Chapter 8 - the key Sarah never mentioned
For five seconds, no one moved.
Then emergency lights glowed along the floor.
Marcus still held the weapon, but his attention had shifted entirely toward Sarah.
“You knew?” David asked.
Sarah’s face looked almost colorless in the dim light.
“I knew Henry left me something. I did not know what it opened.”
“Where is it?” Marcus demanded.
Sarah looked at David.
“In the garden.”
Marcus laughed with disbelief.
“The garden was excavated.”
“Not the rose garden.”
Victoria pushed herself away from the desk, one hand pressed to her shoulder.
“You removed the roses,” Sarah told her, “but you never touched the stone bench.”
Marcus pointed the weapon toward the open doorway.
“We are going outside.”
Vehicles could be heard stopping above them. Doors slammed. Men shouted.
David recognized Colonel Pierce’s voice.
“Marcus!”
Marcus’s expression tightened.
Pierce called again from the cellar.
“Bring them out. We can still finish this.”
David studied Marcus.
“You said you worked for whoever wins.”
Marcus glanced toward the doorway.
“You are not winning.”
“Pierce will blame everything on you.”
“He needs me.”
“He sent you into a house after a decorated Marine while he waited outside. Does that sound like a partner?”
Marcus hesitated.
Victoria saw the doubt.
“He will kill you the moment he has the box,” she said.
“Be quiet.”
“I have known men like Pierce my entire life. Everyone is useful until they become evidence.”
Marcus’s weapon shifted slightly.
David moved without warning.
He knocked Marcus’s hand toward the ceiling as Victoria struck the emergency switch beside the desk.
The lights flashed at full brightness.
Marcus staggered.
David forced him against a filing cabinet and twisted the weapon away.
“Down,” David ordered.
Marcus dropped to his knees.
David removed the magazine, cleared the chamber and slid the weapon beneath the desk.
Sarah was still holding the metal box.
“Can you walk?” David asked Victoria.
“Yes.”
“Then we leave through another route.”
“There is no other route,” Sarah said.
Henry’s recording started again.
“If Pierce has reached the house, do not use the main passage. Open cabinet nineteen.”
David turned toward the filing cabinets.
Numbers were engraved above each one.
He pulled open cabinet nineteen.
Instead of files, it contained a narrow tunnel entrance.
Victoria stared.
“How many passages did your father build?”
Sarah looked toward the recorder.
“Enough to keep secrets from everyone who loved him.”
David guided them into the tunnel and closed the cabinet behind them.
Marcus remained in the underground room.
As David sealed the entrance, Marcus called after him.
“You cannot trust Pierce, but you cannot trust Victoria either.”
David paused.
Marcus smiled through the narrowing gap.
“Ask her who sent the six-word message.”
The cabinet shut.
David turned toward Victoria.
The tunnel was barely wide enough for them to walk in single file.
“Did you send it?”
Victoria did not answer.
“Come home before she signs everything,” David quoted. “Was that you?”
“Yes.”
Sarah looked at her.
“Why warn him after what you did to me?”
Victoria lowered her eyes.
“Because Marcus changed the documents.”
“What were they supposed to say?”
“That the estate would be placed in a protected trust until David returned.”
Sarah’s expression hardened.
“You told me I was transferring ownership.”
“I needed you frightened enough to sign quickly.”
“That makes no sense.”
“It was the only way to make Pierce believe I was following his plan.”
David stepped closer to Victoria.
“You humiliated my mother as part of an act?”
“No. I was angry, desperate and cruel. I will not pretend otherwise.”
“Why did Pierce need the estate?”
“To force your father’s vault open.”
“With my identification?”
“With your bloodline.”
David looked toward the metal box.
“What does that mean?”
Victoria pointed toward the biometric panel hidden beneath the lid.
“The box was not waiting for your identification card. It was waiting for your fingerprint.”
David remembered holding the lid when Marcus attacked.
He had touched the metal edge.
The box had unlocked immediately afterward.
Sarah opened it carefully.
Inside was a single brass key, a photograph and a sealed letter.
The photograph showed Henry standing beside a stone bench in Sarah’s rose garden.
May you like
Written across the bottom were five words.
The first grave is empty.
