Chapter 5 - Blood on the Ledger
Willa burst through the door of the Bridgeport apartment with ice clinging to her eyelashes and her lungs burning like fire.
Toby was on his feet in an instant, dropping his drafting scale onto the table.
“Willa, what happened to your feet?” he gasped, staring at her soaked, threadbare wool socks.
Her work boots were still dangling from her neck, covered in gray street grit and salt stains.
She leaned against the kitchen door, sliding the deadbolt into place with a trembling thumb.
“Take the phone,” she whispered, her voice ragged from the sprint across the icy train platform.
“Plug it into your laptop and copy the storage drive before it corrupts.”
Toby did not ask questions; he took the phone from her cold fingers and ran the cable into his second-hand ThinkPad.
Willa sank onto the linoleum, peeling the wet wool from her numb, blue toes.
Her left forearm was bleeding again; two of the silk stitches had pulled loose beneath the fresh gauze.
Toby sat staring at the high-resolution files loading onto the flickering monitor.
His young face grew extraordinarily pale under the cold fluorescent tube.
“Look at the casting boss on the original piece, Willa,” he said, pointing with a mechanical pencil.
“The beach marks along the fracture plane are classic cyclical fatigue.”
“That cast iron didn't give way under the snow; it’s been separating for at least eighteen months.”
“And look at the replacement they’re bolting into the brickwork.”
He zoomed in on the circular foundry stamp pressed into the flange of the second anchor.
“Foundry mark 44-B, Gary Industrial Works,” Toby murmured, his fingers flying across the keyboard.
“That foundry went out of business six years ago, Willa.”
“Someone pulled that replacement out of a demolition salvage yard and kept it in storage for this exact reason.”
Before Willa could answer, a heavy, rhythmic thud shook the thin wooden frame of their apartment door.
It was not the polite knock of a neighbor or the hurried tap of a landlord.
It was the flat, brutal impact of a heavy shoulder testing the lock from the hallway.
Willa froze on the kitchen floor, her hand dropping instinctively to the cast-iron skillet on the stove.
“Willa Doyle,” a man’s voice called through the wood, muffled and thick with phlegm.
“Open the door, girl. Gordon Pike wants to have a word about the property you took from the ballroom.”
Toby looked at his sister, his eyes wide with sudden, sickening terror.
Willa pointed toward the rear bedroom without making a sound.
She pulled on her wet work boots without tying the laces, her mind working with cold precision.
“The fire escape,” she mouthed silently.
Toby snatched the laptop, jammed it into his canvas school bag, and zipped it tight.
A second blow struck the apartment door, splintering the pine casing around the brass deadbolt.
A crowbar bit into the wood between the door and the jamb, screeching as it levered the frame apart.
Willa grabbed Toby’s arm, shoved him through the bedroom, and threw the sash of the rear window open.
The freezing Chicago wind poured into the bedroom, billowing the thin lace curtains like sails.
They scrambled out onto the rusted iron landing of the fire escape just as the front door gave way with a violent crash.
Heavy footsteps thudded across the linoleum, accompanied by the sound of drawers being overturned onto the floor.
“She went out the back!” someone yelled from inside the apartment.
Willa and Toby flew down the iron stairs, the rusted metal vibrating beneath their weight.
At the second-floor landing, the counterweighted drop ladder was rusted solid in its cradle.
Willa did not hesitate; she grabbed Toby’s jacket and dropped eight feet into the snow-filled dumpster below.
The impact knocked the wind from her chest, but the piles of discarded cardboard broke their fall.
They scrambled over the rusted lip of the bin and hit the alley pavement running.
Behind them, a man leaned out of their third-floor window, shouting curses into the snowy night.
They ran through the maze of Bridgeport alleys, turning every corner until the sound of footsteps died away.
They emerged on Thirty-Fifth Street, soaking wet, shivering violently, and completely without shelter.
Willa reached into the pocket of the black overcoat she was still wearing and pulled out the matchbook.
The Foundry.
An embossed gold address in River North was stamped beneath the striker strip: 412 West Erie Street.
“We can’t go to the police, Willa,” Toby stammered through chattering teeth.
“The police signed the inspection certificate with Gordon Pike.”
“We’re not going to the police,” Willa said, her voice hard as river ice.
“We’re going to the only man in this city who hates Gordon Pike more than we do.”
They took the elevated train north, standing between the cars to avoid the transit officers.
Twenty minutes later, they stood before a nondescript steel door set into an old brick warehouse in River North.
There was no sign, no brass plate, and no awning to keep off the freezing rain.
Willa banged the flat of her fist against the cold steel four times.
A small rectangular viewing slot slid open, revealing two cold, dark eyes beneath a flat cap.
“We’re closed,” the voice said through the grille.
Willa stepped closer, pulling the lapels of the heavy cashmere coat wide so the man could see the cut and the lining.
She held the book of matches flat against the iron mesh.
“Tell August Sartori that Station Seven has the invoice for his mother’s ceiling,” she said clearly.
The viewing slot slammed shut.
May you like
For thirty seconds, there was only the sound of the freezing rain hissing against the brick wall.
Then, with a heavy pneumatic release, the steel door unlocked and swung open into the warm, golden light of the interior.
