Chapter 6 - The Night David Finally Told the Truth
Emergency lights flickered on.
The hospital corridor turned red.
Smoke drifted from the stairwell, but the sprinkler system had not activated.
Grant grabbed the wheelchair beside my bed.
"Sit."
"I can walk."
"You're thirty-one weeks pregnant and almost went into labor yesterday. Sit."
For once, I obeyed.
My mother pushed my overnight bag into my lap while Brooks drew her weapon.
"Stay behind me."
The fire alarm continued screaming.
Patients emerged from rooms.
Nurses shouted directions.
Then a hospital security officer came running around the corner.
"False alarm on the east stairwell! Someone discharged smoke canisters!"
Brooks swore.
It wasn't a fire.
It was cover.
Someone wanted confusion.
Someone wanted doors unlocked and security scattered.
Martin.
Grant wheeled me toward the nurses' station.
A man stepped through the service corridor ahead.
Baseball cap.
Gray maintenance uniform.
For a fraction of a second, nothing about him seemed unusual.
Then Brooks shouted.
"Stop!"
The man ran.
She chased him.
Two officers joined her.
Grant turned my chair in the opposite direction.
"Elevator."
We never reached it.
The maintenance man wasn't alone.
A second man emerged from a patient room and grabbed my mother.
She screamed.
I stood instinctively.
"Mom!"
He pressed something against her side.
Not a gun.
A syringe.
"Don't move."
Grant froze.
The man looked at me.
"Mrs. Whitaker, you're coming with me."
My entire body went cold.
"No."
"Then your mother gets whatever is in this needle."
Mom's eyes locked on mine.
"Don't."
The man tightened his grip.
Grant slowly raised his hands.
"Take it easy."
"I don't want you."
"Good. Because I'm irritating."
Even then, Grant was buying time.
The man's attention flicked toward him.
That was his mistake.
Mom drove her heel backward into his shin.
Grant moved instantly.
He slammed the man's wrist against the wall.
The syringe fell.
I kicked it beneath the nurses' desk.
Security tackled him seconds later.
My mother grabbed me.
"Are you okay?"
"Are you?"
"I'm furious."
I laughed and cried at the same time.
Brooks returned five minutes later.
The first suspect had escaped through a loading bay.
The second refused to speak.
But his phone contained one recent encrypted message:
GET HER TO BLACKWOOD.
By then, nobody needed to ask who "her" was.
Me.
Martin wanted the flash drive, but he apparently believed I knew something about it police did not.
Maybe I did.
My father never trusted electronics.
He used puzzles.
Redundancies.
Paper.
When I was a child, he had once told me, Never put the whole truth in one box, Simone. Boxes burn.
The storage facility had burned.
The flash drive had survived.
But maybe the flash drive wasn't the evidence.
Maybe it was only a map.
Digital forensics cracked it that afternoon.
Brooks arrived with a laptop.
The drive contained only six files.
Five were encrypted financial spreadsheets.
The sixth was an audio recording from my father.
His voice filled the hospital room.
"Simone, if you're hearing this, then circumstances have become worse than I hoped."
My throat closed.
I hadn't heard his voice in years.
"Blackwood was never valuable because of the shoreline. It was valuable because men like Martin Vale needed control of what lay beneath the paper trail."
Brooks paused the recording.
"Beneath?"
I knew immediately.
My father's private boathouse.
Built over an old stone foundation dating back to a logging company that once operated the property.
As a child, I'd watched Dad disappear into a locked maintenance room below the main floor.
He always called it the pump room.
But there had never been a pump.
We contacted the tactical team.
Nobody wanted me anywhere near Blackwood.
I agreed.
Initially.
Then David asked to see me.
Police had arrested him on charges connected to attempted murder, fraud, conspiracy, and evidence tampering.
He looked smaller when officers brought him into the interview room.
Not physically.
Morally.
The man I'd once thought filled every room now seemed like someone wearing David's face.
