Chapter 11 - The Bridge at Midnight
Charlotte refused Dane’s demand, but she agreed to a controlled exchange designed by Detective Chen. A duplicate disk was prepared. Brandon would carry it to Mercer Bridge wearing a transmitter. Officers would wait beyond sight.
“Why should we trust him?” Charlotte asked.
“You shouldn’t,” Chen said. “Trust the surveillance.”
Rain began before midnight, as it had on the night Thomas died in a one-car accident on the road beneath the bridge. Charlotte had accepted the official conclusion that he fell asleep. Now every detail felt contaminated.
Brandon stood beneath the bridge lights holding the duplicate. Victor Dane arrived alone in a dark sedan.
He was seventy, silver-haired and upright, with the quiet confidence of a man accustomed to buying the consequences of his actions.
“You look like your mother when she’s frightened,” Dane told Brandon.
“Did you kill Thomas?”
Dane smiled. “Charlotte is listening, I assume.”
He looked directly toward the unmarked van.
The police channel suddenly filled with static. Every light on the bridge went out.
Charlotte saw movement, heard a blow and ran before Chen could stop her. Emergency lights flashed on. Brandon lay on the pavement. Dane’s sedan accelerated toward the far exit.
Charlotte reached Brandon. Blood marked his temple, but he was conscious.
“He took the disk,” he said.
“The fake disk.”
Brandon opened his empty hand. “And the real one.”
Charlotte stared at him.
“I switched them before we came,” he admitted. “He said he had proof about your father. I thought I could trade.”
Detective Chen swore and ordered units after the sedan.
Dane escaped, but the disk did not help him. The coordinates alone were only the first key. Charlotte and Naomi followed Cross’s clues to a maintenance chamber beneath the bridge, where the second key’s account numbers opened an old industrial safe.
Inside was a waterproof case containing photographs of corroded bridge supports, inspection reports and recordings of Victor Dane ordering payments to officials.
There was also a video made by Thomas three days before his death.
“If you are watching this,” Thomas said, “Victor knows I preserved the bridge evidence. He has threatened Charlotte. I will move the complete archive tonight. Samuel alone knows where.”
The image shook as Thomas looked toward a sound outside the frame.
“If anything happens to me, investigate my brakes.”
The video ended.
Charlotte had the truth about her father’s death within reach.
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Then Naomi noticed the case’s false bottom. Beneath it lay a recent photograph of Skylar leaving school.
On the back, someone had written: THE FIFTH KEY.
