Chapter 3 - Footsteps in the Rain
By midnight, the storm over the city had turned into a relentless downpour. Julia took refuge inside a modest two-bedroom apartment in Queens belonging to her older sister, Maya. Maya was an investigative journalist who lived on black coffee and stubborn principles, and she knew better than to ask why Julia had arrived without her luxury car or wedding ring. When Julia laid out the printouts and the encrypted thumb drive on the kitchen table, Maya let out a low whistle.
The paper trail was undeniable. Three months ago, Marisa had taken out an unpublicized insurance rider on the Caruso parure, doubling its coverage. Simultaneously, two accounts linked to Vance Maritime had received wire transfers from the foundation’s charity reserve. But before Maya could finish cross-referencing the transaction numbers, the faint crunch of tires on wet gravel sounded outside the alleyway.
Julia peeked through the blinds. A black SUV with tinted windows had parked across the street, its engine idling silently. Dante had not relied on the police; he was using his private security detail, likely directed by Sal Greco or Marisa herself. They were tracking the digital footprint of the foundation documents she had downloaded earlier that morning.
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""They don’t know we have physical hard copies,"" Julia whispered, her heart hammering against her ribs, but her mind remarkably lucid. ""They think I ran with the files to broker a deal.""
Grabbing their coats and the thumb drives, Julia and Maya slipped out through the building's fire escape into the dark, rain-soaked alley. As they reached Maya's ten-year-old sedan parked two blocks away, a beam of headlights swept over them. A man stepped out of the SUV, shouting Julia's name. It was Tony, the young guard whose sprained wrist Julia had helped bandaged weeks earlier. For a split second, Tony’s eyes met hers through the torrential rain. Instead of raising his radio to report her position, Tony hesitated, slowly looked down at his strapped wrist, and turned his back toward the street corner, giving the two sisters just enough time to disappear into the midnight traffic.
