Chapter 9 - The First Escape
Bullets struck the minivan as Lena pulled me behind a steel support column.
Daniel dropped beside the front wheel.
Rebecca crawled beneath the van.
The shooter moved along the upper catwalk, hidden by darkness and hanging plastic sheets.
Lena fired twice.
The gunshots echoed through the warehouse.
A figure disappeared behind a railing.
“Rear exit,” Lena said.
“It’s locked,” Rebecca replied.
“Then unlock it.”
“I don’t control the system.”
Daniel held up the phone we had found.
“This might.”
Rebecca snatched it from him and entered a code.
The screen changed to a building control panel.
“You know the code?” I asked.
“It’s a Northstar facility.”
“You said the van came here because you were escaping.”
“I chose a property I understood.”
The rear door rose several inches, then stopped.
The shooter fired again.
Lena returned fire while Daniel and Rebecca pulled at the door.
I crawled beneath the van to reach them.
As I moved, I saw something taped beneath the rear seat.
A small blue rocket.
It had been cut from Noah’s pajamas.
I ripped it free.
On the back, he had written in pencil:
MOM, I HEARD GRANDMA’S VOICE.
My mother had been dead for six years.
I stared at the note.
“Noah left this,” I said.
Rebecca looked at it.
“Who was with him?”
“No one.”
“He heard my mother.”
“Calder uses recordings.”
“What kind of recordings?”
“Voices. Family videos. Old calls. Anything that creates emotional compliance.”
“Why use my mother’s voice on a child?”
Rebecca’s eyes moved toward the loudspeakers mounted near the ceiling.
“To make sure you understand that he has access to your entire past.”
The rear door lifted another foot.
Lena covered us while we rolled beneath it.
A bullet struck the concrete beside my hand.
We ran across an empty loading yard toward Lena’s SUV.
The warehouse door slammed shut behind us.
No one followed.
That frightened me more than pursuit.
They had allowed us to escape.
Lena drove while Rebecca pressed a cloth against the cut on her face.
“Where is Noah?” I asked again.
“In a safe apartment near the hospital district.”
“Take me there.”
“We cannot.”
“Why?”
“Because Calder may have tracked the phone.”
Daniel threw the device out the window.
Rebecca glared at him.
“It was our only access to the facility system.”
“It was also a beacon.”
“He’s right,” Lena said. “We need to change vehicles.”
I turned toward Rebecca.
“Tell me everything.”
She leaned back and closed her eyes.
“I met Daniel three years ago at a private investment conference.”
Daniel corrected her.
“Two years.”
“Three,” she said. “You simply did not remember the first meeting.”
His expression shifted.
Rebecca continued.
“Calder selects people with access to family wealth. Accountants. attorneys. spouses. doctors. He studies their resentments and offers them a way to obtain what they believe they deserve.”
Daniel stared at the floor.
“What did he offer you?” I asked Rebecca.
“Protection.”
“From whom?”
“My former employer.”
“Who was your employer?”
“Your mother.”
The answer stunned me.
Rebecca opened her eyes.
“Margaret Mercer hired me twenty-three years ago. I was a junior records clerk at the bank managing the family trust.”
“You knew my mother?”
“Yes.”
“Why have I never seen you?”
“She kept our work secret.”
“What work?”
“Collecting proof that someone was stealing from the trust.”
“Adrian?”
“At first, she believed it was Adrian. Later, she realized he was only one part of a much larger network.”
“Then Adrian died.”
“Yes.”
“And Calder appeared?”
“Not immediately. The name surfaced ten years later.”
Daniel shook his head.
“You told me you had never met Evelyn’s family.”
“I told you what Calder instructed me to tell you.”
“You used me.”
Rebecca gave him a humorless smile.
“You planned to steal from your wife. Do not ask for sympathy because someone stole from you first.”
I looked out the window.
The city passed in blurred gray blocks.
“Did my mother know Calder’s identity?”
“I think so.”
“Why didn’t she tell me?”
“She tried to keep both of you away from the trust.”
“Both of us?”
“You and Marcus.”
“Marcus knew about the archive.”
“He knew part of it.”
“Can I trust him?”
Rebecca hesitated.
That hesitation hurt more than an immediate no.
“Your brother investigated Calder,” she said. “But his investigation may not have ended the way he claims.”
“What does that mean?”
“Calder does not always destroy investigators. Sometimes he recruits them.”
I took out the prepaid phone.
No messages.
No missed calls.
Marcus had gone silent.
“Where is the apartment?” I asked.
Rebecca gave me an address.
Lena changed direction.
Daniel leaned forward.
“You said we couldn’t go there.”
“We cannot leave Noah alone any longer,” I said.
“He isn’t alone,” Rebecca replied.
“Who is with him?”
“A retired nurse named Helen.”
“Last name?”
Rebecca did not answer.
I turned slowly.
“What is her last name?”
“Mercer.”
My heart stopped.
“Helen Mercer was my grandmother.”
“No,” Rebecca said. “Helen is her younger sister.”
I had never known my grandmother had a sister.
“Why would she help us?”
“Because she has been waiting twenty-four years for someone to open the archive.”
The prepaid phone rang.
Marcus’s number appeared.
I answered.
“Where are you?” he asked.
“With Lena.”
“Is Rebecca Vale there?”
I looked at Rebecca.
“Yes.”
“Get away from her.”
“Why?”
“She did not work for our mother.”
Rebecca watched my face.
May you like
Marcus continued.
“Evelyn, Rebecca Vale died in 2009.”
