Chapter 6 - Two Unknown Voices
Nathan placed his phone on the desk.
The message remained on the screen.
Elena looked from the phone to Margaret.
“I sent the documents,” she said. “I sent the address. But the audio file wasn’t mine.”
“Why didn’t you say that earlier?” Nathan asked.
“Because it supported what I already knew.”
“You let me believe one person was contacting me.”
“I needed you to leave the penthouse.”
Margaret kept her hand inside the desk drawer.
“What did the voice say?”
Nathan played the recording again.
“Adrian didn’t witness your company collapse. He arranged it.”
Elena listened carefully.
“The distortion pattern is different from the software I use.”
“You distort your own voice?”
“When necessary.”
Margaret removed her hand from the drawer but did not close it.
“Someone is using Elena’s operation as cover.”
Nathan typed a message to the unknown sender.
WHO ARE YOU?
No answer appeared.
He sent another.
WHAT IS IN VAULT B-17?
This time, the response arrived immediately.
THE PROOF THAT YOUR FATHER CHOSE ADRIAN BEFORE HE CHOSE YOU.
Nathan felt the words like a physical blow.
Elena moved closer to the phone.
“How do they know about the vault?”
Margaret sat down behind the desk.
“Charles may have told more than one person.”
“Or the vault has already been opened,” Elena said.
Nathan looked at the key.
“We’re going there.”
Margaret shook her head.
“Adrian expects you to search for evidence.”
“He doesn’t know about the key.”
“Someone does.”
“The board meets in six hours. We don’t have time to wait.”
Margaret stood.
“Then you need more than evidence. You need leverage.”
She called a former federal prosecutor named Daniel Hurst. Nathan listened as she described financial fraud, identity misuse, and unlawful corporate surveillance without mentioning Charles’s possible survival.
Hurst agreed to review the documents but warned that no agency would stop a board vote based solely on copied files from an anonymous source.
“We need original records,” Nathan said after the call.
“Or a confession tied directly to the transfer,” Margaret replied.
Nathan thought about Vanessa’s message.
ADRIAN IS LYING TO ME. I NEED TO SEE YOU.
“She wants to talk.”
Elena frowned.
“You cannot meet her alone.”
“I won’t.”
“What are you planning?”
“To let Vanessa believe she still has a choice.”
Nathan replied to her message.
MEET ME AT THE OLD BLACKRIDGE BUILDING. 7:30 A.M. COME ALONE.
The response appeared less than a minute later.
I’LL BE THERE.
Elena looked at the time.
“That gives us ninety minutes.”
Margaret handed Nathan a small digital recorder.
“Do not accuse her. Let her fill the silence.”
Nathan slipped it into his coat.
They left through the garage in Margaret’s car. The original Blackridge headquarters stood near the river, a six-story industrial building that had once housed prototype laboratories.
It had been abandoned after Charles’s disappearance.
Windows along the upper floors were dark.
The front gate was locked, but the B-17 key also opened a smaller pedestrian entrance.
“That suggests the vault key is part of the master system,” Elena said.
They crossed the courtyard.
Nathan remembered visiting the building as a child. His father used to bring him on Saturday mornings and let him draw imaginary machines on the glass conference walls.
On one visit, Nathan had asked why Charles installed so many security doors.
His father had smiled.
Because the most valuable thing in a company is not what it builds. It is what it knows.
Inside, dust covered the reception desk.
Their footsteps echoed.
Vault B-17 was located below the research wing. They descended two flights of concrete stairs and followed faded signs toward the archive corridor.
The steel door waited at the end.
Nathan inserted the key.
It turned easily.
The room beyond contained rows of locked cabinets and a single table.
On the table sat a laptop.
Its power light was glowing.
Someone had been there recently.
Nathan approached the screen.
A video file was open.
The date beneath it was three days before Charles Mercer’s plane disappeared.
Nathan pressed play.
His father appeared in a dim office.
Adrian sat across from him.
Charles pushed a folder over the desk.
“I need you to protect Blackridge from Nathan,” he said.
Nathan stopped breathing.
On the recording, Adrian opened the folder.
“What exactly do you want me to do?”
Charles looked directly toward the hidden camera.
“If my son refuses to step aside, make his failure impossible to ignore.”
The video ended.
Nathan stared at the black screen.
Behind them, the vault door slammed shut.
May you like
A lock engaged from the outside.
Then the laptop began deleting its own files.
