Marco did not frighten easily.
I had seen him stand in the middle of a Manhattan intersection while two men twice his size screamed in his face. I had watched him receive terrible news about people we both cared about and absorb it with the stillness of a stone wall.
But the expression he wore in Elena’s hospital room was different.
It was uncertainty.
And Marco Reyes hated uncertainty.
“What did you find?” I asked.
He glanced at Dr. Bennett.
The doctor seemed to understand immediately.
“I need to check on another patient,” she said. “Ms. Ross needs rest. Keep your voices down, and if she wakes, press the call button.”
The door clicked shut behind her.
Marco waited another few seconds before turning his phone toward me.
On the screen was a photograph of a gray sedan parked outside an aging brick apartment building in Queens.
“I asked Caleb to retrace Elena’s movements,” he said.
Caleb was one of the few people Marco trusted without reservation. Former police. Quiet. Patient. The kind of man who remembered license plates after seeing them once in heavy rain.
“And?”
“Elena has been staying in a furnished apartment under a month-to-month lease. Cheap place. Third floor. No doorman.”
I looked at the woman in the hospital bed.
Elena hated elevators that smelled like cigarettes.
She complained about thin walls.
She once rejected a hotel suite in Milan because the air-conditioning made a faint clicking noise.
The idea of her living alone in a cheap furnished apartment seemed impossible.
“Why there?”
“We don’t know yet.”
Marco swiped the screen.
A second photograph appeared.
A man stood beside the gray sedan.
He was turned slightly away from the camera, but I knew the shape of those shoulders. The silver at the temples. The expensive coat worn without any awareness of its price.
My stomach tightened.
“Daniel.”
My older brother.
Marco nodded.
“He visited Elena’s building three times this month that we can confirm.”
I stared at the photograph.
Daniel Mercer had spent most of our lives being everything I wasn’t.
Patient where I was impatient.
Diplomatic where I was direct.
He remembered birthdays.
He sent handwritten thank-you notes.
At family dinners, when our father and I inevitably disagreed about something, Daniel was the one who refilled the wine glasses and changed the subject before anyone said something that could not be taken back.
He had also been the best man at my wedding.
“No,” I said.
It was not a conclusion.
It was instinct.
Marco’s face remained carefully neutral.
“Luke.”
“No.”
“His car was there.”
“That doesn’t mean he hurt her.”
“I didn’t say it did.”
“You were about to.”
Marco lowered his phone.
“I was about to say we need facts.”
I looked again at Elena.
Purple bruises marked her wrist.
Malnourished.
Dehydrated.
No prenatal care.
Someone close to her had been making sure she never received the support she needed.
Trust no one.
“Call Daniel,” I said.
Marco did not move.
“Now.”
“Maybe you should read the letter first.”
My gaze shifted to the envelope inside the evidence bag.
For Luke—Trust No One.
Five words in Elena’s handwriting.
Five words capable of turning every familiar face into a question.
I pulled a chair beside the bed.
The envelope was unsealed.
That bothered me immediately.
Elena always sealed letters.
Even birthday cards.
She had a strange ritual of pressing the adhesive down with the handle of a spoon because she claimed fingers left uneven pressure.
I turned the envelope over.
No tear.
No moisture mark.
No sign it had ever been closed.
“Marco.”
