Chapter 6 - THE EAST TOWER
Adrian threw the unloaded shotgun across Reed’s path.
The detective stumbled but kept moving.
Lucas followed him up the staircase while guests screamed and security officers flooded the foyer.
Reed reached the east corridor first.
The tower entrance stood behind a pair of carved oak doors sealed by a steel plate. Lucas had not been near it in years.
Reed pulled a key from his coat.
Margaret saw it.
“You said the police never entered the tower.”
Reed ignored her and inserted the key into a narrow lock hidden beneath the plate.
Lucas seized his shoulder.
Reed turned and struck him across the face with the gun.
Lucas hit the wall.
Adrian tackled Reed from the side. The three men crashed against a display table. A porcelain vase fell and shattered.
One of the uniformed officers came around the corner, weapon drawn.
“Detective, drop the gun!”
Reed fired into the ceiling.
Plaster rained down.
The officer flinched.
Reed kicked Adrian away and opened the tower door.
Cold, damp air rushed into the corridor.
Beyond the door, a stone staircase spiraled upward into darkness.
Reed disappeared inside.
Lucas followed.
The steps were slick. Water ran down the walls. Above him, Reed’s flashlight moved rapidly through the blackness.
At the top of the stairs was a circular room.
It had once been Edmund Vale’s private observatory.
Now it was filled with medical equipment.
An empty hospital bed stood near the windows. Oxygen tanks lined one wall. Cabinets contained syringes, bandages, antibiotics, and sedatives. A small refrigerator hummed in the corner.
Someone had been treated there.
Someone had lived there.
Lucas saw a blue scarf folded on the bed.
Grace’s scarf.
He picked it up.
The faint scent was nearly gone, but he remembered it.
Lavender.
Reed stood near a metal desk, opening drawers.
“What are you looking for?” Lucas asked.
The detective turned.
His gun was pointed directly at Lucas.
“You should have married Vanessa and forgotten the past.”
“Was that the plan?”
“You had started asking questions again. Vanessa could control what you saw, who you met, where you went.”
“She was spying on me.”
“She was protecting a structure larger than your family.”
“By abusing Lily?”
Reed’s face hardened.
“Vanessa was never supposed to touch the child.”
“But Grace expected her to.”
“Grace expected betrayal from everyone.”
“She was right about you.”
Reed took a small metal case from the desk.
Lucas recognized the raven symbol engraved on its lid.
“Put it down.”
“You don’t know what this contains.”
“Then tell me.”
“Names. Judges. ministers. bankers. officers. People your father paid and people who paid him.”
“And Grace found it.”
“She created it.”
Lucas frowned.
Reed smiled without warmth.
“You thought your wife was investigating Edmund Vale. She was not merely tracing his accounts. She was building a replacement network.”
“That’s a lie.”
“Grace wanted control.”
“She wanted the truth.”
“Truth is control when you know where everyone buried their crimes.”
Lucas took one step closer.
Reed raised the gun.
“Do not.”
Behind him, a monitor turned on by itself.
Static filled the screen.
Then Grace appeared.
The image had been recorded in the tower.
A scar ran down the left side of her face. Her hair was shorter. She looked thinner than Lucas remembered, but she was alive.
Lucas forgot the gun.
Forgot Reed.
Forgot the cold room and the chaos below.
“Grace.”
On the screen, she looked directly into the camera.
“If Lucas is watching this, then Samuel has opened the tower.”
Reed spun toward the monitor.
The video continued.
“Samuel will tell you I created the network. He will say I wanted power. Part of that is true.”
Lucas’s heart stopped.
“I built a map of every person connected to Edmund’s system. But I did not build it to control them. I built it because someone was preparing to use the network for something far worse than theft.”
Reed fired at the screen.
The bullet shattered the monitor.
At the same moment, Adrian struck him from behind with a broken piece of wooden railing.
Reed fell.
The metal case slid across the floor.
Lucas grabbed it.
A key was taped beneath the base.
Adrian kicked Reed’s gun away.
Security officers entered and restrained the detective.
Lucas opened the case.
Inside were twelve photographs.
Each showed Grace in a different location after her supposed death.
A train station.
A hospital corridor.
A street market.
A church.
The most recent photograph was dated two weeks earlier.
Grace stood outside Lily’s school.
Beside her was Vanessa.
They were speaking calmly.
Not fighting.
Not threatening one another.
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On the back, someone had written:
The bride is not the architect. She is the doorway.
