Chapter 6 - The Blood Line
The hospice in Highland Park didn't look like a place where grandfathers died. It looked like a private country club—stone pillars at the gate, manicured hedges trimmed into neat, round domes, and a long, curved driveway paved with dark gray granite cobbles.
The rain had stopped, but the wind coming off Lake Michigan was brutal, carrying the cold, metallic scent of deep water and wet sand.
A gray Mercedes sedan—registered to an estate lawyer in Evanston—pulled up to the side entrance near the delivery bay at two in the afternoon.
Voss was in the backseat, wearing a dark gray suit he hadn't worn in three years and a clean black tie. Elena sat beside him, her hair combed neatly and held back with the small silver butterfly clip Marcus had found in the alley. She wore a dark blue woolen coat Voss had bought at a department store in Elgin two hours earlier.
She looked small in the leather seat, her small hands resting quietly in her lap.
"Are we going to see my granddad?" she asked softly.
Voss looked at her. "Do you remember him?"
She thought about it for a moment, her brow furrowing in concentration. "He smelled like mints and tobacco. He gave me a silver dollar once, but Marcos took it away."
"Marcos won't take anything else from you," Voss said.
The door to the delivery bay opened, and a woman in a dark green nurse’s uniform stepped out into the cold wind. She was sixty, with sharp, high cheekbones, gray hair pulled back into a tight bun, and eyes that were the exact shade of hazel as Voss’s mother’s had been before she died in the laundry room in South Chicago.
Her name was Clara.
Voss opened the car door and stepped out. He didn't offer his hand. They stood four feet apart in the cold air, watching each other with the long, silent judgment of people who shared fifty years of dark history.
"You look like your father," Clara said, her voice sharp as an ice pick. "He had that same stupid, stubborn set to his chin right before he got caught."
"Hello, Aunt Clara," Voss said softly.
Clara glanced past him into the backseat of the Mercedes. Her eyes softened just a fraction when she saw Elena looking out the window.
"Is that Ramon’s girl?" Clara asked.
"It is," Voss said.
"Marcos has four men on the third floor," Clara said, her voice dropping into a businesslike whisper. "They’ve been there since Thursday. They don't let anyone in except the head nurse and Dr. Bernstein. Ramon’s on morphine. He has good hours and bad hours. Right now, he’s awake, but he thinks it’s nineteen-eighty-four."
"Can he talk?" Voss asked.
"He can talk when he wants to," Clara said. "He asked for his wife three times this morning. She’s been dead ten years."
She reached into her pocket and pulled out a keycard stamped with a blue star.
"The service elevator goes straight to Room 312," Clara said, handing him the card. "If Marcos’s men see you, Hector, I can't protect you. My board meets on Tuesday, and I have six months until my pension hits."
Voss took the card. "If Marcos’s men see me, Clara, you won't have to worry about your pension."
She looked at him for a long moment, her eyes searching his face for any sign of the boy who used to sit on her porch in South Chicago while his mother worked double shifts.
May you like
"Your mother prayed for you every day until she closed her eyes, Hector," Clara whispered softly. "She prayed you wouldn't end up like the rest of them."
"I didn't," Voss said, stepping back toward the car. "I’m worse. I’m careful."
