Chapter 9 - The Tampa Camera Request
The next blow didn’t come from Gregory’s fists.
It came from my inbox.
Or what remained of it.
A personal email arrived from Calder’s board secretary.
ASHLYNN—
Effective immediately, you are placed on administrative leave from all executive duties pending review of allegations involving violent conduct aboard your honeymoon cruise.
Your voting privileges remain subject to existing governance documents.
I read the last sentence twice.
Voting privileges remain subject to existing governance documents.
The forged proxy.
Someone was moving fast.
I called the board secretary.
No answer.
Then my company phone remotely locked.
Gregory had predicted this.
Or arranged it.
I looked through my mother’s private archive again.
Tampa.
One day before her death.
I searched every file from that month.
Nothing mentioning Hartman.
Then I remembered something my mother had done with sensitive correspondence.
She never labeled dangerous documents accurately.
A habit from the old days of hostile acquisition attempts.
I searched HOTEL.
Four files.
The third was a scanned credit-card receipt.
Tampa Bay Harbor Hotel.
Two coffees.
One bottle of sparkling water.
One room-service lunch.
My mother’s card.
Attached was a handwritten note.
D.H. ARRIVED 2:14.
LEFT 3:06.
WOULD NOT PUT OFFER IN WRITING.
THREATENED ASHLYNN’S FUTURE POSITION.
My breath stopped.
Daniel Hartman had met my mother privately less than twenty-four hours before she died.
I continued reading.
HE KNOWS ABOUT THE VOTING CLAUSE.
HE SAID IF I DIE, ASHLYNN INHERITS, BUT A SPOUSE CAN CONTROL HER VOTE UNDER INCAPACITY.
I sat completely still.
Seven years earlier, before Gregory ever met me, Daniel Hartman had already considered a future husband as a route to my shares.
I photographed everything.
Then a message arrived from Gregory.
YOU HAVE TEN MINUTES TO MEET ME AT THE OBSERVATION DECK.
COME ALONE.
I almost ignored it.
Then another arrived.
I KNOW WHERE DANA IS.
That changed things.
The observation deck was crowded enough that I felt comfortable going.
Gregory stood near the rail.
No bat.
No smile.
“What happened to Dana?”
“She found something she wasn’t supposed to.”
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then you lied.”
“I know where she was supposed to be.”
He handed me a printed boarding manifest.
I didn’t take it.
“Put it on the table.”
He did.
I looked.
A passenger named DANA MARIE BROOKS had booked cabin 8144.
Next door to Daniel Hartman.
My stomach tightened.
“Dana is on this ship?”
“She boarded this morning.”
“I checked with Calder. She was supposed to be in Jacksonville.”
“She lies better than you think.”
“Did you see her?”
“No.”
“Who booked the cabin?”
Gregory smiled faintly.
“Ask Dad.”
I looked at the manifest again.
Cabin 8144.
Beside 8142.
“Why show me this?”
“Because you keep acting like Dana is your ally.”
“Maybe she is.”
“She signed your proxy.”
“You forged her signature.”
“Did I?”
I looked at him.
Gregory leaned closer.
“Dana ran my background check. Dana approved me. Dana had access to your shareholder files. Dana knew exactly when you were getting married.”
He was trying to turn me against her.
It was working just enough to bother me.
Then he added, “And Dana was the last person from Calder to speak with your mother before she died.”
That wasn’t in any file I had seen.
“How do you know?”
Gregory’s mouth twitched.
“Because Dad kept the recording.”
My pulse hammered.
“What recording?”
He stepped back.
“That depends on whether you want to keep accusing me of trying to hurt you.”
“You did try to hurt me.”
“You survived.”
The casual cruelty of it nearly made me move.
I didn’t.
Gregory looked disappointed.
Then his phone buzzed.
He checked it.
For one instant, the screen angled toward me.
A message from DAD.
SHE FOUND THE TAMPA NOTE.
MOVE NOW.
Gregory’s face changed.
He looked at me.
Then at my purse.
I reacted before he did.
He lunged.
Not at me.
At my phone.
I twisted away, but he caught the strap of my purse.
The leather snapped.
My belongings hit the deck.
Passengers gasped.
A crew member shouted.
Gregory grabbed one thing from the floor.
My replacement keycard.
He ran.
Not toward the elevators.
Toward the emergency stairwell.
I looked down.
My phone remained beneath a chair.
My wallet was there.
So why steal the key?
Then I understood.
My temporary cabin.
The photographs.
The copied evidence.
I sprinted after him.
By the time I reached my deck, my cabin door stood open.
Inside, the safe had been forced.
The printed copies of my mother’s Tampa note were gone.
So was the manila folder I had quietly taken from Gregory’s suitcase after security finally logged it as evidence.
But Gregory had left something behind.
On my pillow lay Dana Brooks’s Calder identification badge.
A dark stain marked one corner.
And attached to it was a handwritten note.
May you like
STOP LOOKING FOR HER.
📖 Find out whether Dana was truly aboard the ship—and why the blood-marked ID in my cabin became the evidence Gregory most desperately needed destroyed in CHAPTER 10. 👇
