Chapter 5 - WHAT GRANT WAS TRYING TO SAVE
Silas stared at the hospital image.
“Find them.”
Jonas was already moving.
Lena caught his arm.
“Wait.”
Silas looked at her.
“Grant has the other half of the ledger.”
“Exactly.”
“So if you send half the city after him, he’ll destroy it.”
“He may already be doing that.”
“No.”
She studied the image.
Grant was carrying the ledger openly beneath his arm.
Not hidden.
Not wrapped.
“He wants somebody to see him with it.”
Silas’s gaze sharpened.
“A message.”
“To whom?”
Nobody answered.
Lena looked at Celeste.
She had accompanied them to the terminal facility and had gone almost white at the sight of her husband.
“Where would Grant go if he was scared?”
Celeste folded her arms.
“You think I know?”
“I think you know him better than anyone here.”
“That doesn’t mean I know where he runs when he’s stealing poisoned accountants from hospitals.”
Silas said quietly, “Celeste.”
Something in his tone broke through her anger.
She looked away.
“There’s an old rowing club on the Charles.”
Jonas pulled out his phone.
Celeste shook her head.
“Don’t send men storming in.”
“Why?”
“Because Grant used to go there with his father.”
“Everett?”
She nodded.
“When Grant was a boy, Everett took him every Sunday morning. He still goes there when he can’t think.”
Lena noticed the way Celeste spoke.
Not like a woman protecting a criminal.
Like a wife who had spent years watching a man become someone she could no longer recognize.
Silas drove.
Jonas hated it.
Lena could tell from his face.
They reached the rowing club shortly after eight.
Grant’s car stood outside.
No guards.
No backup.
Silas entered first.
Grant sat at a table overlooking gray water.
Owen Price sat across from him, pale and sweating.
The complete second half of the red ledger lay between them.
Grant looked up.
“You took your time.”
Silas stopped.
“You removed a poisoned man from medical care.”
Owen raised one hand.
“I signed myself out.”
Lena stared.
“Why?”
“Because the hospital wasn’t safe.”
“You were poisoned at dinner.”
“Yes.”
“By Wade?”
Owen looked at Grant.
“No.”
Silas pulled out a chair.
“Then we’re done with riddles.”
Grant laughed bitterly.
“That’s rich coming from this family.”
Celeste entered behind them.
Grant’s face fell.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
“Neither should you.”
“Celeste—”
“You lied to me for six months.”
“I was trying to keep you out of it.”
“You married me.”
Her voice remained calm.
“You don’t get to call lying protection just because you were afraid.”
Grant looked down.
For the first time Lena saw him not as the loud man who took credit for other people’s work.
He looked exhausted.
Old.
Ashamed.
Owen pushed the ledger toward Lena.
“I poisoned myself.”
Everyone stared.
Lena frowned.
“What?”
“Not enough to kill me.”
Silas’s eyes narrowed.
“You collapsed deliberately.”
“I needed Carver exposed.”
Jonas looked ready to put Owen through the wall.
“You could have killed yourself.”
“I calculated the dose.”
“You’re a payroll director, not a pharmacist.”
“My wife was a cardiac nurse for thirty-one years.”
Owen looked toward Lena.
“I knew Wade had orders involving your wine. I didn’t know exactly what was in it. Celeste warned you before I could.”
“So you collapsed.”
“I needed the room sealed before Wade escaped.”
Lena stared at him.
“Why not tell Silas?”
Owen’s eyes shifted toward Silas.
“Because I didn’t know if Silas was clean.”
The words landed heavily.
Grant leaned back.
“None of us did.”
Silas gave his cousin a long look.
“What have you been involved in?”
Grant’s swagger disappeared.
“Six months ago I found duplicate port invoices. I thought somebody was stealing from my division.”
“You mean you were angry someone was stealing before you could take credit?” Lena asked.
Grant winced.
“I deserved that.”
It was not the response she expected.
He continued.
“I traced the payments to shell vendors Dad controlled.”
Celeste closed her eyes.
“You knew.”
“Not at first.”
Grant touched the red ledger.
“Then Owen showed me records going back fourteen years.”
Lena sat across from him.
“My father?”
Grant nodded.
“Daniel found the original scheme. My father was using Meridian containers to move contraband for people who paid in cash.”
Silas said, “Adrian’s initials are in the book.”
Grant looked at him.
“Because Adrian joined the payments.”
Silas went still.
Grant continued before anyone could interrupt.
“Not to profit.”
He opened the ledger to a marked page.
“Look at the dates.”
Lena compared them.
For years, entries beside E.V. were regular.
Then A.V. appeared.
For only seven weeks.
The amounts matched payments already logged under Everett’s initials.
Duplicates.
Owen spoke.
“Adrian was buying information from the same intermediaries. He was building a second trail.”
Silas slowly understood.
“He wasn’t part of the operation.”
“No,” Owen said. “He was documenting it.”
Relief crossed Silas’s face.
Then vanished.
“Why didn’t he go to authorities?”
Grant laughed without humor.
“Because one city investigator was already on Everett’s payroll.”
Lena looked toward the river.
One answer.
Two more doors.
“My father helped Adrian.”
Owen nodded.
“Daniel discovered the duplicate electrical loads at Warehouse Nine. Refrigeration units were drawing power on nights the warehouse was supposedly empty.”
“That’s how he found the hidden shipments,” Lena whispered.
“Yes.”
“And the ledger?”
“He took it.”
“Why split it?”
“Insurance.”
Grant looked at her.
“Your father trusted Adrian. But he didn’t trust the Vale family.”
Lena almost smiled.
“Smart man.”
Silas accepted the blow.
“Apparently.”
Celeste moved closer to Grant.
“Where does Wade fit?”
Grant’s expression darkened.
“My father recruited him years later. Wade handled warehouse security. When he discovered Owen and I were digging, he reported us.”
“To Everett?”
Grant nodded.
Silas looked at the ledger.
“Then why invite Lena?”
“That wasn’t about the ledger,” Grant said.
Lena felt cold.
“What was it about?”
Grant looked genuinely sorry.
“Your mother.”
Lena stood.
“What about my mother?”
Everett had recently learned Ruth’s memory was declining.
He believed dementia might make her reveal where Daniel had hidden evidence.
The dinner was designed to frighten Lena, search her apartment, then create a reason for someone from Vale Meridian to approach Ruth while Lena was distracted.
Lena’s hand closed around the chair.
“I left her at Briarwood.”
Silas immediately called Jonas’s team.
No answer from the first guard.
Then the second.
Jonas swore.
They ran.
By the time they reached Briarwood, two security men were awake but disoriented in the staff lounge.
Drugged coffee.
Ruth’s room was empty.
Lena nearly screamed her mother’s name.
Then she saw the blue sweater on the bed.
Folded carefully.
Beneath it lay Daniel’s brown coat.
Someone had removed it from the storage room.
The inside lining had been cut completely open.
Silas found a piece of paper inside the sleeve.
Not a threat.
Not a demand.
A photocopy of an old fire-department photograph.
Warehouse Nine.
Smoke pouring through broken windows.
Two men stood outside the building.
One was Daniel Mercer.
Alive.
The timestamp read 11:31 P.M.
Twelve minutes before the official fire began.
Beside him stood Everett Vale.
On the back, in Ruth’s handwriting, were six words.
Everett didn’t make Daniel go back.
Lena turned the photograph over again.
May you like
Below the first sentence, almost lost beneath the fold, Ruth had written three more.
I did.
