Chapter 13 - Seventy-Two Minutes
Not seventy-two hours.
Seventy-two minutes.
That was the deadline Marcus gave Victor.
Victor stood inside Blackwood Manor, looking twenty years older.
“I created this.”
Adrian stared at him.
“Yes.”
Victor did not defend himself.
“I stole from the company.”
“Yes.”
“I helped Marcus bury the audit.”
“Yes.”
Victor’s voice cracked.
“I never agreed to kill anyone.”
Sophie stared at him.
“You stayed silent after Thomas died.”
Victor looked at her.
“Yes.”
“After Charles?”
“Yes.”
“After Celeste?”
Victor closed his eyes.
“Yes.”
“Then you helped.”
The words struck him harder than shouting could have.
Victor nodded.
“You’re right.”
He placed a phone on the table.
Marcus had instructed him to bring the original audit to an underground parking garage.
Alone.
Adrian wanted police surrounding the location.
Victor shook his head.
“Marcus monitors law-enforcement contacts.”
Sophie asked:
“How?”
“Mason.”
Adrian looked up.
“Mason isn’t a police officer.”
“No.”
Victor gave a tired smile.
“But he has spent twenty years collecting people’s weaknesses.”
They devised another plan.
Victor would go.
He would carry a false copy.
He would wear a recorder.
Sophie objected.
“Marcus will inspect it.”
Victor looked at her.
“I know.”
“You could die.”
“Yes.”
No one spoke.
Victor turned toward Sophie.
“I cannot undo what happened to your parents.”
“No.”
“But I can stop running.”
Victor went.
The garage was nearly empty.
Adrian listened through the recorder from an unmarked vehicle several blocks away.
Footsteps.
Marcus’s voice.
“You always were sentimental.”
Victor answered.
“Eleanor is not part of this.”
“She became part of it the day she helped Grace disappear.”
“Let her go.”
“The files.”
Victor handed him the case.
Silence.
Then Marcus laughed.
“This is fake.”
Adrian’s face changed.
Sophie whispered:
“How does he know?”
A gunshot-like crack sounded through the recorder.
Not a gun.
A car window breaking.
Victor shouted.
The transmission distorted.
Then Mason’s voice appeared.
“Where are the originals?”
Victor coughed.
“Somewhere you’ll never find.”
Marcus spoke calmly.
“Then we start with Sophie.”
Sophie’s stomach dropped.
Adrian turned toward her.
Too late.
The lights inside their vehicle died.
The doors locked.
Smoke hissed from the vents.
Sophie kicked the door.
Adrian smashed the side window.
They crawled out seconds before the cabin filled.
A second car sped from the alley.
Adrian caught the driver’s face.
Mason.
They reached the garage.
Victor was alive.
Bleeding from a cut above his eye, but conscious.
Marcus had escaped.
Victor grabbed Sophie’s sleeve.
“He knows.”
“What?”
“About the cottage?”
“No.”
Victor shook his head.
“About the other copy.”
Sophie stared.
“What other copy?”
Victor looked at Adrian.
“Charles gave one to Eleanor.”
Everyone went still.
May you like
Eleanor had never mentioned it.
Again.
