Chapter 6 - The Lawyer Who Betrayed Everyone
The monitor showed Marcus standing beneath the loading-bay lights with rain on his shoulders and a pistol pressed against Grace’s ribs.
Lily remained unnaturally calm.
Edward leaned toward the camera microphone. “Let them go.”
Marcus looked up as if he could see Edward through the lens.
“Bring Thomas to the manor,” he said. “Archive Zero opens tonight.”
Thomas struck the console. “He sold us out.”
“No,” Noah said. “Look at Grace.”
Her right hand was closed around her employee badge. She tapped its edge against her leg in a steady pattern.
Three short. Three long. Three short.
SOS.
Then she changed the rhythm.
Two. One. Four.
Noah recognized it. “Security code. East service exit, level four.”
Thomas rewound the feed. Marcus’s pistol was angled away from Grace whenever the guards looked elsewhere. His grip on Lily’s shoulder was loose.
“He isn’t holding them,” Edward said. “He’s pretending to.”
As if confirming it, Marcus leaned close to Lily and whispered something. She nodded once.
The feed cut.
An explosion shook the loading bay.
Thomas ran for the corridor. Edward followed despite Noah’s order to remain behind.
Smoke rolled through the eastern wing. Sprinklers poured freezing water over the tile. Two Meridian guards lay unconscious beside the service stairs. Marcus emerged carrying Lily while Grace supported herself against the wall.
“Move,” Marcus said. “The blast bought us four minutes.”
Thomas shoved him against the wall. “You threatened them.”
“I saved them.”
“You told Dad both his daughters would die.”
Marcus looked at Lily. “There are microphones throughout this facility. Michael had to believe I was still cooperating.”
Edward pulled Thomas back. “Where is Michael?”
“Not here. He controls Bellweather remotely from another site.” Marcus handed Noah a small drive. “This contains access logs and partial financial records. I took it from the van.”
Grace stared at him. “You were at the hospital when Daniel disappeared.”
Marcus nodded. “I was a junior attorney for the Caldwell Foundation. Malcolm told me the children had been transferred to protective care after a trial accident. I believed him for almost a year.”
“And then?”
“I found death certificates for children who were still receiving treatment payments. I confronted Edward’s father. He offered me money. When I refused, he made it clear that my family would suffer.”
Edward’s voice was cold. “My father died twelve years ago.”
“His system did not.”
Thomas released Marcus. “Why didn’t you tell Dad?”
“Because Edward was being watched. Catherine was being watched. Everyone near the family was being watched.” Marcus looked at Edward. “When Thomas vanished, I tried to trace the river vehicle. The car was remotely driven. The driver had been dead before it crossed the guardrail.”
Edward remembered the closed coffin, the police photographs, the endless river searches.
“You convinced me to declare Thomas dead.”
“I needed Michael to stop moving him. As long as the search remained active, Thomas was transferred every few weeks. After the declaration, they kept him at Bellweather. I could finally locate him.”
“You located him and left him here.”
Marcus accepted the accusation. “I tried three extractions. People died in the second. In the third, Thomas refused to leave without the other children.”
Thomas looked away.
Grace gripped Marcus’s coat. “Was Daniel one of them?”
Marcus’s silence answered before his words.
“He survived the original trial. I don’t know what happened after Bellweather closed its pediatric wing.”
Lily stepped between the adults. “The boy in the walls said Daniel is alive.”
Everyone looked at her.
“What boy?” Grace asked.
“The one who first told me about Thomas.”
Edward crouched beside her. “When did you hear him?”
“Last winter. In our apartment. The radiator made knocking sounds. I thought it was pipes, but then the voice said my name.”
Grace’s face tightened. Their apartment had been owned by a Caldwell subsidiary and assigned to mansion staff.
Lily continued. “He told me to find the brass flower. He mailed the key for my locket. He said when I saw the boy in the portrait, I had to say Buddy.”
“What was his name?”
“He said names were dangerous. But once, when he thought the call had ended, someone said ‘Daniel, disconnect now.’”
Grace collapsed into Marcus’s arms.
The building alarm changed pitch.
Thomas glanced at the wall display. “Full containment purge.”
Metal shutters began descending over every door.
Marcus took a keycard from his pocket. “There’s a boat tunnel below the west laboratory.”
They raced downstairs as the facility sealed behind them. In the lowest corridor, they found six glass rooms. Five were empty.
In the sixth, a young woman sat motionless beneath a white light.
Her hair had been shaved close. Electrodes marked her temples. Around her neck hung a cedar-tree tag labeled C-07.
When Edward approached, her eyes opened.
“Edward?” she whispered.
He recognized her.
Anna Mercer, Catherine’s younger sister, had disappeared eighteen years ago. The family had been told she died while hiking in Peru.
Anna pressed her palm to the glass.
“Michael knows Lily opened the portrait,” she said. “He is going to the house.”
May you like
Then she looked at Thomas.
“And he is bringing your mother.”
