Frank takes another shaky swig of beer.
“Your brother sat at my kitchen table and started laying out photos. My daughter Melissa. At her apartment in Wicker Park. At the Whole Foods on Ashland where she does her shopping. Getting into her boyfriend’s fucking Subaru.” He swallows. “He never said he’d hurt her, nothin’ that crazy, you know? Never made a single explicit threat. Just kept sliding those photos across the table, one by one, while asking me all about Olympus. Real simple questions, almost like he was just a curious guy who liked to know how shit works. What systems were going in first, how the inspections usually went, that kinda thing.”
My stomach churns in a way that has nothing to do with morning sickness. “And?”
“And I told him what he wanted to know. The fuck else was I supposed to do?”
“Not fucking sell me out to a mobster, for starters,” snarls Bastian.
“I’m not that kind of guy,” Frank answers immediately. “There’s shady dudes in my line of work, for sure—but I never wanted to be one of ‘em. All this shit is way above my paygrade. B’sides, I didn’t know what he was gonna do with all that info.”
“Until he came to you and started asking favors, didn’t he?” I interject.
Frank swallows again. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s exactly what he did.”
Bastian grips my thigh beneath the table. “Go on.”
“I didn’t hear nothin’ from him for a long time after that. ‘Til about six months before we were due to cut the ribbons. And then… It started.” Frank’s voice descends to a meek whisper. “Guy I’ve never seen before in my life shows up one day and says,‘The boss needs you to pull out all that ventilation shit you just put in.’I was confused, you know, ‘cause I knew timelines were tight and you guys had a lot riding on it. But then I realized he wasn’t talking aboutyou, Mr. Hale. He was talking ‘bout theotherboss. So again: what else was I s’posed to do?”
For the second time, Bastian clicks his tongue in disgust. “Keep going” is all he says, though.
“So I went in with a coupla my guys that I trusted and we ripped out all that ventilation. All good stuff that had been installed, tested, inspected, approved. I hoped that’d be the end of it, but nah. Week later, same guy, same kind of request. That time, we replaced working electrical with faulty wiring that’d fail the second anyone looked too close.”
“Jesus,” I breathe.
“Few more things after that. It hurt my soul, you know?” Frank says. “This big, beautiful building got turned into a flimsy house of cards. I hadpridein that thing, I swear I did. I felt cheated, too.”
“Spare me the fucking sob story,” spits Bastian. “It’s not your life’s work that got sabotaged. And besides, I bet he paid you, didn’t he?”
Frank must nod. “Seventy-five grand in cash. Twenties and fifties stuffed into a Home Depot bag.” Then he laughs hollowly. “You know where that money is right now, though? In mygarage, tucked behind the snow tires. Haven’t touched a single bill.”
“Why not?” I ask.
“Because every time I look at it, I see Melissa’s face. Those photos. Her walking to her car, grocery bags in hand, living her goddamn life without knowing some psychopath was documenting every move.” Frank’s seat groans as he fidgets. “I wanted to burn it. Thought about it a hundred times at least. But then I figured, if something happens to me, maybe Melissa could use it. Get out of town. Start over somewhere your brother can’t find her.”
“So that’s why you’re here,” Bastian concludes. “Your guilt finally got too heavy to carry around, so you figured you’d dump some of it on us.”
Frank doesn’t deny the accusation. “It’s been killing me. When I’m lying in bed at night, I close my eyes and see that building. All those people who coulda been hurt if something went wrong during construction… Those guys I work with are like my family, and I put them at risk. My own daughter, I almost— almost…” He stops and cries for half a second before he sniffles and clams up.
Bastian’s palm tenses on my thigh.
“So I want to help,” Frank continues shakily. “To make things right.”
“And what do you want in return?” I ask. If I’ve learned anything over the last few months, it’s that nothing in this world comes free.
“Just a clean conscience, Ms. Hunter,” he swears. “I gotta be able to look at myself in the mirror again.”
I feel the change in Bastian’s posture and I can almost picture his eyes darkening from blue to black as he leans forward and asks the only question that matters. “Alright then. Tell me this: Where’s Sage?”
Frank exhales. “Your brother hired me for some reno work a couple weeks back at an apartment building he owns on the West Side. Karlov Avenue, near the Eisenhower.”
Goosebumps prickle up on my skin. I don’t like where this is going.
“It’s a three-story brick building,” he explains. “Looks abandoned from the outside. But it ain’t. He had me put bars on all the windows and reinforce the doors. And while I was there, I did some observing. They got a rotating guard schedule, usually two guys at a time.”
“And Sage is there?”
“He was headed there soon, last I heard. They move him every three, four days to different safe houses. Keeps things unpredictable.” Frank pauses. “I got a good tip that the next rotation’s in forty-eight hours. After that, he disappears into a different location and I won’t know where. Nobody will, except your brother.”
