Chapter 8 - The TrapAt eight the next morning, Jack sent Daniel a message.
Hannah woke up for several seconds. She told the police someone from the company arranged everything.
Daniel responded almost immediately.
Did she give a name?
Jack waited three minutes.
Not yet. Doctors sedated her again. Ryan found a backup file from her phone. Police are opening it at noon.
The message was a lie.
Hannah had not regained consciousness.
But Daniel did not know that.
Within twenty minutes, hidden activity began inside Mercer Biotech’s systems.
Files were deleted.
Payments were moved.
A company administrator attempted to erase security records linked to Daniel’s office.
Ryan’s cybercrime contact captured every action.
At the same time, police officers located the hospital employee Daniel had paid to monitor Hannah.
The employee initially denied everything.
Then investigators showed him bank transfers from a Mercer shell company.
He asked for a lawyer.
By ten o’clock, Daniel knew the investigation was closing around him.
He called Jack.
“We need to move Hannah.”
Jack looked through the glass at her motionless body.
“Why?”
“St. Catherine’s isn’t secure. If someone inside the company targeted her, they may try again.”
“Where should she go?”
“A private clinic in Connecticut. I can arrange transport.”
Jack placed the call on speaker so Ryan and two detectives could listen.
“Send me the clinic details.”
“I’ll handle everything.”
“No. Send them.”
Daniel hesitated.
“I’ll call you back.”
The call ended.
Ryan looked at the detectives.
“He’s going to make a move.”
The hospital prepared a trap.
A private ambulance was positioned at the service entrance. A covered hospital bed was placed inside, but Hannah remained safely in the ICU under police protection.
Jack publicly informed Daniel that Hannah would be transferred at eleven thirty.
At eleven twenty-six, a man wearing paramedic clothing entered the service corridor using temporary credentials created by Daniel’s assistant.
He carried an unmarked medical bag.
Officers arrested him before he reached the ambulance.
Inside the bag, they found falsified transfer documents, restraints and medication that had not been authorized by any doctor.
The man refused to speak.
But his phone contained recent calls from Daniel’s private number.
Police moved to arrest Daniel.
They were too late.
Daniel had already left Mercer Biotech.
His car was found abandoned near the river.
For three hours, no one knew where he had gone.
Then Jack received a message.
Come to Grandmother’s house alone. Bring Hannah’s phone, or every file proving what happened disappears forever.
Ryan read the message.
“It’s another trap.”
“I know.”
“You are not going alone.”
“He expects surveillance.”
“The police can track you from a distance.”
Jack looked at Hannah.
She had survived the night but had not awakened.
“I need him to confess.”
Ryan shook his head.
“He will not confess because you ask politely.”
“No,” Jack said. “But Daniel has spent his whole life believing I was given everything he deserved. He’s been waiting years to tell me why.”
The Mercer family’s abandoned estate stood two hours north of Manhattan.
It was the house where Jack and Daniel had grown up.
The place where rivalry had first become resentment.
Jack placed a recording device beneath his shirt and drove north.
Police vehicles followed several miles behind.
When he arrived, the estate was dark except for one light in their grandmother’s old study.
Daniel waited beside the fireplace.
On the desk was a metal container filled with burning documents.
“You came,” Daniel said.
Jack closed the door.
“You knew I would.”
“Do you have the phone?”
Jack held up an evidence copy inside a clear bag.
“First, tell me why.”
Daniel smiled bitterly.
“You still need everything explained to you.”
“You tried to kill Hannah.”
“I gave her opportunities to leave.”
“She was carrying my child.”
“That was the problem.”
Jack’s hands curled into fists.
Daniel walked toward the portrait of Eleanor Mercer hanging above the fireplace.
“She gave you the company before you had earned a single thing. The board followed you because of your name. Employees worshipped you because you smiled at them twice a year.”
“You had the same name.”
“But never the same position.”
“So you destroyed my marriage?”
Daniel turned.
“I saved this company from your weakness.”
“Hannah was not weakness.”
“She would have convinced you to sell your shares and walk away. Then she became pregnant, and Grandmother’s trust would have placed the company under the control of a child who had not even been born.”
“A child you tried to erase.”
Daniel’s expression hardened.
“I built Mercer Biotech while you played the perfect husband. I deserved control.”
“You deserved nothing Hannah had.”
“You left her, Jack.”
The words struck harder than Jack expected.
Daniel stepped closer.
“I created the threat, but you chose to believe it. You looked into your wife’s eyes and told her you did not love her. I did not force those words out of your mouth.”
Jack felt the truth of the accusation.
Daniel had manipulated him.
But Jack had made the choice.
“I will spend the rest of my life answering for what I did,” Jack said. “You won’t have that chance.”
Daniel glanced toward the windows.
“What did you do?”
Jack touched the device beneath his shirt.
“I let you explain everything.”
Police lights flooded the estate.
Daniel’s face changed.
He rushed toward the fireplace and knocked over the metal container. Burning papers scattered across the floor.
Jack blocked his path to the back door.
Daniel swung at him.
The brothers struggled briefly before officers entered and forced Daniel to the ground.
As handcuffs closed around his wrists, Daniel looked up at Jack.
“She will never forgive you.”
May you like
Jack did not answer.
Because that was the one threat Daniel made that might still come true.
