Chapter 6 - The Man They Buried Twice
Ethan Cole was alive.
Barely.
We found him in a rented room above an electronics repair shop three blocks from Penn Station.
He was thinner than the photograph Caroline showed me.
Older.
Scared.
He checked the hallway three times before letting us inside.
Caroline stood frozen.
“My father went to your funeral.”
Ethan gave a humorless laugh.
“No, he went to somebody’s funeral.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means Graham Prescott is very good at making people disappear.”
He looked at me.
“You’re Lucia.”
“Yes.”
“You should have quit.”
“So everyone keeps telling me.”
That almost made him smile.
Then he opened a laptop.
“What did they use to authenticate the Cayman account?” he asked.
“Video,” I said. “Biometrics.”
“Exactly.”
He pulled up an old security architecture diagram from Prescott Group.
“Three years ago, Adrian approved an experimental executive authentication program. Voiceprint, facial geometry, signature dynamics.”
Caroline nodded.
“I remember.”
“Graham insisted on it.”
Ethan zoomed in.
“The biometric master files were supposed to be destroyed after testing.”
“They weren’t,” I said.
“No.”
“Who kept them?”
He looked at Caroline.
“Malcolm.”
Her face hardened.
Ethan continued.
“With enough high-resolution video and Adrian’s biometric template, they could create a synthetic authorization convincing enough to pass an automated compliance review.”
“Deepfake,” I said.
“More sophisticated than the kind people play with online, but yes.”
Caroline sat down.
“So the Cayman video is fake.”
“Yes.”
“Can you prove it?”
Ethan lifted a small hard drive.
“I kept the development logs.”
Hope surged through me.
Then he added, “But that only proves the video can be forged. It doesn’t prove Graham ordered it.”
“What would?”
“The estate server.”
I immediately understood.
The Prescott mansion.
Ethan nodded.
“The biometric archive was copied to an offline machine in the west-wing network room.”
“Graham’s wing,” Caroline said.
“If the server still exists, it should contain access logs.”
“Why didn’t Dad use them?”
“He tried.”
Ethan’s expression changed.
“Your father called me the week he died. He said someone had altered his medication and accessed his private computer.”
Caroline’s face crumpled.
“What did you do?”
“I told him I’d come to the house.”
“What happened?”
“Malcolm intercepted me.”
The room became silent.
“He said your father was unstable. Said Graham wanted the company protected from Robert’s paranoia.”
“And you believed him?”
“For about twelve hours.”
Ethan looked ashamed.
“Then I checked the network. Someone had duplicated Adrian’s biometric profile.”
“What happened next?”
“A truck hit my car.”
My skin prickled.
“I woke up in a hospital under another name. Graham’s people approached my wife.”
He looked down.
“They told her I had stolen company data and would go to prison unless we disappeared.”
“Where is she?”
“Canada. With our daughter.”
“Why come back now?”
He looked directly at me.
“Because then I saw your face on television.”
I almost laughed.
“The stupid photograph.”
“The photograph Graham released created the one thing he couldn’t control.”
“What?”
“Attention.”
Ethan handed me the drive.
“Now people are looking.”
We took the evidence directly to Agent Mercer.
Within hours, Adrian was released pending review of the new forensic material.
But Graham was moving too.
He called an emergency transfer vote.
Eighty-three million dollars in employee pension reserves were scheduled to be moved Friday morning into what he described as a “temporary defensive custody vehicle.”
Bellweather.
That was what REMOVE LUCIA BEFORE FRIDAY had meant.
The forty-seven million had been the test.
The pension money was the real prize.
If it moved offshore, thousands of employees could lose retirement savings.
“We stop the transfer,” I said.
Mercer shook his head.
“We need proof tying Graham directly to the fraud.”
“Ethan’s logs—”
“Prove capability.”
“The recordings—”
“Suggest motive.”
“Caroline?”
“She’s a participant. Defense counsel will attack her credibility.”
Adrian looked at me.
“The estate server.”
Mercer stared at him.
“If it still exists.”
Caroline whispered, “It exists.”
Everyone turned.
She looked at Adrian.
“Dad showed me the network room once. It’s behind the old wine cellar.”
Mercer immediately began preparing a warrant.
But someone leaked the request.
