Chapter 5 - THE MAN WHO WAS SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD
The facility would not give us access to Daniel Reed.
Privacy laws protected him.
Maya expected that.
What she did not expect was to learn that someone had changed his emergency contact three months earlier.
The new contact was Malcolm Pierce.
I stared at the document.
“That can’t be real.”
“It is.”
“Why would Malcolm be the emergency contact for a man who looks like my dead father?”
Maya did not answer.
She did not need to.
Nathan stood on the other side of the conference room.
He had followed us upstairs after I told security to let him through.
I turned toward him.
“How much did you know?”
“Nothing about your father.”
“Don’t lie to me again.”
“I knew Malcolm was afraid of something connected to the trust.”
Nathan’s voice cracked.
“He never told me Thomas was alive.”
I hated that part of me believed him.
A liar could still be telling the truth occasionally.
That made everything harder.
Nathan sat down.
“Three years ago Malcolm approached me.”
“Before you started sleeping with Celeste?”
His eyes dropped.
“Yes.”
The answer hurt even though I expected it.
“He told me your mother had structured the company badly.”
“My mother structured it so people like you couldn’t steal it.”
Nathan flinched.
“He said the board would collapse when your voting rights activated.”
“And you believed him.”
“I wanted to.”
There it was.
The ugliest truth.
Nathan had not been tricked because he was innocent.
He had been tricked because Malcolm offered him something he already wanted.
Power.
Recognition.
Ownership.
A chance to stop being Emma Carlisle’s husband and become Nathan Rowe, jewelry tycoon.
“What did Malcolm promise you?”
“Chief executive control after the Pelham merger.”
Maya laughed without humor.
“Pelham replaces management after acquisition.”
Nathan looked at her.
“I know that now.”
“When?”
“Yesterday.”
He pulled an envelope from inside his jacket.
Celeste had given it to him after I left the store.
Inside was a draft executive termination agreement.
Nathan’s name appeared at the top.
Effective immediately upon merger approval.
Malcolm had planned to remove him too.
I studied Nathan.
“So Celeste warned you.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
I did.
Or at least I suspected.
Celeste had spent years working for Malcolm.
She knew where the bodies were buried.
Maybe she had finally realized Malcolm was preparing to bury her beside the rest.
Maya’s assistant entered.
“There’s something you need to see.”
She placed a tablet on the table.
The medical facility in Vermont had responded to our emergency request.
Daniel Reed had checked himself out that morning.
No forwarding address.
No explanation.
One security camera captured him leaving.
The footage showed an older man wearing a baseball cap and dark coat.
He walked slowly with a cane.
Then he turned toward the camera.
I forgot how to breathe.
Age had changed him.
His hair was almost completely gray.
His face was thinner.
But I knew those eyes.
I had looked into them every morning of my childhood.
“Dad.”
Nathan whispered something behind me.
I barely heard him.
The man on the screen reached a waiting car.
Before entering, he stopped.
He looked straight toward the facility camera.
Then he raised a folded piece of paper.
Someone zoomed in.
May you like
Three words had been written across it.
FIND EMMA FIRST.
