Chapter 5 - THE VOICE ON THE TAPE
“I remember saying those words.”
Dominic's confession was barely audible.
Grace stared at him across the small security office.
“You ordered three men locked underground?”
“No.”
“But that was your voice.”
Dominic looked at the cassette player as though it had become something dangerous.
“I ordered an empty service passage closed. My father told me there had been a chemical spill and nobody was allowed inside until inspectors arrived.”
Walter Briggs lowered himself into a chair.
“Those three men weren't inspectors, Mr. Caruso. They were railroad employees. They'd been working that passage for almost twenty years.”
“I didn't know they were there.”
Walter looked at him.
“Somebody should have checked.”
Dominic didn't defend himself.
The old man's words had struck exactly where they needed to.
Patrick stopped the recording.
“There's more on this tape. We should hear all of it.”
He pressed play again.
Salvatore's voice returned.
“Charles approved the release. We proceed.”
A second man spoke.
“You know what happens if they find the shipment records.”
“Then we make certain they don't.”
There was a sharp clicking sound.
Then Daniel Mercer spoke, his voice trembling with anger.
“This is Daniel Mercer. October seventeenth. I placed the recorder behind the dispatch panel before the meeting. They're going to flood the lower passage, and I'm trying to get someone to stop them.”
Grace covered her mouth.
Daniel continued.
“I don't know if Dominic understands what's happening. He thinks the men have been evacuated. They're still inside.”
The recording ended.
For several seconds, nobody moved.
Claire began crying quietly.
“He tried to warn you.”
Dominic stared at the wall.
“He came to my office that afternoon.”
Claire looked up.
“What?”
“Daniel told me something was wrong with the terminal. He said the books didn't match and workers were afraid.”
“What did you tell him?”
Dominic swallowed.
“I told him my father would handle it.”
Claire's expression changed from grief to disappointment.
“You sent him back to the man he was afraid of.”
Dominic closed his eyes.
At twenty-seven, he had been eager to prove himself.
He'd inherited his father's temper and ambition, along with an unquestioning belief that family loyalty came before everything.
Daniel had been his oldest friend.
But when forced to choose between Daniel's suspicions and Salvatore's authority, Dominic had chosen his father.
Three men had died.
Daniel had disappeared.
And Dominic had spent seventeen years believing he'd been betrayed by the friend who never came home.
“I should have listened,” he said.
Grace watched him struggle with something his money and power couldn't repair.
She wanted to hate him.
Part of her did.
But the man standing before her wasn't making excuses.
He was facing the kind of regret that could destroy someone from the inside.
Walter finally spoke.
“The accident happened five weeks before Daniel disappeared. Those workers had discovered chemical shipments being moved through the old drainage route. They were going to report it.”
Patrick nodded.
“That's why the payroll records mattered.”
Walter looked toward the door.
“And why Daniel kept asking questions after the funerals.”
Dominic turned to him.
“Were you working that night?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn't you tell anyone?”
Walter pulled a folded piece of paper from his coat.
It was an old termination notice.
“Because I tried.”
He laid it on the desk.
“Charles Langley's company fired me three days after the accident. They said I had falsified inspection reports. Nobody would hire me afterward.”
Grace studied the notice.
Walter's signature appeared at the bottom.
But across the top, someone had stamped:
EMPLOYEE SAFETY VIOLATION.
For seventeen years, Walter had carried a document that made him look responsible for the very accident he'd tried to prevent.
Dominic slowly pushed it back toward him.
“You shouldn't have had to live with that.”
Walter's voice tightened.
“Three men didn't get to live at all.”
The words silenced everyone.
They returned to the records room and spent the next hour photographing the contents.
Patrick insisted they leave the original documents in place until independent investigators could inspect the room.
Inside a filing cabinet, Grace found payroll ledgers listing overtime payments to the three dead workers.
The entries continued for months after their deaths.
Beside each payment was the same authorization code.
CL-17.
“Charles Langley,” Patrick said.
Claire nodded.
“Daniel found these.”
Then Grace discovered a small blue notebook beneath a stack of maintenance schedules.
The cover was torn.
A faded sticker of a yellow flower decorated one corner.
Grace immediately recognized it.
“My mom had this.”
She opened the notebook.
The first pages contained ordinary household reminders.
Buy milk.
Grace needs new school shoes.
Abby has a dentist appointment Friday.
Grace smiled despite herself.
Her mother had never stopped being a mother, even when her life was falling apart.
Then the entries changed.
Daniel says the men weren't supposed to die.
Charles signed the override.
Salvatore knew.
Dominic may not understand what they did.
Grace turned another page.
Claire has the song. I have the photographs.
If they find the recording, they will come after all of us.
Then came a sentence written so heavily that the pen had almost torn the paper.
I SHOULD HAVE TOLD DOMINIC BEFORE THEY TOOK DANIEL.
Grace looked at Claire.
“My mother wanted to warn him.”
Claire nodded.
“She tried.”
“Then why didn't she?”
“Because Harrison threatened to have you and Abigail taken away.”
Grace remembered being ten years old and watching her mother bolt the apartment door every evening.
Nora had insisted that Grace never open it for strangers.
For years, Grace had considered it ordinary maternal caution.
Now she understood.
Her mother had been frightened for their lives.
Dominic looked down at the notebook.
“I never knew.”
Grace felt anger rising.
“You had guards, money, connections. My mother had two little girls and a part-time job.”
Dominic met her eyes.
“You're right.”
“She was trying to protect us while everyone around her had the power to destroy us.”
“I know.”
“No. You don't.”
Her voice broke.
“You don't know what it was like watching her work until her hands shook. You don't know how many birthdays she missed because she couldn't afford to lose a shift.”
Dominic accepted every word.
Finally, he said, “I can't change what happened to your mother. But I can make sure the truth isn't buried with her.”
Grace looked away.
She wanted to believe him.
She wasn't ready.
Near the back of the notebook, Patrick found a newspaper clipping.
It described Daniel Mercer's disappearance.
The article stated that he had last been seen outside the freight terminal shortly before midnight.
Nora had circled one sentence.
Authorities believe Mercer may have left Tennessee voluntarily.
Underneath, she had written:
FALSE. I SAW HIM TWO DAYS LATER.
Dominic leaned closer.
“That's the date on Harrison's photograph.”
Grace turned the page.
Nora had drawn a rough picture of a wooden cabin beside the river.
Beneath it, she wrote:
Daniel is hurt. They moved him after he tried to reach Claire.
He asked me to bring the other recording.
He said he wouldn't leave without the names of the three men.
Grace felt tears gathering.
Even injured and frightened, Daniel had been thinking about the families who deserved answers.
Claire touched the notebook.
“He never told me where he was going.”
Dominic stared at the drawing.
“He was alive. Two days after he disappeared.”
Patrick nodded.
“And if Nora saw him, she may have recorded what happened next.”
Grace turned another page.
There was one final entry.
It had been written in a hurry.
The handwriting slanted across the paper.
I couldn't get him out.
Victoria was there.
She saw what Harrison did.
Then, beneath those words, Nora had written something that made Dominic's blood run cold.
DANIEL DID NOT DIE AT THE TERMINAL. THEY TOOK HIM TO THE RIVER, AND VICTORIA KNOWS WHERE.
Dominic looked toward the entrance.
Victoria had remained at the mansion.
May you like
For seventeen years, she had known more about Daniel's disappearance than she'd admitted.
And tomorrow, she was supposed to marry the man who had spent half his life searching for him.
