Chapter 6 - THE SECOND FILE|
The man in the hallway was one of my guards.
His name was Daniel Ruiz, and he had been working for my organization for six years.
He was holding a phone.
"Boss, we found a second entrance behind the garage. Someone escaped through it."
"Did you see who?"
"No. But they left this."
He showed me a security image captured from the neighboring property. A figure in a dark coat stood beneath a streetlamp, face hidden beneath a hood.
The figure was carrying a small case.
Jenna looked at the image.
"That's the same coat the man outside my apartment wore."
I took the flash drive from the floor and handed it to Marcus.
"Open it in the secure room. No network connection."
He nodded and left.
Jenna faced her mother.
"Tell me everything."
Her mother sank into a chair.
"After your father died, a man came to the house. He said he was a friend of Thomas's. He told me there were people looking for a ledger and that if I cooperated, they would leave you alone."
"Who was he?"
"I never learned his name."
"Did he look like Ryan?"
Her mother closed her eyes.
"Not exactly."
"Mom!"
"He had a scar near his ear. He said your father had betrayed powerful people. He offered to pay the mortgage if I stopped asking questions."
Jenna's voice became dangerously quiet.
"You took his money?"
"I was afraid we'd lose everything."
"You let someone buy your silence."
Her mother started crying harder.
I wanted to condemn her. Instead, I recognized the terrible calculation she had made: survival now, consequences later.
That didn't excuse it.
But it explained why people sometimes became accomplices without ever believing they were villains.
"Did you tell Ryan about the study?" I asked.
Her mother looked at me.
"He came to see me two weeks ago. He said he wanted to make things right with Jenna. He asked whether Thomas had kept any papers."
Jenna stared at her.
"You gave him access?"
"No! I told him nothing was here."
"Then how did he know?"
Her mother had no answer.
We took the files to Blackwood Tower, where Marcus isolated the flash drive.
It contained audio recordings, financial ledgers, and a video file dated eleven years earlier.
I recognized the warehouse immediately.
My father stood beside Thomas Hart, both of them arguing with a third man.
Victor Voss.
The video had no sound for the first minute. Then the audio began.
"We agreed the money would be used to protect the families," my father said.
Voss laughed.
"Protection is expensive, Daniel. And people are more useful when they're frightened."
Thomas stepped forward.
"You told us you were moving the funds into safe accounts."
"I did."
"Then where did the money go?"
Voss looked directly into the camera.
"Into the future."
The screen went black.
Jenna gripped the table.
"What does that mean?"
Marcus opened another file.
"There's a list of transfers. Millions of dollars moved through companies that no longer exist."
I leaned over the screen.
One account had been opened under a name I recognized.
My own.
The account had been created when I was twenty-three, two years after my father's death. I had never authorized it.
"Someone used my identity."
Marcus nodded.
"And the money was transferred out last week."
"Where?"
He hesitated.
"To a company owned by Ryan Callahan."
Jenna stared at me.
"Ryan stole from your family."
"Apparently."
"No," Marcus said quietly. "It's worse than that."
He opened the last document.
A list of targets appeared on the screen. Several were names of people who had worked with my father.
Most were dead.
At the bottom were two names.
EVAN BLACKWOOD.
JENNA HART.
May you like
Beside Jenna's name was a date.
Tomorrow.
