Chapter 14 - The House by the Lake
The estate smelled like dust and old wood.
Vale led me through a wide foyer.
Two armed men followed.
I saw Rachel first.
She sat in a dining chair with her wrists restrained.
Her face was bruised.
When she saw me, horror filled her eyes.
“Daniel, no.”
“Where are the kids?”
Vale opened a door.
Lily sat on a couch clutching Tommy.
Both were crying.
Alive.
I nearly collapsed from relief.
“Daddy.”
Lily tried to run toward me.
A man blocked her.
Every instinct told me to attack him.
I didn’t.
Not yet.
“I’m here, sweetheart.”
“I knew you’d come.”
Vale watched us.
“Beautiful.”
“Now give me the ledger.”
I placed the case on the dining table.
Vale opened it.
His hands trembled slightly when he saw Rebecca’s handwriting.
For the first time, I understood something about powerful men.
Sometimes what they feared most was not violence.
It was a record.
Vale flipped through several pages.
Then stopped.
“Where is the rest?”
“Safe.”
His eyes rose.
“You brought me half a ledger?”
“I brought you proof.”
“Release my family and you get the rest.”
Vale smiled.
“You’re negotiating from inside my house.”
“No.”
“I’m negotiating with the one thing you’ve spent eleven years failing to find.”
Rachel stared at me.
She understood.
Vale closed the book.
“I could kill you.”
“Then the missing pages go to every major newspaper and federal office in the country.”
That was a bluff.
Vale did not know it.
“When?”
“If I don’t make a call by one fifteen.”
He checked his watch.
We had twenty-three minutes.
Vale looked toward Rachel.
“You married an interesting man.”
She said nothing.
He walked closer to me.
“Rebecca never told you what she did, did she?”
“I know enough.”
“Do you?”
He smiled.
“She didn’t just steal my ledger.”
“She stole money.”
Rachel looked down.
“How much?”
Vale answered for her.
“Two million dollars.”
I looked at Rachel.
“Is that true?”
“Yes.”
Vale enjoyed my reaction.
“She used it to disappear.”
Rachel shook her head.
“No.”
“Tell him.”
“I took it.”
“But I didn’t keep it.”
“Where did it go?”
Her eyes moved toward Ethan, though he wasn’t there.
“To families.”
“What families?”
“People Vale destroyed.”
Vale’s smile disappeared.
Rachel continued.
“I emptied one of his reserve accounts and sent the money to sixteen families whose relatives disappeared because of him.”
I looked at Vale.
“That must have hurt.”
His face hardened.
“You think this is funny?”
“No.”
“I think that’s why you’re still obsessed with her.”
“It was never the ledger.”
“It was never the money.”
“It was the fact that a twenty-one-year-old bookkeeper made you feel powerless.”
Vale slapped the table.
One of his men raised his weapon.
Tommy began crying.
Lily covered his ears.
Something inside me nearly broke.
Vale leaned close.
“You have no idea what power is.”
Then lights flashed through the windows.
Not police.
Headlights.
Three black SUVs entered the property.
Vale looked confused.
One of his men rushed to the window.
“Boss.”
“Who is that?”
A familiar voice came from the foyer.
“Someone you should have killed eleven years ago.”
May you like
Ethan Hart stepped through the doorway.
And every gun in the room turned toward him.
