His six-month-old nephew had vanished, but when Gabriel found him alive in a safe room, the baby was sleeping in the arms of a badly injured woman who knew far too much.

Damian Sterling called back at seven in the morning.

Gabriel took the call in the brownstone's front office, standing behind a desk that had belonged to his father.

Marco stood by the window.

The call was on speaker.

A recorder was running.

"Romano." Sterling's voice was smooth, the kind of smooth that came from decades of practice making dangerous things sound reasonable.

"I think we've had a significant misunderstanding."

"Have we."

"Last night got out of hand.

That was never my intention.

The people responsible have been dealt with internally.

I want you to know that Leo was never in any real danger—"

"He was six months old in a warehouse near the Indiana line," Gabriel said.

"Speak carefully."

A pause.

Sterling recalibrated.

"I'm calling because I think we can resolve this like businessmen.

The shipping routes, the sale — all of that is still on the table.

More than on the table.

I'm prepared to offer you thirty percent above my last number.

Thirty percent, Gabriel.

That's not a negotiation.

That's an apology in the language that actually means something."

"And Vincent?"

Another pause.

Shorter this time.

"Vincent is a complicated situation," Sterling said.

"He came to me.

I want to be clear about that.

Whatever he told you, he initiated the contact.

He approached me with the convoy information.

I was responding to an opportunity that was offered."

"And the upgrade to the arrangement?"

Silence.

"I don't know what you mean," Sterling said.

"The instruction to make sure Leo didn't come home.

Who gave that order?"

"That was a miscommunication between my people.

It was never authorized at my level—"

"You're on record," Gabriel said.

The silence this time was different.

Longer.

The kind of silence that happened when a man was doing very fast arithmetic.

"I'm sorry?"

"The woman you took with Leo.

The accountant your people decided was nobody." Gabriel kept his voice level.

"She was in that storage office for forty minutes.

Your men talked outside the door.

She heard the name of your Joliet facility.

She heard about the recordings you've been keeping of your meetings with Vincent." He paused.

"And before she drove out through your loading bay, she had forty minutes to memorize everything she needed."

"Whatever she claims she heard—"

"She found the Joliet property at four this morning.

Grain processing facility, acquired eighteen months ago, listed as inactive.

Your name is on the acquisition through two shell companies." Gabriel picked up a single sheet of paper from the desk.

"The recordings are stored in a server room on the second floor of the eastern building.

Your facility manager is a man named Cole Draper, who has a prior crjminal record in Indiana that your company's background check somehow missed."

Sterling said nothing.

"She's an accountant," Gabriel said.

"She notices when numbers don't add up."

"What do you want." Sterling's voice had lost its smoothness entirely.

What was underneath it was harder and less practiced.

"I want the recordings.

All of them.

Every conversation you had with Vincent, with anyone in my organization, with anyone connected to my family.

I want the originals and every copy, delivered to an address Marco will send you within the hour."

"And if I do that?"

"Then we discuss what happens next like businessmen."

"And if I don't?"

Gabriel set the paper back on the desk.

"Then I stop being a businessman," he said.

He ended the call.

Marco looked at him from the window.

"He won't deliver them voluntarily," Marco said.

"No." Gabriel picked up his jacket.

"But he'll spend the next two hours deciding whether to run or negotiate.

While he's deciding, I want four people at that Joliet facility.

Not to go in.

Just to make sure nothing comes out."

"Already moving." Marco put his phone away.

"Mia found the facility records in thirty-eight minutes, by the way.

She said forty.

She was being conservative."

Gabriel paused at the door.

"Is she still working?"

"She's on her third cup of tea and she's pulled Sterling's full corporate structure going back nine years.

She found three other properties we didn't know about and a financial connection to a city alderman." Marco's expression was carefully neutral.

"She said she'll have a complete report by noon."

Gabriel looked at the door for a moment.

"She should be sleeping."

"I told her that."

"What did she say?"

"She said she'd sleep when it was finished." Marco almost smiled.

"She also said, and I'm quoting directly, that she didn't spend the night in a warehouse and drive a truck through a wall so that Damian Sterling could have two hours to shred documents."

Gabriel was quiet for a moment.

Then he said: "Make sure she has everything she needs."

He walked out into the hallway, and for the first time since the night before, something in his chest that had been locked at full tension eased by a single degree.

Sterling called back forty minutes later.

He didn't want to negotiate.

He wanted to run.

Marco's people at the Joliet facility watched a van attempt to leave through the service entrance at eight forty-seven in the morning.

The driver stopped when he saw them.

He made a phone call.