Stay on the landing until I come out.”
“I’m not leaving you in here.”
“Last night I walked into a room because no one else was coming.
This morning, someone is coming.
I only need to slow these men down.”
The door shuddered under a second impact.
Evelyn held his gaze for one second, then nodded.
She helped Lily into her coat while Lucas pulled an amplifier cable from the bag.
He looped it around the heavy radiator beside the door, threaded it through the inside handle, and locked it with a steel connector.
The next blow cracked the frame, but the cable held.
Lucas climbed through the kitchen window after Evelyn and Lily.
The three of them descended the fire escape as the apartment door splintered behind them.
At the second-floor landing, a window opened.
Mrs.
Alvarez, Lucas’s elderly neighbor, leaned out in a bathrobe.
“Lucas? What is happening?”
“Call the police,” he said.
“Tell them two men broke into my apartment.”
“I already called.
I heard the door.”
Another witness.
Lucas had learned the value of witnesses the night before.
They reached the alley.
Evelyn nearly slipped, but Lucas caught her elbow.
Lily held his other hand as they crossed between two buildings and emerged onto a narrow street behind a bakery.
A delivery truck blocked the view from the front of the apartment building.
Evelyn drew a sharp breath.
“My driver is two blocks east.”
“Victor will know the car.”
Lucas looked at the equipment van parked near the loading zone.
The company logo was faded, one rear door was dented, and half the city would ignore it on sight.
Five minutes later, Evelyn Carter, one of the most recognizable executives in Boston, sat on a coil of cable in the back of a white AV van while Lily ate emergency crackers from the glove compartment.
Lucas drove.
“We need a witness for the license,” Evelyn said.
“We need someone Victor cannot buy.”
“Do you know anyone like that?”
Lucas thought of his late wife, Anna, and the people who had remained after the funeral casseroles stopped arriving.
The list was short.
But it was not empty.
He called his sister-in-law, Naomi Brooks, a family court clerk in Cambridge.
She answered on the second ring.
“Lucas, do you know what time it is?”
“I need a favor.”
“You only use that voice when something is on fire.”
He looked in the rearview mirror.
Evelyn was reading the trust again while Lily rested against her side.
“Nothing is on fire yet.”
Naomi met them at a municipal records office that opened early for court staff.
She arrived wearing snow boots beneath a gray suit and stared at Evelyn for several seconds.
Then she looked at Lucas.
“You left the gala with a CEO and came back engaged?”
“It’s complicated.”
“That is not a legal category.”
Evelyn placed the founder’s trust on the counter.
“Ms.
