Chapter 10 - The Man Who Refused to Die
Daniel covered the vent with a blanket.
The smoke smelled chemical.
“It’s not fire,” Helen said.
“It’s sedative gas.”
Ethan pushed Thomas’s wheelchair toward the bathroom.
Claire soaked towels beneath the faucet.
They covered their mouths and noses.
Footsteps approached the locked door.
Daniel aimed his gun.
“Is there another exit?”
Helen pointed toward a service elevator.
“It requires a security code.”
Thomas lifted his head.
“Seven-one-nine-four.”
Helen stared at him.
“How do you know that?”
“I listened.”
His voice was weak, but his eyes remained sharp.
“For ten years, I listened.”
They moved through the bathroom into an adjoining treatment room.
Helen entered the code.
The elevator opened.
Two armed security guards waited inside.
Daniel struck the first before he could raise his weapon.
Ethan drove his shoulder into the second.
Claire grabbed the guard’s radio and threw it down the corridor.
They crowded into the elevator.
Thomas struggled to breathe.
Helen checked his pulse.
“He needs oxygen.”
“Get us outside,” Ethan said.
The elevator descended to a loading dock.
A black sedan waited with its engine running.
Lucas Grant stood beside it.
He held a pistol.
Ethan stepped in front of his father.
Lucas looked exhausted.
A fresh burn covered one hand.
“You were at the cabin,” Ethan said.
Lucas did not deny it.
“Move away from the chair.”
“No.”
“Eleanor wants Thomas alive.”
“For how long?”
Lucas’s jaw tightened.
“She only needs him long enough to sign one document.”
Thomas laughed weakly.
“She still doesn’t understand.”
Lucas looked at him.
“Understand what?”
“I signed everything years ago.”
Ethan glanced toward his father.
Thomas continued.
“The controlling trust does not belong to Eleanor.”
“It never did.”
A siren sounded beyond the gates.
Federal vehicles were approaching.
Lucas raised his weapon.
Daniel aimed at him.
For one suspended second, no one moved.
Then Lucas lowered the gun.
“I didn’t know she would keep him here this long.”
“You helped her,” Ethan said.
“I helped arrange the boat.”
Lucas’s voice cracked.
“I believed Thomas was stealing from the company.”
“Eleanor showed me documents.”
“She said he intended to bankrupt everyone.”
Thomas looked at him.
“And when you learned the truth?”
Lucas could not answer.
Federal agents entered the loading dock.
He dropped the weapon.
Thomas was taken to a secure hospital.
Helen agreed to testify.
She told investigators Eleanor had forced her to keep Thomas sedated under the name Samuel Ward.
In return, Eleanor concealed Helen’s role in falsifying Laura Bennett’s death records.
Claire heard the words from across the hospital corridor.
“My mother survived her accident?”
Helen closed her eyes.
“For forty-eight hours.”
“Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
“Because she spoke before she died.”
“What did she say?”
May you like
Helen looked toward Thomas’s guarded room.
“She said Eleanor wasn’t acting alone.”
