Carter Reed novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: The Phone

"It's tracked," Carter said.

He turned the phone over in his scarred hand, and the cracked screen threw light across his face.

We were back in the warehouse, standing at the long table.

Tori sat on a stool nearby with her knees drawn up.

"He wants to know where it is," Carter said. "So I'm going to take the battery out."

"Wait." Tori held out her hand. "Before you do, I know the passcode."

We both looked at her.

"He made me type it once," she said. "In June. He wanted me to see something. Four-two-eight-one-one-two."

"What did he want you to see?"

"I don't want to say it."

"Then we'll look," I said.

Carter put the phone in a metal bread box, closed the lid, and carried it to a counter with no outlet.

He typed the code, and the phone lit.

"A dead man's phone is a ledger," he said. "Sit down."

I sat on his left, Tori on his right.

The photos folder held a thousand pictures, and the first dozen were women.

Different women, different rooms, none of them smiling.

Some looked drunk, and some looked asleep.

I knew what I was seeing before I read the notes under them.

Dates, initials, a dollar figure.

"Nine," Tori said. "I count nine."

"Eleven," said Carter, scrolling.

His voice had gone very quiet.

I knew the quiet from the trauma bay when a doctor read a bad scan.

"There's a spreadsheet." He tapped. "Names, addresses, what he paid them to stay silent, which ones wouldn't take it."

"Which ones?" I asked.

"Four wouldn't."

"What happened to those four?"

He didn't answer.

Tori put her hand over her mouth.

"Giorgio knew," I said slowly. "He has to have known."

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