Chapter 9 - the officer without a name
Arthur moved Lily behind him.
The child protection officer removed not a weapon, but a small black transmitter.
Mara knocked it from his hand before he could press the switch.
The second officer stepped back in shock.
“I don’t know him,” she said. “He joined us outside.”
The man lunged toward the damaged recorder.
Arthur intercepted him and forced him against the desk. The struggle ended quickly. Meridian agents entered and restrained the intruder without further violence.
Mara searched his pockets.
“No identification.”
Eleanor stared at him.
“I have seen him before.”
“Where?” Arthur asked.
“At Claire’s funeral.”
The man smiled.
Arthur looked at his face carefully. He appeared to be in his forties, with gray eyes and a thin scar beneath his chin.
“Who gave Richard the order?”
The man remained silent.
Mara recovered the transmitter.
“It was designed to ignite the building’s emergency fuel system.”
Lily gripped Arthur’s hand.
“He wanted to burn the room?”
Arthur crouched.
“He did not succeed.”
“Because of Code Black?”
“Because you called me.”
Medical staff examined Lily and Eleanor outside the building. Lily had no serious injuries, and the mark on her cheek required no treatment. Eleanor’s blood test confirmed she had been sedated.
The judge revoked Richard’s temporary guardianship and placed Lily in Arthur’s care pending the final hearing.
It should have felt like victory.
Instead, Richard had escaped with Claire’s help, the hidden network had reached the courthouse and a nameless intruder had nearly destroyed the evidence.
Mara transported the nursery recorder to Meridian headquarters.
The internal memory had survived.
The footage began five days before Arthur’s return.
Lily sat in the blue room while Richard stood beside a floral screen. Behind it, a woman asked questions.
“Does your father leave you alone?”
“No.”
“Does he frighten you?”
“No.”
“Does he care about his company more than you?”
Lily hesitated.
Richard leaned toward her.
“Answer correctly.”
“My dad loves me.”
The woman behind the screen stopped speaking.
Richard’s frustration increased.
“You need to say the words we practiced.”
“I won’t.”
He struck the table with his hand. Lily flinched.
Arthur had to force himself to remain in the room.
Mara slowed the footage.
The woman extended one hand beyond the screen.
She wore the silver Vale ring.
A narrow scar crossed her wrist.
Claire.
The recording continued.
The woman placed a photograph on the table. It showed Arthur entering a vehicle with several armed security officers during an overseas contract.
“Your father lives in danger,” she told Lily. “If you stay with him, dangerous people will find you.”
“They already found me here,” Lily answered.
Arthur looked away for a moment.
Mara stopped the recording.
“There’s more.”
The final section showed Richard alone with the woman after Lily had been taken from the room.
“You said she would cooperate,” the woman told him.
“She is Arthur’s daughter.”
“She is mine too.”
“Then speak to her as her mother.”
“I cannot let her see me.”
“Why?”
The woman stepped partly around the screen.
Only the lower half of her face was visible.
“Because Lily remembers things Arthur does not.”
Richard lowered his voice.
“What things?”
“The night of the accident.”
Arthur froze.
Lily had been at home with him when Claire supposedly crashed.
At least, that was what he remembered.
Richard asked, “What did she see?”
Claire answered, “Me returning after midnight.”
The recording ended.
Arthur went to Lily’s room at Meridian’s protected residence.
She was sitting beside the window with a sketchbook.
He sat near her.
“Do you remember the night Mom’s car crashed?”
Lily drew a dark line across the page.
“You said she didn’t come home.”
“That is what I believed.”
“She did.”
Arthur waited.
Lily drew a woman standing near a doorway.
“I woke up because she was singing. Her coat was wet.”
“Did she speak to you?”
“She said she had to go away before the bad people came.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I did.”
Arthur could not remember the conversation.
Lily looked at him.
“You drank the tea she made. Then you slept all day.”
Arthur remembered waking the following afternoon with a severe headache. Claire had already been declared dead.
“What else did she say?”
Lily turned the page.
She had drawn Claire holding a black folder.
“She said the folder could destroy our family.”
Arthur looked at the drawing.
A symbol appeared on the cover.
It resembled a circle divided by three lines.
He had seen the same symbol inside the classified archives his father left behind.
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The files were known by one name.
The Lazarus Ledger.
