Chapter 18 - MORGAN'S FINAL SECRET
Judge Morgan was serving her sentence in a federal prison several hours away.
She had refused every interview request.
She had appealed her conviction.
She had spoken publicly only once.
Now she wanted Claire.
And Ethan.
Detective Bennett advised against bringing Ethan.
Morgan insisted.
“She says the information concerns him.”
Claire immediately disliked that.
But Ethan wanted answers.
They agreed to meet in a secure interview room with Bennett present.
Morgan entered wearing a prison uniform.
Without the courtroom robes and expensive clothes, she looked smaller.
But her eyes were unchanged.
Sharp.
Calculating.
She sat across from Ethan.
“You look like Samuel.”
Claire immediately said.
“Speak to me.”
Morgan smiled.
“Still protective.”
“What do you want?”
Morgan folded her hands.
“There is one mistake your father made.”
Claire waited.
“He believed I was the Architect.”
Bennett leaned forward.
“You were.”
Morgan shook her head.
“I managed the legal structure.”
“I protected Cole.”
“I arranged documents.”
“But I didn’t create the network.”
Ethan remembered Richard’s files.
“Then who did?”
Morgan looked at him.
“Samuel never found out.”
Claire stood.
“We’re leaving.”
Morgan spoke again.
“Your husband did.”
Claire stopped.
“Richard discovered the real Architect six months before your funeral.”
“Why didn’t he tell anyone?”
“Because he planned to blackmail them.”
Bennett stared at Morgan.
“Name.”
Morgan smiled.
“I never knew it.”
Bennett clearly didn’t believe her.
Morgan continued.
“Cole called the person Northstar.”
Another code name.
Ethan frowned.
“What does this have to do with me?”
Morgan’s eyes shifted toward him.
“Richard mailed something before the bridge meeting.”
Claire’s stomach tightened.
“What?”
“A package.”
“To Ethan.”
Bennett immediately contacted investigators.
No package had arrived at their new home.
Then Ethan remembered something.
Their old house had been sold.
Mail forwarding had ended months earlier.
Bennett called the current owners.
They checked.
A package addressed to Ethan Parker had arrived two days earlier.
No return address.
Police retrieved it.
Inside was a small black notebook.
Richard’s handwriting covered every page.
The final line read:
Ethan,
If you found your mother once, maybe you can uncover the person all of us were afraid to name.
On the next page was a photograph.
It showed Samuel Parker shaking hands with a man at a fundraiser.
Claire stared at him.
May you like
She recognized the man immediately.
“Senator Thomas Ward.”
