Chapter 7 - THE KEY TO THE TRUTH
Claire didn't go home. She couldn't risk Robert having men watching her house. She drove straight to the 24-hour downtown branch of First Ohio Bank, her clothes still reeking of smoke and mud.
She slammed the scorched photograph and her ID on the desk of the night manager. “I need access to this box. Immediately.”
The manager looked at her disheveled state but recognized the Mercer name. Ten minutes later, Claire was sitting alone in a sterile steel vault, staring at a small metal box on the table.
She turned the key. The lid opened.
Inside wasn't a stash of money. It was a leather-bound journal and a micro-cassette recorder.
Claire pressed play on the recorder. Static hissed, followed by the undeniable voice of Robert Hale, much younger, yelling in the background: “Daniel can’t read a damn word, Walter! Just put the safety slip in the stack. He’ll sign it. If the pressure valve blows, the liability falls on him. I’m not losing this defense contract over safety margins.”
Claire gasped, covering her mouth. It was a recorded confession. Daniel had known. He had proof all along.
She opened the leather journal. The pages were filled with agonizingly crooked handwriting, spelled phonetically, like a child’s diary.
Clare, if you r-e-e-d this, I am s-o-r-y. Robirt sed he woud hirt you and the babie if I told the p-o-l-e-s-e. I kept the tape to kepe him away from you. I l-u-v you. - Daniel.
Tears streamed down Claire’s face, dropping onto the pages. Daniel hadn’t been a coward. He had sacrificed his own freedom, his own dignity, living as a prisoner to Robert for fifteen years, entirely to keep his family safe from a ruthless sociopath.
Claire wiped her eyes, a dangerous, fiery resolve settling into her bones. Robert Hale had pushed the wrong woman.
She picked up her phone and dialed Sarah at the literacy center. “Sarah. I need your help. Call Walter Briggs. And call every news station in Columbus.”
The next morning, at 9:00 a.m. sharp, the emergency board meeting of Mercer Aerospace convened on the fiftieth floor of the corporate tower. Robert Hale stood at the head of the mahogany table, adjusting his tie, ready to be voted in as the new CEO.
“As you know,” Robert addressed the board members solemnly, “Daniel Mercer’s recent erratic behavior and subsequent arrest for arson have left this company in peril. I am stepping in to—”
The double glass doors of the boardroom shattered open.
Claire Mercer marched into the room, flanked by two armed security guards she had personally hired, and Walter Briggs. Behind them, looking battered but wearing a suit that fit like armor, was Daniel Mercer. He had been bailed out an hour earlier.
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Robert’s face went white. “Security! Remove them!”
“Sit down, Robert,” Claire said, her voice echoing through the massive room with the authority of a queen. She slammed the micro-cassette recorder and the original blueprints onto the mahogany table. “We have some reading to do.”