By the time federal agents reached the estate, the server room had been emptied.
Almost.
One cable remained warm.
A machine had been removed minutes earlier.
There was only one road leaving the service entrance.
Traffic cameras caught a black SUV.
Registered to Malcolm Pierce.
He was heading north.
Toward a Prescott-owned private airfield.
Mercer dispatched agents.
Then Caroline noticed something else.
“There’s another server.”
“Where?” I asked.
She looked toward the house.
“Dad hated cloud storage. He kept redundant local backups.”
Adrian frowned.
“Where?”
“In the old storm cellar.”
We found the entrance beneath a rug in a storage room behind the wine cellar.
Adrian lifted the metal door.
A narrow staircase descended into darkness.
Mercer’s agents were still searching the west wing.
“We wait,” Adrian said.
Then the lights went out.
A door slammed upstairs.
My heart jumped.
“Adrian?”
“I’m here.”
A flashlight clicked on.
Caroline whispered, “Someone locked us in.”
Then a voice came from below.
“No.”
I knew that voice.
Graham Prescott stepped into the flashlight beam.
He held a gun.
Beside him stood Malcolm.
My mouth went dry.
Graham looked tired.
Not frightened.
Almost disappointed.
“You children have made this unnecessarily messy.”
Adrian stepped in front of me.
“Put the gun down.”
“You always did inherit your father’s confidence without his judgment.”
“You murdered him.”
Graham sighed.
“Robert murdered himself.”
Caroline made a sound of disgust.
“You changed his medication.”
“I corrected a problem.”
“You killed your own brother.”
“He was going to destroy everything we built.”
Adrian’s voice shook with rage.
“You mean everything he built.”
Graham’s expression changed.
There it was.
The real wound.
Jealousy.
Forty years old and still alive.
“Robert got the credit,” Graham said. “Robert got the headlines. Robert got the controlling shares. And then he planned to hand everything to you.”
“So you stole it.”
“I took what should have been mine.”
I slowly slid my phone from my pocket.
No signal underground.
But the recorder worked.
I pressed it.
Graham didn’t notice.
“You used Caroline,” Adrian said.
Graham looked at her.
“She was useful.”
Caroline flinched.
“You told me you were protecting this family.”
“I was protecting the company from weak people.”
“You framed me.”
“You signed what I put in front of you.”
Caroline looked as though he had struck her.
He turned to me.
“And then the maid started reading invoices.”
“Housekeeper,” I said.
He blinked.
“If you’re going to threaten me, at least use my actual job title.”
Malcolm almost smiled.
Graham didn’t.
“You could have taken your resignation and disappeared.”
“You threatened my mother.”
“I authorized Malcolm to encourage you.”
“Encourage?”
“The brake line was excessive,” Graham said.
I looked at Malcolm.
He shrugged.
“Had to make the message clear.”
My recorder captured every word.
Adrian saw the phone in my hand.
He understood.
He began talking louder.
“You released the photograph.”
“Of course.”
“You opened the Cayman account.”
“With your identity.”
“The fake video?”
“Remarkable technology.”
Every answer became evidence.
Then Malcolm noticed my phone.
“Her hand.”
Graham turned.
“Lucia.”
I ran.
The first gunshot hit the stone wall.
Caroline screamed.
Adrian tackled Graham.
The flashlight fell.
Darkness swallowed us.
Malcolm grabbed my jacket.
I drove my elbow backward.
He cursed.
I broke free.
Somebody hit somebody else.
A gun skidded across concrete.
Then Graham shouted, “Enough!”
The flashlight flickered back on.
He had the gun again.
Pointed at me.
Adrian stood between us.
Graham’s hand shook.
“You ruined everything.”
“No,” I said. “You did.”
His finger tightened.
From upstairs came pounding.
Federal agents.
“Drop the weapon!”
Graham looked toward the stairs.
Then back at me.
Desperation replaced control.
“You should have left when she warned you.”
The exact words from my first threatening text.
I raised my phone.
“And you should have stopped talking five minutes ago.”
His eyes widened.
The gun fired.
Adrian shouted my name.
Something struck my shoulder.
I fell.
May you like
And the last thing I heard before darkness swallowed me was Caroline screaming,
“LUCIA!”