I sat across from him with Brooks present.
His eyes dropped to my stomach.
"How is she?"
"Don't ask."
His face crumpled.
"Simone—"
"You loosened the dock."
He closed his eyes.
"Yes."
"You watched me sink."
"I panicked."
"No. Panic is what I did. You made a decision."
"I know."
"You poisoned me?"
"No."
"You expect me to believe you now?"
"I never touched your vitamins."
"Then who did?"
"Martin."
"How?"
David looked confused.
"He sent you those expensive prenatal supplements three months ago. Remember? Hawthorne's executive wellness program?"
I did.
A gift box had arrived at David's office, supposedly for senior employees expecting children.
David had brought it home.
"I didn't know," he said. "I swear."
"You knew he wanted me dead."
"Not then."
"You started seeing Rebecca."
"Yes."
"You married me because of Blackwood."
His eyes filled.
"At first, I approached you because Martin wanted access."
I felt nothing.
That surprised me.
Maybe some betrayals were so complete they burned through pain and left only emptiness.
"Did you ever love me?"
"Yes."
"Not enough."
He lowered his head.
"No."
The honesty was almost unbearable.
"Why are you telling me this?"
"Because Martin will kill you."
"He already tried."
"He won't stop until he gets what's under the boathouse."
"What is there?"
"I don't know."
"You expect me to believe that?"
"Martin doesn't know either. That's why he's desperate."
David leaned forward.
"Your father kept a ledger. Not electronic. Handwritten. Martin believes it names every official and company involved in the Blackwood scheme."
"Where?"
"He thinks there's a vault beneath the boathouse."
I stared.
"Why would Martin need me?"
"Your father designed the access around family information. He told Martin years ago that only you could open it."
That sounded exactly like Dad.
Infuriating even from beyond the grave.
Brooks asked, "What information?"
David shook his head.
"I don't know."
Then he looked at me.
"But Martin knows you'll figure it out."
That night, police searched the boathouse.
They found the hidden room.
They found the steel vault.
They could not open it.
On the front were four mechanical dials and an engraved sentence:
THE DAY BLACKWOOD BECAME OURS.
My mother knew the date.
October 14, 1989.
The dials opened.
Inside was a waterproof case.
The ledger was there.
So were photographs.
Bank records.
Signed contracts.
Original shoreline reports.
Twenty years of corruption.
Enough to destroy Martin Vale.
But Martin had anticipated us.
As officers carried the case toward a secure vehicle, gunfire erupted from the woods.
Nobody was hit.
The lights went out.
A black SUV smashed through the property gate.
By the time backup arrived, the evidence case was gone.
And so was Martin Vale.
Brooks called me at 11:08 p.m.
"We lost the case."
My heart sank.
"Then everything is gone?"
"No."
"What do you mean?"
A strange note entered her voice.
"The case had a tracker."
I sat upright.
"Where is it?"
"Moving south on Highway Twelve."
"Can you stop him?"
"We're following."
Grant stood beside me, listening.
Brooks continued.
"But Simone, there's another problem."
"What?"
"The tracker just stopped moving."
"Where?"
A pause.
Then:
"At Blackwood Lake."
I stared out the hospital window.
Martin had taken the evidence right back to the place where this began.
Then another call came through.
David's detention transport had been ambushed en route to county jail.
Two officers were injured.
David was missing.
And thirty seconds later, my phone received a photograph.
David stood at the end of the repaired Blackwood dock.
Martin Vale was behind him.
A gun pressed to David's neck.
Below the image was one message:
COME ALONE IF YOU WANT THE LEDGER.
I looked at Grant.
He shook his head immediately.
"No."
I looked at Brooks' number still glowing on my screen.
For the first time since David left me underwater, I understood something clearly.
Martin didn't actually need me alone.
May you like
He needed to believe I was afraid enough to obey.
And that gave us one chance to end this.
