Chapter 6 - The Aftermath of Smoke
The engine of David Garza’s silver sedan screamed as we tore out of the alley behind the Wabash diner, tires throwing up a spray of icy slush against the brick walls. In the rearview mirror, Frank Vance did not chase us into the street. He simply stood under the amber glow of the security light, coughing violently from the chemical spray, his hand wiping his eyes while he watched us vanish into the Chicago night.
He didn't need to chase us. He already knew where Garza lived. He knew where the newspaper office was. And thanks to Greg Miller, he knew that a twenty-seven-year-old waitress named Cassie Vance had just walked out of Bellamy’s Steakhouse with a flash drive containing fourteen years of hidden history.
I sat rigidly in the passenger seat, my fingers still trembling as I stared down at my hands. The warmth of the car heater washed over my face, but I couldn't stop shivering.
“When this blows up, you aren't just hurting Dominic. You’re handing the keys to a worse monster.”
Frank’s words echoed louder in my head than the roar of the car engine. I looked across the center console at Garza. His knuckles were white against the steering wheel, his jaw clenched tight as he navigated the slick, snow-dusted expressway toward the Loop.
“You knew,” I said, my voice cutting through the hum of the tires.
Garza didn't look at me. His eyes stayed glued to the road ahead, watching for tail lights in the rearview mirror. “Knew what, Cassie?”
“You knew what Caleb was doing before tonight,” I said, the realization settling into my chest like lead. “When we were at the diner, you weren't entirely surprised when I told you about the bank records. You’ve been tracking the Vales for years. You knew Caleb wasn't just a victim looking for closure.”
Garza let out a heavy sigh, signaling a lane change as we navigated around a sluggish snowplow. He exited the ramp toward downtown, steering the car into the underground parking garage of a nondescript mid-rise apartment building.
“I knew the Vales,” Garza corrected, cutting the engine as we slid into a dark, concrete stall. The sudden silence in the car felt absolute. “And I knew Caleb was biding his time. But nobody—not even me—fully understood how cold that kid’s calculation really was.”
He turned in his seat, looking at me with deep, tired eyes.
“For fourteen years, everyone in Chicago thought Caleb Vale was broken,” Garza continued softly. “They thought the explosion that killed his mother fried his nerves and left him isolated in a world he couldn't hear or touch. But deafness doesn't make you blind, Cassie. It makes you watch. While his father built an empire on blood and handshakes, Caleb sat at the family dinner table and read every ledger, every wire transfer, every secret whispered behind closed doors.”
“And instead of going to the police, he waited until he could tear the whole thing down,” I whispered, looking down at my coat pocket where the flash drive still rested. “He didn't just want justice. He wanted total control.”
“Dominic built that empire by crushing anyone who stood in his way,” Garza said, unbuckling his seatbelt. “Caleb learned from the best teacher in the city. The only difference is that Dominic uses a baseball bat, and Caleb uses a scalpel.”
We got out of the car and took the service elevator up to Garza’s fourth-floor apartment. It was a modest, cluttered space filled with towering stacks of newspapers, corkboards covered in red string, and the smell of stale black coffee. It was the lair of a man who had married his work.
Garza tossed his trench coat over the back of a worn leather armchair and walked straight to his battered desk, sitting down in front of an open laptop. He plugged the small metal flash drive into the USB port. A small blue light blinked twice, then stayed solid.
“Let’s see what we actually bought tonight,” Garza muttered, his fingers flying across the keyboard.
A series of encrypted folders populated the screen, filled with scanned PDF files, bank routing numbers, and corporate shell company names registered in the Cayman Islands and downtown Chicago real estate fronts. Garza opened a subfolder dated November 2012—the exact month of the lake house explosion.
My heart skipped a beat as I leaned over the back of his chair.
There it was. A wire transfer of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars from a Vale-owned construction front to a personal account belonging to a man named Arthur Pendelton—a local contractor who had conveniently left the country the week after the fire. Attached to the transfer was a scanned memo line in Dominic’s own looping signature: Site preparation and structural clearance.
“There’s the murder weapon,” Garza whispered, his eyes scanning the data. “That’s what Frank Vance didn't want us to publish. That’s why they tracked you tonight.”
“So we give it to the police,” I said, though the words felt hollow even as I spoke them. “We send it to the State’s Attorney.”
Garza laughed, a dry, humorless sound. “Cassie, the State’s Attorney’s reelection campaign was heavily funded by Vale-owned trucking subsidiaries. If we drop this into the legal system directly, it will get buried in a filing cabinet before sunrise, and you and I will end up in a shallow grave near the Indiana border.”
“Then what do we do?” I demanded, stepping around the desk to face him. “We can't just sit on it. Frank Vance knows I have it. Greg knows I took it. Every enforcer in the city is going to be looking for me by morning.”
Garza looked up from the screen, his expression unreadable. “We don't give it to the police, and we don't just dump it on the front page of the Tribune where Dominic’s lawyers can slap us with a dozen gag orders and injunctions.”
He reached out and tapped the screen.
“We give it to the person who has the most to lose if it stays hidden—and the only person in Chicago powerful enough to survive the fallout.”
I stared at him, the pieces clicking together with a cold, terrifying clarity.
“Caleb,” I said.
“Caleb,” Garza confirmed, leaning back in his chair. “He wanted these records out of his father's safe. He wanted them delivered to the press. Now we go back to the source. We find Caleb, hand over the files, and ask him what his next move is—before his father finds out we’re playing his game.”
Before Garza could pick up his phone to dial, a sharp, rhythmic tapping echoed from the apartment’s front door down the dimly lit hallway.
It wasn't a knock of police or an intruder trying to kick it down. It was a slow, deliberate series of three knocks—pause—three knocks.
Garza froze, his hand dropping silently toward the drawer where he kept a heavy steel flashlight. I held my breath, staring down the dark corridor toward the entrance.
The lock clicked. The heavy wooden door swung open slowly.
Standing in the doorway, framed by the dim light of the hallway, was Caleb Vale. He wasn't wearing his coat. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, and his dark eyes were burning with an intensity that made the hair on the back of my arms stand up.
He looked at Garza, then straight past him to me. Without a word, his hands moved with lightning speed, cutting through the silence of the room:
May you like
My father just called an emergency meeting with his capos. He thinks I stole the drive. And he's coming here.
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