Chapter 7 - The Names in the Ledger
Luxury Peak Realty was being evacuated when Nora and Evelyn arrived.
Employees crowded the sidewalk beneath umbrellas.
A fire engine blocked the main entrance, but there was no smoke.
Adrian Lang stood near the curb, arguing with a firefighter.
Claire was nowhere in sight.
Nora pushed through the crowd.
“Where is the deed?”
Adrian recognized her immediately.
“In the safe.”
“Where’s Claire?”
“She went back upstairs.”
“Why?”
“She said she forgot her phone.”
Nora looked at the building.
The alarms were still flashing.
“How long ago?”
“Four minutes.”
She ran.
A security guard tried to stop her at the lobby, but Adrian shouted that she was a property owner.
Nora took the stairs two at a time.
The twenty-second-floor hallway was empty.
The alarm pulsed through the walls.
She entered the real estate office and smelled burned plastic.
Someone had set fire to a wastebasket near the copy room.
The sprinkler above it had activated, flooding the carpet.
“Claire!”
No answer.
Nora moved toward the records room.
The door was open.
Claire lay beside the filing cabinets.
Blood darkened her hair.
Nora checked her pulse.
Alive.
The safe stood open.
The deed was gone.
Nora heard a door close near the conference rooms.
She moved toward the sound.
The emergency stairwell door swung shut at the end of the corridor.
Nora reached it and looked down.
Footsteps echoed below.
She followed for six floors before the intruder shoved a metal cart down the stairs.
Nora jumped back as the cart crashed past her.
By the time she reached the parking garage, the intruder had disappeared.
Pike arrived with paramedics.
Claire regained consciousness while they prepared to transport her.
Her eyes found Nora.
“The deed,” she whispered.
“Who took it?”
Claire’s lips trembled.
“I didn’t see.”
“You hid it in the sale file, didn’t you?”
Claire closed her eyes.
“My grandfather told me to.”
Nora leaned closer.
“Who is your grandfather?”
Claire opened her eyes again.
“Thomas Pike.”
Jonah Pike froze behind Nora.
Claire was his niece.
Before Nora could ask another question, Claire clutched her wrist.
“There’s a copy.”
“Where?”
“Your father’s ledger.”
“What ledger?”
“The one Luke found beneath the north room.”
Pike stepped forward.
“Claire, where is Luke?”
“I don’t know. He called me six days ago. He said he found a metal chest beneath the cabin floor.”
“The empty space,” Nora said.
Claire nodded weakly.
“He brought me the deed and one book. He said he would hide the rest before Mason came back.”
“What was in the book?”
“Names. Payments. Land parcels.”
Pike’s face changed.
“Cresswell records.”
Claire swallowed.
“Not just Cresswell.”
“Who else?”
Before she could answer, a paramedic adjusted the oxygen mask over her face.
Claire lifted one trembling finger and pointed toward the conference room.
“Inside the wall.”
The paramedics moved her onto a stretcher.
Nora entered the conference room.
Mason’s unsigned sale documents still covered the table.
Evelyn examined the walls.
“Inside which wall?”
Nora remembered the opening scene of Mason’s video call.
He had been laughing at this table.
Behind him was a framed photograph of the Blackridge skyline.
She removed it.
A narrow envelope had been taped to the back.
Inside was a single page torn from an old ledger.
Twenty-three names were listed in two columns.
Beside each name was a dollar amount.
Near the bottom, Nora found Mason Reed.
The amount beside his name was seventy-five thousand dollars.
Below Mason’s name was another.
Helen Hayes.
May you like
Nora’s mother.
Amount received: two hundred thousand dollars.
