Chapter 11 - The Docks:
Richard moved before the gunman fired.
He pushed Nora behind a concrete pillar.
The bullet struck his side.
Mia grabbed Hale’s fallen weapon.
She had never fired a gun.
She did not need to.
She pointed it at the traitor with both hands.
“Drop it.”
He smiled.
“You won’t shoot.”
Hale lifted his head from the floor.
His first bullet struck the man’s leg.
The second knocked the weapon from his hand.
Security officers arrived moments later.
Paramedics treated Richard and Hale.
Richard’s wound had passed through the flesh above his hip.
Hale’s bulletproof vest had stopped most of the first impact, but his shoulder was fractured.
The captured officer was named Daniel Price.
He had joined the department three years earlier.
Bank records showed monthly payments from a Mercer-owned consulting company.
During interrogation, Price revealed the location where Elias planned to take Rosa.
The old Vance marina.
The same dock from which Laura’s boat had departed six years earlier.
Jonathan wanted the shareholder vote completed before killing Rosa.
Until then, she remained leverage.
Richard should have gone to the hospital.
Instead, he wrapped his side and drove toward the coast.
Hale remained behind to coordinate police units.
Mia and Nora rode with Richard.
At the marina, fog covered the water.
An abandoned boathouse stood at the end of the longest pier.
Elias waited inside.
Rosa sat tied to a support beam.
Jonathan appeared on a video screen mounted above her.
“The board meeting begins in forty minutes,” he said.
“Richard will sign his proxy over to me.”
“Then Rosa goes free.”
Richard removed the document Jonathan’s courier had delivered.
He held it above a metal barrel.
Then he dropped it into the fire.
Jonathan’s expression remained calm.
“You have always confused pride with courage.”
“And you have always confused deception with intelligence,” Richard replied.
Mia moved through the shadows along the side of the boathouse.
Rosa saw her.
She did not react.
Elias stood near the main door with his gun trained on Richard.
Nora remained outside with police.
Richard stepped closer.
“You took Laura.”
“You burned Rosa’s house.”
“You watched two children for six years.”
Elias shrugged.
“It was work.”
Mia reached the support beam behind Rosa.
She began cutting the rope with a piece of broken metal.
Jonathan continued speaking.
“When your father chose you to inherit the company, he created this.”
Richard looked at the screen.
“What does my father have to do with you?”
Jonathan smiled.
“He never told you.”
“Of course he didn’t.”
“He was ashamed.”
Rosa’s ropes loosened.
Mia pulled her toward the rear exit.
A floorboard creaked.
Elias turned.
He fired.
The bullet struck the wall beside Mia.
Richard charged him.
They crashed through the boathouse door onto the pier.
Elias struck Richard’s wound.
Richard fell to one knee.
Mia pushed Rosa behind a boat.
Police sirens approached through the fog.
Elias grabbed Richard and placed the gun beneath his chin.
“Tell them to stop.”
Richard looked toward Mia.
He gave one small shake of his head.
Mia understood.
She threw a loose chain across the pier.
It wrapped around Elias’s ankle.
Richard pulled.
Elias lost his balance and fell into the water.
His gun skidded across the boards.
He tried to climb onto the dock.
Rosa stepped forward.
For six years, he had hunted her daughters.
For six years, he had kept Laura imprisoned.
Rosa looked down at him.
Then she kicked the ladder away.
Police boats surrounded the pier.
Elias was arrested before he drowned.
Jonathan’s video connection ended.
Rosa collapsed into Mia’s arms.
Chloe arrived with Hale’s officers twenty minutes later.
The sisters held their mother between them.
Rosa’s scars were deeper than the security footage had shown.
One side of her face had been burned.
Two fingers on her left hand no longer moved.
But she was alive.
“I watched you,” she whispered.
“Every birthday.”
“Every school.”
“Every terrible apartment.”
Mia pulled back.
“You should have come.”
“I wanted to.”
“You let us believe you were dead.”
“If Jonathan saw me near you, he would have killed you.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I watched him order the fire.”
Rosa’s voice broke.
“I heard him tell Elias to leave no survivors.”
Chloe pressed her face against Rosa’s shoulder.
For a few minutes, they were only a mother and two daughters trying to understand the years that had been stolen.
Then Rosa remembered the vote.
“Jonathan doesn’t need Richard’s proxy.”
“He created enough false shares to control the company.”
“How?” Richard asked.
“He used the identities of children from St. Agnes.”
“Dead children.”
“Missing children.”
“Children whose names were changed.”
“He built shell trusts in their names.”
“The board will accept those votes unless we prove the records are fraudulent.”
“The original archive case is gone,” Mia said.
Rosa reached beneath her coat.
She removed a small memory card.
“I copied everything before Elias found me.”
Richard looked toward the marina clock.
The meeting began in twelve minutes.
They would not reach Boston in time.
Nora held up her phone.
“The meeting is being streamed to remote shareholders.”
Rosa looked at her granddaughter.
“Can you place me on that screen?”
Nora almost smiled.
“I can do better.”
She connected the memory card to her laptop.
The shareholder broadcast opened.
Jonathan stood at the main podium.
Behind him, Evelyn sat with the board.
Nora interrupted the feed.
Rosa’s burned face appeared across every screen in the room.
Jonathan stopped speaking.
Rosa looked directly at him.
“My name is Rosa Torres.”
“Six years ago, Jonathan Mercer tried to murder me.”
“And I have every record he believed he destroyed.”
The boardroom erupted.
Then the video feed went black.
May you like
A message appeared on Nora’s laptop.
LAURA IS DYING.
