Chapter 8 - THE ACCIDENT PROTOCOL
I wanted to believe Diane was lying.
Lies were familiar. They had shape and purpose. I knew how to defend myself against them.
Fear in my mother’s face was harder to understand.
Agent Ruiz took the photograph and placed it in an evidence sleeve.
“Where was this kept?”
“In Ray’s wall safe.”
“When did you find it?”
“Two hours before the meeting.”
“Why didn’t you call police?”
Diane laughed once, bitterly.
“Ray controls the estate security team. He has friends in the county office. The last time I tried to leave, he knew before I reached the highway.”
I looked at her.
“The last time?”
She rubbed the inside of her wrist. Makeup had concealed a fading mark there.
“I packed a bag after Henry died.”
“You were planning to leave Ray?”
“I was planning to disappear.”
The confession did not soften me. Diane had humiliated me, isolated my father, and brought five lawyers into the house to strip me of my rights. Fear might explain some of it, but it did not erase choice.
“You could have warned me.”
“I tried to get you to sign.”
“That was not a warning.”
“It was the only outcome they said would keep you alive.”
Evelyn stepped closer.
“Who told you that?”
Diane looked toward the open vault.
“Martin Voss.”
The name landed hard.
Voss had attacked Thomas and stolen pages from the ledger. He had also claimed Diane was his client.
But when the lights went out upstairs, he had been trapped with us.
Either he was being used too, or the confinement had been part of a performance.
Agent Bennett’s radio crackled.
The signal broke into fragments.
“Main house… attorney… ambulance…”
Ruiz tried to respond, but static swallowed her words.
Evelyn looked down the tunnel.
“We need to move.”
We returned to the house through the left corridor.
The hidden door opened behind a bookshelf in my father’s study. When we stepped through, a paramedic was kneeling beside Thomas.
Blood darkened the collar of his shirt.
Margaret stood near the desk, both hands pressed over her mouth.
Voss was gone.
“What happened?” Ruiz demanded.
Margaret pointed toward the broken study window.
“He came in through the hall. He said he needed his medication. Thomas confronted him about the pages. They argued, and then—”
She swallowed.
“He had a knife.”
Thomas opened his eyes.
“Not Voss,” he rasped.
Margaret stared at him.
“What?”
“The man who cut me… wasn’t Voss.”
Ruiz crouched beside him.
“Who was it?”
“He wore Voss’s coat.”
A disguise would have sounded ridiculous an hour earlier. Now nothing about the morning felt impossible.
Margaret shook her head.
“I saw his face.”
“For two seconds,” Thomas said. “From the side.”
Evelyn examined the window frame.
“Security camera?”
“The study feed went dark seven minutes ago,” Margaret said.
The dining room camera still worked. The upstairs jammer had been disabled. Someone had selectively cut power to this room.
Agent Bennett found Voss’s charcoal suit coat lying beneath the open window.
Inside the pocket were the ledger pages he had taken.
Also inside was a card key stamped with the Parker Industrial logo.
The name printed beneath the photograph was not Martin Voss.
It was Daniel Mercer, Vice President of Corporate Security.
I knew Daniel.
He had worked for my father for fifteen years. He sent flowers to the funeral and stood beside my mother during the burial.
I looked at Evelyn.
“Could Mercer have intercepted my father’s calls?”
“He controlled the company’s communications vendors.”
“And the estate security team?”
“Indirectly.”
Diane sank into a chair.
“Ray reported to him.”
A paramedic placed an oxygen mask over Thomas’s face.
He caught my hand before they lifted him onto the stretcher.
“Northstar,” he whispered.
“The vault is empty.”
“No.”
His grip tightened weakly.
“Northstar isn’t the vault. It’s a person.”
The paramedics carried him toward the foyer.
I stood frozen beside the desk.
Then the computer monitor woke by itself.
A black screen appeared.
White letters filled the center.
HELLO, CLAIRE.
YOU SHOULD HAVE SIGNED.
Below the message, a live video window opened.
May you like
Martin Voss was bound to a chair in an unfamiliar room.
A digital clock behind him was counting down from fifty-eight minutes.
