CHAP 12 — HANNAH DISAPPEARS
Conrad called Hannah immediately.
No answer.
Police located her car near the Hudson.
Empty.
Her phone lay beneath the driver’s seat.
There was no blood.
No sign of struggle.
But the passenger door was open.
Ortiz refused to let Conrad go to the meeting.
“If Marcus has her, you walking into an unknown location helps nobody.”
“If I don’t go, he kills her.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know Marcus.”
“No. You thought you knew Marcus.”
That distinction stopped him.
Conrad had spent too much of his life mistaking familiarity for knowledge.
He did not make the mistake again.
They traced metadata embedded in the photograph.
Marcus had stripped most of it.
Not all.
An old maintenance-camera network had captured Hannah’s vehicle near a shuttered Sterling Global warehouse in Queens.
Police moved.
Conrad stayed behind.
For eleven minutes.
Then he went anyway.
Not alone.
Evelyn drove.
“You’re a terrible attorney,” Conrad told her.
“I’m excellent.”
“You’re helping me disobey police.”
“I’m driving you toward police.”
At the warehouse, they discovered the truth.
Marcus had not kidnapped Hannah.
Hannah had followed him.
She had recognized his reflection in a storefront window and deliberately allowed him to believe she was alone.
Then she texted her location through an emergency account her mother had taught her to use.
By the time Marcus realized, federal agents had surrounded the building.
But he escaped through a storm drain.
Again.
Inside the warehouse they found Graham.
Alive.
Tied to a chair.
Badly beaten but conscious.
Conrad stared at his former friend.
Graham laughed weakly.
“Not how you expected to see me?”
Conrad felt no sympathy.
“Where’s Marcus?”
“If I knew, I wouldn’t be tied to a chair.”
“Why did he take you?”
“The same reason he wants you.”
“The ledger?”
Graham shook his head.
“The other ledger.”
Conrad frowned.
“There is no other ledger.”
“There is.”
Graham looked toward Hannah.
“Madeleine found it.”
Hannah stepped closer.
“What is it?”
“A list.”
“Of what?”
“People Marcus worked for before he worked for me.”
Conrad’s stomach tightened.
“You hired him.”
“I thought I did.”
Marcus had not begun as Graham’s employee.
He had been embedded inside Sterling Global years earlier by private intelligence contractors connected to corporate competitors.
Graham discovered him.
Instead of exposing him, he used him.
For surveillance.
Corporate espionage.
Pressure campaigns.
Then Marcus became impossible to control.
“You let a professional criminal into my family.”
Graham gave Conrad a hollow look.
“He was already there.”
“Where is the list?”
“Madeleine hid it.”
“We have everything she left.”
“No.”
Graham shook his head.
“She hid the final archive with Eleanor Price.”
Hannah froze.
“My mother died before Madeleine.”
“Officially.”
The room went silent.
Hannah stared at him.
“No.”
May you like
Graham slowly smiled without humor.
“You’re not the only person in this house who was lied to about a death.”
