He threatened you," Sienna said.
"He made a promise," Robert said.
"The kind you don't test."
Sienna crossed the room and crouched in front of the armchair.
"Dad.
Where is Leo?
Do you know?"
Robert looked at her for a long moment.
"He called me," he said quietly.
"Four days ago.
He said he was safe.
He said he had everything he needed and that he was waiting for the right moment to bring it forward." He reached into the pocket of his flannel shirt and produced a folded piece of paper.
"He gave me a number to call if something happened to either of you."
Sienna took the paper.
She unfolded it.
A phone number.
A single line beneath it in Leo's handwriting: *Tell him the blue box is already open.*
Sienna looked up at Damian.
Damian looked at the paper.
"He's already moved," Damian said.
"He already has it."
From outside, somewhere down on the street, a car door closed.
Silas appeared in the doorway of the apartment.
He had gone back down without Sienna noticing.
"We have company," he said.
"Two men.
Street clothes.
They've been parked across from the building for twenty minutes."
Robert stood up from the armchair.
"Carrow," he said.
It wasn't a question.
"Not Carrow himself," Silas said.
"But his."
Damian looked at Robert.
"Is there another way out of this building?"
Robert Hayes picked up his jacket from the hook by the door.
May you like
"I spent eight months learning every exit in this neighborhood," he said.
"Follow me."
