Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Eliana stepped off the L train onto the platform, where only a few people were milling around. She naturally registered each one as she walked to the exit. Kind of an involuntary action, though she was aware of it.
She knew where the skills came from. She’d sneaked copies of her grandfather, Malcolm Banbury’s books and read them all. And the vacations she’d taken at Ramon and Zeyla’s… Some things were ingrained at this point. As if she’d gone through years of training.
But did that stop her from freaking out seeing her first dead body?
No, it certainly had not.
She turned to the stairs and clipped the shoulder of a man in a brown wool coat.
“Sorry.” She didn’t linger to glance at him and immediately checked her pockets to make sure she still had her cell.
Backpack over one shoulder, the wooden box still inside. She discovered a ticket to the John Wayne Gacy museum in her pocket and tossed it into the trash, along with everything she’d learned from visiting that place. Namely, that she wanted nothing to do with murder investigations.
She might’ve learned some things over the years—most about personal safety. She’d had others drilled into her thanks to Auntie Zeyla. But without putting them into practice, she hadn’t used it all enough to be some kind of investigator like her parents, and now she knew she didn’t want to.
Eliana stepped off the bottom step of the concrete stairs and pushed through the turnstile onto the busy street. People on the sidewalk. People on the road passing by in their cars, heading home from work.
Her cell buzzed in her pocket, a quick hum. Another text.
Three teenage guys approached her on the sidewalk, wearing dark sweatshirts with their hoods pulled up. All shorter than her. One wore smart glasses, the light from a game shining on his face. He walked between the other two as the trio chatted.
Smart Guy glanced at her and shook his head. “She doesn’t have the app.”
One of his friends looked her up and down. “Shame.”
Eliana walked past them, then glanced back after a few steps to ensure they weren’t focused on her any longer. This wasn’t the worst part of town, but it wasn’t the best either, and she was a single woman walking home alone.
She used her key on the front entrance and stepped into the apartment building lobby. Another glance over her shoulder. The door clicked shut.
Two flights of stairs, past the door where Mr. Collins played his gameshows far too loud. Eliana passed the door she tried to avoid, to the third floor, where she knocked on her neighbor’s door and used the key Patience had given her.
“It’s just me.” Eliana shut the door behind her and locked it, then pulled out her phone and opened it to find a text from her sister, Maizie.
The girls are at their piano lessons for the next hour. Call anytime.
Eliana replied,
Give me ten.
She needed that time, and not just to decide what she was going to share with her sister and what she wasn’t. “Patience?”
“Living room, dear.”
Eliana shrugged off her jacket—Patience liked it warm—and found the older woman in her chair with the TV on. “How was your day?”
“Fine, you know.” The older woman had wrinkled dark skin and curled white hair. She had a friend come over once a month to give her a wash and set, and one of the young women from church did her nails every two weeks.
Eliana wandered over and bussed her cheek with a kiss before taking the plate and cup from her end table. Patience had an old cop show from twenty years ago on the TV that Eliana knew of but hadn’t watched. Another thing that wasn’t part of her growing up.
“My parents never let me watch that show, or any show about murder.” She shot Patience a smile and wandered to the kitchen, putting the dishes in the sink. There were leftovers from what she’d batch cooked over the weekend. “Chicken and rice or the stew for your dinner?”
“Stew, please.” Patience watched her. “Were your parents those strict religious types?”
“They were particular in what they thought, but not fundamentalist in the scary sense. They instilled strong beliefs in me.”
“So what did you watch?”
Eliana put the stew in a pan on the stove and lit the gas.
She faced Patience, her stomach resting on the kitchen island, and smiled.
“Nothing with murder or police investigations. They didn’t want me to get any ideas about going into the family business, I guess.
” She thought about Carlos. “Practically everyone in the family is a cop, or some kind of investigator.”
“Not you?”
Eliana shrugged. “They didn’t want me in that world. They wanted me to choose what I was going to be, to work out who I was without that influence.”
Instead of handing her a legacy with expectations, like Carlos had received from his father, she’d been given… Eliana didn’t even know.
