Chapter 4 - The Friend Who Sold Me
“Move away from her.”
Marcus’s voice sounded nothing like the man who had protected me for twelve years.
I stepped in front of Clara.
“No.”
“Julian.”
“Move.”
“You’ll have to shoot me first.”
Marcus’s jaw tightened.
Alexander chuckled.
“Always predictable when love is involved.”
“Shut up.”
Marcus looked exhausted rather than triumphant.
That frightened me more.
“Why?”
I asked.
“You were with me from the beginning.”
“Yes.”
“You sat beside me when we received false reports from Prague.”
“Yes.”
“You flew to Toronto.”
“Yes.”
“You watched me identify bodies.”
His eyes dropped.
“Yes.”
I felt sick.
“Why?”
“My daughter.”
The answer came quietly.
Marcus’s daughter, Sophie, had been born with a severe congenital heart condition.
I remembered hospital visits.
Surgeries.
Her eighth birthday.
My father had paid for an experimental treatment in Germany years before his supposed death.
Marcus never knew the money came with permanent ownership.
“He saved her,” Marcus said.
“So you helped him imprison Clara?”
“At first, I didn’t know.”
“And later?”
He said nothing.
“Later?”
“I knew enough.”
Clara whispered,
“He gave you choices too.”
Marcus looked at her.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize to me while pointing a weapon at me.”
His hand shook.
Alexander’s face hardened.
“Do your job.”
Marcus did not move.
“Marcus.”
“I heard you.”
My father stepped forward.
“You have thirty seconds.”
Marcus looked at me.
Then at Clara.
Then he slowly lowered his weapon.
Alexander stared.
“What are you doing?”
Marcus turned.
“Paying a debt.”
He fired once.
Not at anyone.
At the overhead camera.
Glass exploded.
His men reacted.
Two raised weapons.
Marcus shouted,
“DOWN!”
Chaos.
I dragged Clara behind a steel desk.
Shots hit the walls.
Alexander disappeared through a side door.
Marcus tackled one of his own men.
Another fled.
The last surrendered when Marcus pressed him against the floor.
Then alarms screamed.
“He’s going for the east tunnel,” Clara said.
Marcus looked at her.
“You know the layout?”
“Part of it.”
We ran.
The east tunnel descended beneath the gardens.
Marcus called his outside team.
No answer.
“They’re jamming communications.”
Clara suddenly stopped.
A steel door stood open.
Beyond it was a room.
A bedroom.
Small.
Windowless.
A narrow bed.
A wooden chair.
A sink.
Scratches covered one wall.
Clara did not move.
I knew immediately.
“This was yours.”
She nodded.
I stepped inside.
Four years of my wife’s life existed in that room.
Books with missing covers.
A blanket.
A chipped mug.
Tiny marks carved beside the bed.
Groups of seven.
Weeks.
Clara had counted time.
On the far wall, almost hidden behind the bed frame, someone had scratched:
JULIAN WILL FIND ME.
I turned away because I could not breathe.
Clara saw it too.
“I stopped writing after the second year.”
I looked at her.
“I thought you had stopped looking.”
“I never stopped.”
“I know that now.”
Marcus stood outside the room.
“We have to move.”
Clara opened a drawer.
Inside was an old photograph.
She handed it to me.
My father.
Victoria.
Daniel Hargrove.
And one more person.
My mother.
Eleanor Vale.
I stared.
“My mother knew?”
Clara shook her head.
“I don’t know.”
On the back, a date.
Thirty years earlier.
And a handwritten line:
THE FOUR FOUNDERS.
Marcus read it.
“Founders of what?”
Clara answered.
“The Meridian Circle.”
My father’s secret operation had not been his alone.
It began with four people.
Alexander Vale.
Victoria’s father, Samuel Sterling.
Daniel Hargrove.
Eleanor Vale.
My mother.
I remembered her as gentle.
Quiet.
A pianist.
She died of cancer when I was twenty.
Or so I had believed.
Suddenly every death in my family felt uncertain.
We heard an engine.
Marcus ran toward the tunnel exit.
By the time we reached the service road, a black SUV was speeding into the forest.
Alexander.
Police sirens echoed from the main estate.
Marcus turned to me.
“He’ll have a secondary site.”
Clara nodded.
“I know where.”
“How?”
“Daniel told me once.”
She pointed toward the mountains.
“Blackridge.”
I knew the name.
An abandoned Vale property two hours north.
My grandfather’s hunting lodge.
Closed for decades.
Marcus stared.
“Why would Alexander go there?”
May you like
Clara looked down at the photograph.
“Because that’s where the Meridian Circle began.”
