Chapter 6
No body identified as Margot had been found.
That mattered.
The fire destroyed part of the west wing, but not everything.
Three bodies were recovered.
Daniel.
Two staff members.
None female.
I had been unconscious for most of the aftermath.
Then hidden.
Rafe moved me to a private property because someone attempted to enter the medical wing using false Vale credentials.
That was why my survival remained secret.
Now another possibility opened.
Margot may have escaped.
Or been taken.
I needed Daniel’s final movements.
Garage cameras were partly destroyed, but stable cameras survived.
Rafe found one angle.
Smoke already rising.
Daniel running from the west entrance carrying me.
He handed me to two guards.
Then turned back.
Exactly as Nell said.
Thirty seconds later, Margot appeared at an upper window.
Alive.
She struck the glass.
Daniel saw her.
Ran inside.
Two minutes later, the camera cut.
No Daniel emerging.
No Margot.
But another figure appeared from the side corridor.
Reed.
He was not running in.
He was running out.
Carrying something under his jacket.
I paused the footage.
“What did you take?”
Reed stared at the still frame.
“Nothing.”
Wrong.
Then I saw it.
His right wrist.
No cufflink.
The one in Daniel’s box.
Meaning Daniel confronted Reed before going back.
Maybe pulled the cufflink free.
I played further.
Reed reached the courtyard.
Then another man appeared.
Older.
Face partly obscured.
They exchanged something.
The man left toward the service road.
Reed stayed.
Who?
I zoomed.
No clear face.
But one detail.
Walking cane.
Silver handle.
I knew one senior Vale man who used that cane.
Victor Hale.
Margot’s father.
My late wife’s father.
Seventy-five.
Retired.
Supposedly living in Florida.
I looked at Rafe.
“Find him.”
He hesitated.
“Boss.”
“What?”
“He arrived in Connecticut yesterday.”
My jaw tightened.
“Where?”
“At the old Hale farm.”
Convenient.
One day after my survival likely became known.
The fire connected Reed to my brother’s old secret.
Now Margot’s father had appeared.
Two families.
May you like
One dead woman’s recording.
And Daniel trapped between them.