“They weren’t bad parents.” She lifted both hands. “They’re actually great, and my childhood was peaceful. Protected.”
“Sounds safe.”
“I read plenty of books about adventure.” She stirred the stew, then turned down the heat. “One day I decided to run away and find an adventure. I took my dog Cabot with me for company, so I wouldn’t be alone.”
Patience lifted the remote with a shaky hand and paused the show. “What happened?”
“Nothing. I walked for hours and only saw a few birds. The dog drank from a river. I sat under a tree and tried to figure out where I was going to go next, but I fell asleep.” She sighed.
“I woke up in my bed. My parents probably would’ve tried to convince me it was a dream, but I never would’ve believed them.
All I got was a lecture about making an old dog walk that far. ”
After a moment, Eliana poured the stew into a bowl. While Patience ate, she did the dishes, then tidied the kitchen.
Patience had almost finished by the time she went back over. “Is that why you came to Chicago? Trying to find adventure in the big city?”
“Something like that.” Eliana pointed at the bowl. “Want me to take this? I can make you some tea before I go.”
“I can do it,” Patience said. “You’re a sweet girl.”
“Let me know if you hear of any adventures.” Eliana grinned.
“Good night.” Patience patted her arm.
“Thanks.”
“I don’t know what for. You’re the one helping me.”
Eliana smiled at her from the doorway, grabbed her coat, and went to her own apartment. She saw Patience nearly every day, but today it was a needed distraction from any more talk—or thoughts in her head—about the dead body at work. Or Carlos.
She had enough to do in Chicago, trying to get into the vault, to deal with her teenage crush coming here and making things weird. She hoped he found Luci, wherever his sister had landed herself in this time. But he didn’t need to involve her.
Eliana shed her work clothes in the tiny bedroom, easing between the bed and the drawers to the sliding door of the closet. Sweatpants and a T-shirt were all she needed—plus a pair of fuzzy socks. Soon as she’d changed, she grabbed her tablet from the coffee table and called Maizie.
Eliana folded the cover behind the tablet so it would stand up, listening to it ring.
Maizie picked up. “Hey, Sis.”
Eliana glanced at her over her shoulder, washing her hands at the sink. “Piano lesson day?”
Maizie smiled. “I worked long days all last week, so I took a half day and gave the nanny the afternoon off.”
“Did you close whatever case you were working on?”
“The squad apprehended the suspect, yes.”
There it was. “Great.”
Maizie sighed. “You know that isn’t what I wanted to talk about.”
“I know, I can’t ask about your work. You’re a police captain, but that has nothing to do with me and my safe bubble of zero adventures.”
Maizie made a face. “Eliana—”
“Forget it.” She waved a hand. “Don’t worry about it. How’s things going? How are the girls and Dean? How are things at the hospital? I can ask about his job, right? Not too dangerous for me to know about?”
“Geez, you’re moody today.”
Seeing a dead body will do that. Eliana bit her tongue and didn’t say the words aloud. But the fact was she adored her sister’s surgeon husband. “It’s the weather in Chicago.”
“What is going on with you?” Maizie frowned. “If things aren’t going well, you can come and stay with me in Milwaukee. You know that, right?”
Eliana didn’t know which question she was supposed to answer first.
She didn’t want to make another comment about Maizie’s picture-perfect life, so she said, “If I split, Carlos will have to relocate as well, once he finds Luci. After all, he can’t babysit me if he’s on the Chicago PD and I’m back home.”
The idea coalesced in her mind as soon as she said it aloud. He’d come here to watch out for her, not even knowing the reason she was in Chicago.
He wasn’t just here for Luci, though it was a good excuse. He was here to protect Eliana—probably because the family had ordered it.
“Wait,” Maizie said. “Luci is missing? And Carlos is in Chicago as well?”
Eliana waited for Maizie to laugh off the fake surprise, but it didn’t happen.
“Right. As if no one in the family knows any of this. You don’t need to lie and act shocked, Maze.
” She dumped the bags of veggies on the counter and got her big knife.
If she made an extra-large salad, she could take some to Patience for lunch tomorrow.
The background behind Maizie moved, then a door closed. “I feel like we need to break things down.”
