Chapter 12 - The Living Dead
No one spoke.
Emily remained before the darkened screen, waiting for her father’s face to return.
It did not.
Margaret gripped the edge of the table.
“Replay it.”
Gabriel typed at the controls.
“The transmission wasn’t recorded locally.”
“Trace it.”
“It passed through too many relays.”
Emily turned to her mother.
“Why did he say that?”
Margaret looked devastated.
“I don’t know.”
Lorraine removed her ring from the key slot.
“I do.”
Adrian stepped between Lorraine and the exit.
“You’re not leaving.”
“The doors will soon open. The police will arrive. Your wife needs a hospital.”
“Answer Emily.”
Lorraine glanced toward Margaret.
“Thomas discovered that his beloved wife had not merely worked for my network.”
Margaret’s voice sharpened.
“Do not.”
“She created the architecture that made it possible.”
Emily shook her head.
Margaret approached her.
“I developed financial tracking software. I believed it would identify corruption.”
“It identified vulnerability,” Lorraine said. “Debts. Affairs. Secret accounts. Illegal payments. Margaret designed the system that showed us where pressure could be applied.”
“I left when I understood.”
“You left after you copied the core code.”
Margaret faced Emily.
“Thomas and I intended to destroy it.”
“But you didn’t,” Gabriel said.
Margaret looked at him.
“We needed evidence before dismantling the network.”
Lorraine smiled.
“Such useful moral language.”
Emily thought of the live transmission.
Her father had not said Lorraine should not be trusted.
He had named Margaret.
“Did Dad believe you betrayed him?”
Margaret’s silence answered first.
Then she said, “Near the end, Thomas suspected I had hidden part of the ledger.”
“Had you?”
“Yes.”
Emily stepped backward.
“Why?”
“Because the ledger contained the identities of protected witnesses and undercover investigators. Thomas wanted to release everything. I believed doing so would cause innocent deaths.”
“So you stopped him.”
“I tried to.”
“What happened at Blackwater Point?”
Lorraine watched Margaret with open interest.
Gabriel looked equally intent.
Margaret’s voice became quiet.
“Thomas arranged to meet a journalist on the boat. I followed him. We argued.”
“About the ledger?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“He accused me of protecting Lorraine.”
“Were you?”
“No.”
Lorraine’s smile suggested otherwise.
Margaret continued.
“Someone fired from the shore. Thomas was hit. He fell against the railing.”
Emily’s knees weakened.
“You told police you weren’t there.”
“I was trying to protect you.”
“You keep saying that.”
“I pulled him below deck. Gabriel arrived.”
Emily turned toward the scarred man.
He nodded reluctantly.
“I was working the case unofficially.”
“You knew my father survived?”
“Yes.”
“All these years?”
“I knew he survived the shooting. I did not know what happened afterward.”
Margaret continued.
“We took Thomas to a private clinic. He was unconscious. The next morning, he was gone. So was the ledger.”
Lorraine said, “And conveniently, the body of another man appeared two days later.”
Margaret faced her.
“You arranged that.”
“I arranged nothing. Victor handled the identification.”
Victor remained behind the street barrier.
Everyone looked at him.
Emily moved toward the controls and opened the door.
Margaret objected, but Emily did not listen.
Victor entered slowly.
A security guard would have restrained him upstairs. Down here, in the heart of his family’s secrets, he seemed smaller.
“Whose body was cremated?” Emily asked.
Victor wiped blood from his knuckles.
“I was twenty-eight. My mother told me Thomas was dead and that identifying the body would protect the company from scandal.”
“Did you see his face?”
“There was no face left to see.”
“Then how did you identify him?”
“His watch. His height. A surgical scar.”
Emily remembered her father’s appendectomy scar.
Gabriel opened a database on the screen.
“Bodies do not acquire conveniently matching scars.”
“Unless medical records are falsified,” Adrian said.
The room’s lights dimmed again, but no alarm followed.
The archive transfer reached sixty percent.
Emily looked at Victor.
“Did you know my father survived?”
“Not then.”
“When did you learn?”
“Three years into our marriage.”
Emily felt the answer like a physical blow.
Victor continued.
“I found a payment to a rehabilitation facility in Northern Canada. The patient used an alias, but the age and injuries matched Thomas.”
“You spent three years knowing my father might be alive.”
“I went there.”
“What did you find?”
“The facility had burned down.”
Lorraine’s expression changed.
It was the first time she appeared genuinely surprised.
“You never told me this.”
Victor looked at his mother.
“I stopped telling you everything a long time ago.”
“Did you find a body?” Emily asked.
“No.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I needed to know whether he was a threat.”
“To whom?”
“To us.”
“There was never an us.”
Victor looked at her with something close to desperation.
“You think I married you only for a key. Maybe that was true at first. But after years together, I could not let Thomas return and take you away.”
Emily stared at him.
“You kept me imprisoned because you feared my father would rescue me.”
Victor’s eyes lowered.
The archive transfer reached seventy-three percent.
A message appeared on the screen.
EXTERNAL RECIPIENT REQUESTS LIVE CONNECTION.
Emily pressed ACCEPT before anyone could stop her.
Thomas returned.
This time, the image was clearer.
Behind him stood a concrete wall marked with a painted number.
317.
“Dad,” Emily said. “Where are you?”
Thomas looked at her burned face.
His expression broke.
“What did Victor do?”
“He cannot hurt me again.”
Thomas closed his eyes briefly.
“Listen carefully. The transfer has revealed your location to people monitoring the network.”
“We’re beneath Bellarosa.”
“I know.”
“Are you coming here?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because the man you believe is Gabriel Shaw is not Gabriel Shaw.”
May you like
Everyone turned toward the scarred man.
He reached inside his jacket.
