CHAPTER 52 - A NEW SUSPICIOUS NAME

The elimination process Elias had promised moved forward carefully, and by the end of the second week, the list of forty names had narrowed to twelve.

It was still a long way from an answer, but it was enough to give the investigation a clearer direction.

"Vasquez," Elias said, laying a thin folder on Luca's desk. "Phone records show three calls to an unregistered number in the past two weeks. Each call happened within an hour of information later showing up in ways that don't track back to any legitimate source."

Luca opened the folder and scanned the details with the same unhurried, cataloguing attention he brought to everything.

"The gambling debt," Luca said.

"Confirmed," Elias replied. "He owes considerably more than his salary can cover, to men who don't extend patient terms." Elias turned another page. "Access to the warehouse schedule. Financial motive strong enough to explain the risk. And now a pattern of unexplained calls that lines up with at least two of the failures."

Luca's expression hardened slightly as he read through the remaining information.

"It fits," Luca said.

"It does," Elias agreed. "But there are still gaps."

Luca lifted his gaze from the folder.

"How many?" he asked.

"Enough that I wouldn't call it conclusive yet," Elias answered.

For several seconds, Luca said nothing.

He reread the phone records, then placed the folder flat on the desk.

"It's considerably more evidence than we've had against anyone else," Luca said.

"That's true," Elias replied.

"And you're still not convinced?" Luca asked.

"I'm saying we should hear him out before we decide what the evidence means," Elias answered.

Luca leaned back in his chair.

Then, after a moment, he closed the folder.

"Bring him in," Luca ordered.

"Now?" Elias asked.

"Yes, now." Luca rose from his desk, already reaching for his jacket. "I want to hear his explanation myself, before he has time to prepare one that survives scrutiny."

Elias nodded and followed him out of the study.

The security wing was already preparing the interrogation room when they arrived.

Vasquez had been summoned from his quarters, where he'd been recovering from the warehouse wound.

He was still walking with a slight limp, and the expression on his face suggested he had spent the entire walk wondering why he'd been called.

Elias had seen enough men brought into that room to know that the uncertainty was often worse than the questioning itself.

Vasquez sat in the small interrogation room off the security wing, his injured leg stretched slightly forward beneath the table. Sweat had begun to bead at his hairline despite the room's cool temperature.

Elias remained near the doorway as Luca took the chair opposite Vasquez.

"The calls," Luca said, sliding the phone records across the table. "Explain it."

"I told you, I..." Vasquez's voice cracked. He swallowed hard before continuing. "It's not what you think, Boss. I swear it isn't."

"Then tell me what it is," Luca said.

Vasquez's hands trembled against the table's edge.

"I owe money. A lot of it," Vasquez admitted. "The man I've been calling, he's not Kozlov, I swear on my mother's life. He's just someone who lent me the money to cover what I owe elsewhere. I've been paying him back, that's all those calls are. Arrangements about payment."

"That's a considerable coincidence," Luca said, his voice flat and unmoved. "That your payment calls happen to align, within the hour, with information reaching people who shouldn't have had it."

"I don't know anything about that," Vasquez insisted.

His voice rose, panic bleeding through every word now.

"I swear to you, Boss, I've never once given anyone information about this house. I wouldn't. I couldn't afford to, even if I wanted to. You'd kill me for it and everyone knows it."

Luca didn't respond immediately.

He simply watched Vasquez.

The silence seemed to make the man's panic worse.

"I swear," Vasquez repeated, his voice shaking. "I swear I'm telling the truth."

Elias watched the exchange carefully, paying attention to more than Vasquez's words.

Luca's questions became sharper with every round. Vasquez's answers became increasingly disorganized, circling back to the same explanation about his debt and the man he'd been borrowing from.

There was certainly enough there to make him suspicious.

But suspicion wasn't the same as proof.

"Luca," Elias said.

Elias waited until Luca looked toward him before continuing.

"A word, before this goes further."

Luca glanced at him, something sharp in his expression at the interruption, but he stepped away from the table regardless, following Elias into the corridor outside.

"What?" Luca asked.

"I think I believe him," Elias said quietly.

Luca's expression didn't change.

"Why?" he asked.

"Not because I trust him particularly. Because the pattern doesn't fit cleanly enough," Elias explained.

Elias lowered his voice further.

"If he were the source, I'd expect the timing to track more consistently across all failures, not just two of them. His calls explain something, but they don't explain enough."

Luca folded his arms.

"And the panic?" Luca asked.

"That could be an act. I'm not ruling that out." Elias glanced through the small window in the door before looking back at Luca. "But if we're going to accuse someone of feeding information to a rival organization, we need more than circumstances that happen to line up."

"You didn't raise these objections before we brought him in," Luca said.

"I wanted to see whether his explanation held up under questioning first," Elias answered.

Luca remained silent for a moment.

Elias continued, "I want you to find the actual source as much as you do, Luca. I don't want you to find a name that satisfies the search without actually solving the problem. If we punish Vasquez and the leaks continue, we've lost considerably more than the two weeks this took. We've lost whatever trust remains in this house, and we've told the actual source exactly how far off track we currently are."

Luca studied him for a long moment.

The frustration in his expression was obvious, but so was the calculation behind it.

"If not him, then who?" Luca asked, more to himself than to Elias.

"I don't know yet," Elias said.

There was no point pretending otherwise.

The investigation had narrowed the possibilities, but narrowing a list wasn't the same as identifying the person responsible.

Luca looked back through the window at Vasquez.

"You're certain?" Luca asked.

"No. I'm saying we don't have enough to be certain," Elias replied.

That distinction seemed to matter.

Luca exhaled slowly.

"Fine," Luca said.

He opened the door.

"Vasquez," Luca called.

The man immediately straightened.

"Boss?" Vasquez asked.

"You're going back to your quarters," Luca told him.

Vasquez stared at him, seemingly unable to process the words.

"You're not cleared," Luca continued. "Until we know exactly what's going on, you'll be moved to a less sensitive position."

"Yes, Boss," Vasquez answered quickly.

"And if I find out you're lying to me..." Luca began.

"I understand," Vasquez said.

Luca turned away.

The questioning ended there.

Vasquez was released that evening, shaken but unharmed, reassigned to a considerably less sensitive position within the organization.

Luca returned to his study with the particular, grinding frustration of a man who had believed, briefly, that the search was over, only to have it reopen beneath him.

The reports were still spread across his desk when Elias entered.

"Three months," Luca said, staring at the pages. "Three months, and I've come no closer to a name than I was the day the warehouse was hit."

Elias closed the door behind him.

"You're closer than you think," Elias replied.

Luca looked up at him, something tired and searching in his expression.

"How would you know that?" Luca asked.

"Because the investigation has already eliminated more possibilities than we had three months ago," Elias said.

Luca said nothing.

Elias walked toward the desk and looked down at the reports.

"Whoever this is has been careful enough to survive three months of scrutiny without a single clean mistake. That kind of discipline doesn't come from nowhere. It comes from someone who understood, from the very beginning, exactly how thoroughly this would eventually be investigated, and planned accordingly."

"You're describing someone who knows this house as well as I do," Luca said.

"I'm describing someone who's had considerable time to learn it," Elias answered.

Luca's gaze returned to the reports.

The room fell quiet again.

Neither man spoke for several seconds.

The search had not ended.

If anything, Vasquez's innocence had made the remaining possibilities more difficult to ignore.

Someone had managed to stay ahead of them for three months.

Someone understood the routines of the house.

Someone knew which pieces of information mattered and when they would be most useful.

And until they found that person, every member of the organization remained a potential question mark.