A security guard was crouched on the floor. He held a flashlight and one of her files. A small cry caught in her throat, and she crumpled to her knees. It was Ramone.

She was caught.

CHAPTER 47

“How do you know Max?” The security guard was holding Max’s personnel file. It was the one Beatrice had stolen from the third floor.

Beatrice couldn’t find her voice.

He had Max’s picture in his hand. “You know you weren’t foolin’ nobody when you said you was her the other night.”

Blood was pumping through her at a dizzying pace. She stayed crouched next to the door, clutching the handle.

“Relax. I’ve been watching you for days. If I wanted to have you arrested, I would have done it already.” He waved his hand at her like they were old friends.

Her brain struggled to process the words. He didn’t want her arrested. But they were alone in the middle of the night, she had broken the law, and she was completely at his mercy. She instinctively clutched her coat.

“How do you know Max?” he asked again, showing Beatrice the picture he was holding.

“She was my . . . friend,” she said slowly, unsure how to even think of Max now.

“She’s my friend too,” Ramone said, and tucked the picture back in the file. “We grew up together. She helped me get this job. Or at least she told me about it . . . ‘Arrest on sight’ . . . She’s in some real shit now, boy.”

Beatrice nodded in agreement and felt her shoulders relax a little. If Max was friends with Ramone, maybe she could trust him. But then again Max had once trusted Bill. From under her lowered lashes, she eyed Ramone’s blue collared shirt, worn-out shoes, and dark brown hands. She knew what her mother would think just looking at his skin, but Beatrice searched Ramone’s eyes for a threat and found none. They looked worried. He cared about Max.

“She’s missing,” Beatrice whispered.

“Yeah.” Ramone lit a cigarette. “I told her not to go messin’ with this shit. She wouldn’t listen to me.”

“What was she messing with?”

“Big money, man, big money. You go messin’ with people that have that kind of money, there’s no way you gonna win. I told her that. These bankers here ain’t no different than anybody else. They lie, they cheat, they steal. Difference is, they don’t get caught. They got the system tied up.” Ramone took a hard drag off his cigarette and blew out a thick cloud of smoke. “Max kept talking about bringing people to justice and going to the police. Man, there’s no justice. Not in Cleveland anyway. Probably not anywhere.”

He was right. Teddy and Jim’s conversation about bribes replayed in her head. Even Tony admitted that the police department might be compromised. The money men had friends on city council, and they would be protected.

“She’s worried that they’re going to try to blame her.”

“How they gonna do that exactly?” Ramone demanded, glaring at her.

Beatrice instinctively shrunk away. He might care about Max, but that didn’t mean he was above getting angry or possibly violent. Beatrice breathed the wave of panic out slowly. He’d been watching her for days, and if he had wanted to harm her, he could have easily done it already. She was going to have to trust him.

“There’s a safe deposit box with her name on it. I think someone has been stashing stolen money and other things in there. I really don’t know how it all works.” Beatrice paused. “She’s not the only one. It happened to my Aunt Doris too.”

Ramone stared at her for a long moment and rubbed his eyes. “Son of a bitch. Well, that explains some things.”

“Like what?”

“Like why Max wanted me to make copies of some keys. Like why she was always asking about the vault. Why I caught her red-handed in there at three in the morning the other night.” He paused. “She didn’t know it was me, so she ran off. I tried to catch up, but I lost her in the tunnels. I haven’t seen her since.”

Beatrice thought of the huge ring of keys she’d found in the ladies’ room. Maybe Max hadn’t stolen them. Maybe Ramone had made copies of the keys. “I saw her tonight. She’s okay. She was in disguise.”

“Disguise?” Relief seemed to wash over him.

“Her hair and clothes were different. She looked awful.” She paused, trying to process everything Ramone had said. Max had been in the vault. “Did you say something about tunnels?”

“Yeah, there are old steam tunnels under the building. They connect to all sorts of places downtown.” Ramone studied her closely for a moment, his eyes hardening. “If you’re gonna keep stayin’ here, you need to find a better way to get in and out of the building. I don’t know what you was thinkin’ using the front door.”

Her little mouth fell open. He’d seen her. He’d been watching the door. “Can you help me?”

“Help you do what exactly? Why you here?”

“I didn’t have anywhere else to go.” She couldn’t hold back the tears and hid her face. “I don’t know if I can help Max, but my aunt’s involved too, and . . . and she’s dying, and I can’t just leave her. Men from the bank are watching her hospital room. They destroyed her house, and I can’t go back.”

A huge hand shook her gently by the shoulder. “Okay, okay. I’ll help you, but you can’t just hang around here forever. You need to figure out a plan. You need to find a way out for good.”

She nodded at him, and he helped her stand up.

“First off, what’s your real name?”

“Beatrice.” She wiped her eyes.

“Okay, Beatrice. I’m Ramone.” He shook her hand gently. “I’ll help you find your way in and out of the building. I’m not going to ask how you got Max’s keys, and I’m not going to tell anyone you’re here. But you listen to me.”

“Yes?” she asked obediently.

“Stay away from the big money men, okay? You can’t win.”

CHAPTER 48

Stay away from the money men. Beatrice thought about it the rest of the night and all the next day of typing and filing. That meant leaving Teddy and Jim alone. The next night, she stared at the door from her bed in the dark office, wondering what the money men were up to and what it all had to do with Bill and Aunt Doris.

There was a soft knocking on the other side. Beatrice scrambled into a corner as the brass knob turned and the door slowly swung open. It was Ramone. He couldn’t help smiling at her petrified expression, and motioned her into the hall. She followed him to the service elevator and down to the lowest level of the building.

He led her through a large corridor with two huge, round steel doors. “These are the vault doors. They’re always locked, and they’re rigged with alarms, so don’t get any crazy ideas. There’s TV cameras too.” He pointed to a large gray box with a round, black lens near the ceiling.

“What do you mean cameras?” She’d never noticed cameras in the building before.

“Closed-circuit monitoring. They just installed it in the vault last year. They still workin’ the bugs out. If the little red light is on, watch out. Someone might be watching.”

Beatrice froze, staring at the camera. “Who?”

“Well, that’s one of the bugs. During the day, the guard watches the monitors from out in the lower lobby.” He led her through a huge round doorway into a lobby area and pointed to the desk. There was a small TV sitting on the corner of it. “At night they usually turn this shit off.”

“What’s the bug then?”

“People upstairs can’t make up their minds when they want it turned off and when they want people watching.”