“We really don’t. I’m in Chicago, and obviously Mom and Dad think it’s permanent since they had Carlos transfer to the police department here just so he could look out for me.”
Maizie shook her head. “You haven’t told anyone else where you are?”
“Not even Zeyla.” Eliana chopped the end off the head of lettuce and attacked it.
“She and Ramon are on a job in Chile.”
“Guess I shouldn’t ask about that.” Auntie Zeyla had told her plenty of crazy stories. She always said she changed the names to protect the innocent, but there were often details in the stories that told Eliana who Zeyla was talking about.
But how on earth were all those stories true?
Maizie said, “Girl, I don’t even ask what they’re up to. Otherwise, I’d probably have to report them to the Miami PD where they live.”
Eliana caught a tomato before it rolled off her cutting board.
“Dean doesn’t count because we’re married,” Maizie continued. “He and I tell each other everything. But he still doesn’t ask about open police cases because that isn’t something I can talk about. Not even at home.”
“Point made.”
“Is it? Because I can go on…”
Eliana rolled her eyes. Maizie had worked hard over the years not to act like another mom when Eliana needed a sister. Maizie was nineteen years older than her and now had gray threaded in her blond hair. Still, she looked about ten years younger than she was.
Maizie had grown up the captive of a sick man who had abducted her to be his bride. At seventeen she had finally escaped, making contact with Eliana’s mother. Kenna and Jax had kept her safe and eventually adopted her.
Eliana looked like her mother. Spitting image, everyone who knew them said.
Which led anyone who knew her parents to ask if she’d followed in their footsteps.
The answer was always no. They’d given up that life as much as they could, and when they weren’t able to avoid it, they left her under someone else’s protection.
Now that she was an adult, they seemed to be taking more and more cases, though. And Eliana was supposed to be fine with them putting their lives in danger?
“So if no one told Carlos where you were,” Maizie said, “how did he happen to transfer to where you’re living?”
“Pretty coincidental if you ask me.” Eliana didn’t want to think she’d been set up. After all, Maizie didn’t even know there had been a murder. “He just showed up where I am.”
“I’ve resisted the temptation to find out everything about you through…other means. Including adding location services to all our phones. I chose to respect your privacy.”
As if that was so huge Eliana should be grateful. The family lived as “off the grid” as they could, which meant no GPS. “He wasn’t surprised to see me. He knew I was going to be there.” She bit her lip and noticed her sister wasn’t looking at her.
“How was piano?” Maizie asked the girls.
Eliana went back to her chopping, listening to her nieces talking to their mom. Absorbing the light chatter of the nine-year-old twins, so different than the day she’d had.
The scene she’d come across was enough to make her want to call her mom and ask how she dealt with seeing dead bodies.
Eliana had chosen to accept the job she’d been offered and come to Chicago.
To use her savings to rent this shabby apartment.
Eventually, she would know everything there was to know about Dominatus, and the real, unvarnished family history.
Maizie turned back to the screen. “I could call you back later, after the girls are in bed? Dean had a surgery today, so he won’t be home until tomorrow.”
“I’m going to bed early. I’ll talk to you another time.”
Maizie looked like she wanted to say more. “Love you, Ellie.”
“Love you too, Sis.” Eliana ended the call and put the knife down.
The screen flashed, indicating the time duration for the call.
An email notification with a receipt for the payment she’d been charged for the video call showed on the screen for a second.
She swiped it away and opened the app she used to stream TV shows, then entered her PIN.
In her most recently viewed category was the documentary from ten years ago about Dominatus, broadcast to coincide with the opening of the museum, that her parents had refused to participate in.
She’d watched it a hundred times and could almost quote the show. Her parents had declared it mostly fabrication and told fifteen-year-old Eliana not to watch it. She’d seen it just a few weeks later on a sleepover with Luci, Carlos’s big sister.
She watched it again months ago, preparing for this move. The one where she gave up her safe job and safe life and went off on an adventure.
The last thing she’d expected was a grisly murder at work. One that had nothing to do with her plan. It was safe to say things had gone off the rails.
And Eliana still had to figure out how to get into the vault.