Chapter 9 - Seventy-Two Hours
The clock began at 10:14 a.m.
Seventy-two hours.
No location.
No instructions beyond ending Mara’s investigation.
That meant Evelyn was not trying to make a trade.
She was trying to make us panic.
Mara refused to close anything.
“I can pretend to.”
“She’ll know.”
“She already hacked Claire’s laptop.”
Claire shook her head.
“That laptop was never connected to the internet.”
Mara stared at her.
“What?”
“It was isolated.”
My father whispered, “Then the breach came from inside the building.”
Silence.
The Vale headquarters had seventeen layers of digital security.
Only eight people could access the internal network.
One of them stood at the far end of the conference table.
Marcus Reed.
He had been cleared in the poisoning after security footage showed another man using the old Vale phrase.
But suspicion never disappears completely.
Marcus met my eyes.
“You think it’s me.”
“I think someone inside this building just erased evidence.”
“I agree.”
He placed his access card on the table.
“Take it.”
Dad shook his head.
“Marcus—”
“If I’m compromised, I shouldn’t have access.”
I studied him.
A guilty man might have performed that exact gesture.
So would an innocent one.
Mara’s phone rang.
She listened.
Then looked at us.
“They identified the catering man who poisoned Arthur.”
“Who?”
“Daniel Webb.”
Marcus went pale.
I noticed.
“You know him.”
He nodded.
“Former Vale employee.”
Dad asked, “Department?”
“Cybersecurity.”
“Why was he fired?”
Marcus hesitated.
“Unauthorized access.”
“When?”
“Fourteen years ago.”
One year after my mother vanished.
Mara said, “Webb disappeared from the estate during lockdown.”
“That’s impossible,” I said.
“No.”
Marcus looked toward the security map.
“He could have used the old storm tunnel.”
“What storm tunnel?”
Dad closed his eyes.
I almost laughed.
Another secret.
“Of course there is a tunnel.”
Victor looked tired.
“Halcyon was built during the Cold War.”
“Where does it lead?”
“To the river.”
Mara’s expression hardened.
“So Evelyn left in Victor’s car.”
Marcus nodded.
“And Webb left underground.”
Two escape routes.
Prepared before I locked the doors.
Which meant the lockdown had not trapped the people who mattered most.
It had trapped witnesses.
Mara opened Daniel Webb’s personnel file.
A photograph appeared.
I had seen him before.
Not at the gala.
Somewhere else.
Then I remembered.
“My mother’s funeral.”
Dad looked at me.
“What?”
I pulled up the photograph Evelyn sent.
There.
Behind the black umbrellas.
A young Daniel Webb.
Standing near Evelyn.
Mara leaned closer.
“They knew each other.”
Marcus looked sick.
“He was twenty-six.”
“How did he get a job at Vale?”
Marcus said nothing.
“Marcus.”
His eyes met mine.
“I recommended him.”
The room went silent.
“Why?”
“He saved my life.”
“Where?”
“Baghdad.”
Dad looked surprised.
“You never told me.”
“There was a lot I never told you.”
Mara closed the file.
“Find him.”
That night, we located Daniel Webb.
Dead in a motel room outside Baltimore.
No obvious signs of struggle.
On the desk beside him was an old Vale security token.
And a handwritten note.
I DID NOT POISON THE SENATOR.
Underneath:
ASK MARCUS ABOUT ISTANBUL.
I looked at Marcus.
His face went completely still.
“What happened in Istanbul?”
He stared at the note.
Then at my father.
“Victor.”
Dad stepped backward.
Marcus whispered:
“I think Evelyn knows.”
“Knows what?”
Marcus closed his eyes.
“That Isabella was never the only person we hid.”
And then he told us the secret that would tear my father’s company apart.
Fifteen years earlier, three days after my mother disappeared, Marcus had personally flown another passenger out of the United States under a false identity.
A thirteen-year-old girl.
My father’s daughter.
May you like
A girl I had never known existed.
My sister.
