Chapter 12 - My Brother in the Fire
Gabriel watched the video three times.
Each time, his own face walked into Bay Three.
Each time, he looked directly at the camera.
Each time, he helped carry a box.
Mateo stood five feet away, silent.
Finally Gabriel said, “It isn’t what you think.”
Mateo laughed once.
“I have reached the point where that sentence makes me violent.”
“I didn’t know they were going to burn the shop.”
“You helped empty the vault.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Gabriel looked toward Vanessa.
She was crying.
“For her.”
Vanessa stared.
“What?”
Gabriel took a breath.
“Warren called me yesterday afternoon. He said Vanessa would be charged with medication tampering and conspiracy unless I helped him move records.”
Vanessa stepped back.
“You never told me.”
“I was trying to protect you.”
Mateo slammed a wrench onto the workbench.
“Stop saying that!”
Everyone froze.
“Every disaster in this family starts with somebody deciding they are protecting someone by lying to them.”
Gabriel looked ashamed.
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I do now.”
Lucas stepped in.
“Where did the boxes go?”
“I don’t know.”
“You rode with them?”
“No. I left before the van.”
“Who were the masked men?”
“No idea.”
“What did Warren tell you was inside?”
“Old tax records.”
Tomas laughed bitterly.
“You believed a retired judge needed masked men for tax records?”
“I believed he could put my wife in prison.”
Vanessa whispered, “Maybe I deserve prison if I did something.”
Gabriel looked at her.
“You picked up medication.”
“I didn’t switch it.”
“Then we prove that.”
“That is what Mateo is saying.”
The sentence landed.
Gabriel looked at his brother.
For once, there was no resentment in his face.
Only exhaustion.
“I’m sorry.”
Mateo wanted to stay angry.
Instead, he asked, “Did you see anything unusual in the vault?”
Gabriel thought.
“One box was already missing before we started.”
“Which?”
“Marked BLUE.”
Tomas and Marisol exchanged a look.
Mateo saw it.
“What is Blue?”
Neither answered.
“Elena?”
She shook her head.
Marisol sighed.
“Children.”
Clara stiffened.
“What about children?”
“Cedar kept files on members’ families. Birth certificates. custody disputes. adoption records.”
Mateo looked at Sofia’s mark in his memory.
“Leverage.”
“Yes.”
Clara whispered, “My file.”
“Probably.”
“Rebecca’s?”
“Yes.”
Mateo looked at Tomas.
“And mine?”
“Yes.”
The blue archive had disappeared before Warren’s men arrived.
Meaning someone else had opened the vault first.
“Who knew the combination?” Lucas asked.
Tomas said, “Only Manuel, Elena, and me.”
Elena stared.
“I never knew the combination.”
Tomas looked at her.
“You entered it once.”
“When?”
“The river night.”
Elena’s face changed.
“What?”
“You were in shock. Manuel made you repeat six numbers.”
She shook her head.
“I don’t remember.”
Mateo did.
Not the numbers.
A rhythm.
His mother whispering something beside a hospital bed when he was eight.
Four.
Nine.
Two.
Seven.
One.
Three.
He said them aloud.
Tomas went still.
“That’s it.”
Everyone stared at Mateo.
“I remember Mom repeating them after I almost drowned.”
Elena covered her mouth.
Memory, apparently, had been hiding in all of them.
Lucas asked the obvious question.
“Who else could know?”
Mateo looked at Clara.
She shook her head.
“Not me.”
Gabriel?
“No.”
Marisol?
“I knew the keys, not the combination.”
Tomas paced.
“Manuel could have told someone.”
“Luis?” Mateo asked.
Tomas stopped.
His supposedly dead brother.
Possible.
Clara said, “Rebecca?”
Also possible.
The dead had become a suspect pool.
Lucas’s phone rang.
He listened.
Then looked at Vanessa.
“Your father’s attorney just filed an emergency motion claiming Judge Blake is medically unfit for questioning.”
Vanessa frowned.
“He isn’t sick.”
“His attorney says advanced cognitive decline.”
Mateo laughed.
“The same trick he wanted to use on Mom.”
Lucas nodded.
“Except the medical records are signed by a neurologist.”
“Real doctor?”
“Yes.”
“Real diagnosis?”
“Unknown.”
Vanessa looked frightened.
“My father has never mentioned memory problems.”
Marisol said, “Because he doesn’t have them.”
“Then why file?”
“To get him moved.”
“Where?”
Lucas checked.
“Private medical facility.”
Tomas swore.
“A Cedar facility?”
“Probably.”
Mateo remembered Elena’s altered pills.
Manufactured confusion.
Competency.
Medical paperwork as a weapon.
“Stop the transfer.”
Lucas said, “Working on it.”
A car horn sounded outside.
Clara looked through the broken bay door.
A taxi had pulled into the lot.
A woman stepped out.
Mid-fifties.
Dark hair streaked gray.
She carried one suitcase.
Clara stopped breathing.
The woman looked toward her.
Then whispered a name.
“Clary.”
Clara’s knees buckled.
Mateo caught her.
Only one person had called her that in childhood.
Rebecca Blake.
Her mother.
Alive.
Clara ran across the burned parking lot.
Rebecca dropped the suitcase.
They collided in an embrace so hard both nearly fell.
Clara sobbed.
“You’re dead.”
Rebecca held her face.
“I know.”
“You left me.”
“I know.”
“Why?”
Rebecca looked past Clara.
At Tomas.
Her expression changed.
“Because he told me to.”
Mateo turned toward his father.
Tomas closed his eyes.
Another lie had arrived.
After Gabriel’s confession, Mateo walked away from the others and stood beneath the damaged RIVERA AUTO sign.
Gabriel followed.
“You can yell.”
“I already did.”
“You can hit me.”
“No.”
“I deserve it.”
“That does not make it useful.”
Gabriel sat on the curb.
“I always thought you got everything.”
Mateo looked at him.
“What?”
“Dad liked you better.”
“Dad disappeared when I was seventeen.”
“Exactly. Your memories were good. Mine were him angry all the time.”
Mateo had never considered that.
“You were twelve.”
“I was twelve and then suddenly the man who criticized everything I did was a martyr.”
“That is not my fault.”
“I know.”
“Then why bring it up?”
“Because Warren knew.”
Mateo sat beside him.
Gabriel continued.
“He knew I felt second. He kept saying the shop should have been mine.”
“So he fed the resentment.”
“Yes.”
“And you let him.”
“Yes.”
“Why tell me now?”
“Because I helped burn our father’s evidence to protect my wife from a crime she might not have committed.”
Mateo almost smiled.
“When you say it out loud, it sounds worse.”
“It does.”
They sat quietly.
Then Gabriel said, “I don’t want the shop.”
Mateo looked over.
“I want to rebuild it with you.”
“If we still own it.”
“If we still have walls.”
“If neither of us gets arrested.”
Gabriel nodded.
“Conditions noted.”
May you like
It was not forgiveness.
But for the first time in years, they were talking as brothers rather than competitors.
