Chapter Six: The Airfield
Nathan’s private airfield was thirty miles north of Manhattan.
By the time investigators reached it, the runway lights were already glowing.
A Gulfstream jet waited near the hangar with its engines running.
Celeste stood beside the stairs.
Victor Monroe sat in a wheelchair next to her.
He was thin, pale, and older than his photographs, but his eyes remained sharp.
Nathan was nowhere in sight.
Mara ordered the jet grounded.
Celeste did not resist when officers approached.
She simply looked past them toward the convoy arriving from the highway.
She saw me step from the second vehicle.
Then she saw my mother.
All color left her face.
Margaret remained beside the car, wrapped in a dark coat.
Victor stared at her.
For twenty-two years, he had controlled her existence.
Now he looked like a man facing judgment.
Celeste walked toward me before the officers stopped her.
“You don’t understand what happened.”
“I understand enough.”
“My father saved her.”
“He imprisoned her.”
“He kept her alive.”
“So he could use her.”
Celeste’s eyes filled with anger.
“You think your father is a hero because he arrived with helicopters? Ask him why Victor was paid twenty million dollars.”
“I already did.”
“And?”
“He admitted he chose not to ask questions.”
That answer unsettled her.
She had expected me to defend him.
I did not.
Victor asked to speak with my mother.
She refused.
Then he asked to speak with me.
Against Mara’s advice, I agreed.
We sat inside the hangar with officers surrounding us.
Victor’s breathing was weak.
“I never intended for Anna Bell to die,” he said.
The sentence revealed more than any denial could have.
“You started the fire.”
“Yes.”
Celeste closed her eyes.
Victor continued.
“The order was to destroy Margaret’s files and frighten her into silence. Richard Ashford arranged it.”
“Nathan’s father?”
“He controlled the partnership. Your father suspected corruption, but he feared what exposure would do to the company.”
“Did Sebastian order the fire?”
“No.”
The answer came immediately.
“But he funded your division.”
“He approved a security budget. Richard redirected part of it.”
“Why didn’t you kill my mother?”
Victor looked toward Margaret.
“Because she had copied the ledger. I needed to know where it was.”
“You held her for twenty-two years because you couldn’t find a book?”
“At first. Later, she became protection. If Richard betrayed me, I could prove Margaret Vale was alive.”
“And Celeste?”
“My daughter was eighteen. I told her I had rescued Margaret from men who wanted her dead.”
Celeste’s voice broke.
“You said Sebastian would kill us if he learned the truth.”
Victor looked at her.
“I said what was necessary.”
She stepped away as if he had struck her.
“You made me visit that clinic.”
“You kept her calm.”
“You told me she was dangerous.”
“She remembered too much.”
Celeste covered her mouth.
For the first time, I saw something other than cruelty in her face.
Horror.
Not because of what she had done to me.
Because she finally understood what her father had made her part of.
“Where is the recording?” Mara asked.
Victor looked toward the jet.
“In the black case.”
Officers searched the aircraft and found a weatherproof container beneath a seat.
Inside were passports, cash, medical documents, and an old digital recorder.
Mara played the file.
Richard Ashford’s voice filled the hangar.
“Burn the guesthouse. Destroy the papers. If Margaret is inside, that solves two problems.”
Another voice answered.
Victor.
“And Sebastian?”
“He’ll protect the company. Men like him always do.”
Nathan’s father had ordered the fire.
But he was not the only voice on the recording.
A third man spoke from somewhere farther away.
“He must never learn the truth about the shares. Margaret transferred them to the girl.”
I looked at my father.
“Who is that?”
Sebastian listened again.
His face hardened.
“Graham Pike.”
The chairman of Vale Meridian’s board.
The man currently leading the emergency vote against Nathan.
The man my father had trusted for forty years.
Before anyone could speak, gunshots cracked outside the hangar.
Not inside.
Not close enough to hit us.
But close enough to create panic.
The lights went out.
Emergency alarms began screaming.
Mara pulled me behind a concrete barrier.
Through the darkness, a vehicle crashed through the side gate.
A black sedan sped toward the runway.
Nathan was driving.
May you like
He had not come to rescue Celeste.
He had come for the recording.
