Chapter 14 - The Call from Prison
Nora had ignored every previous message from Mason.
This time, she accepted.
“You found the blue folder,” he said immediately.
Nora’s grip tightened around the phone.
“How do you know about it?”
“Because Vivian received one before we tried to take your house.”
Vivian Reed, Mason’s mother, had insisted during her trial that the property scheme had been her idea. Mason had supported that version in exchange for a reduced sentence.
Now his voice sounded different.
Not remorseful.
Afraid.
“The folder contained instructions,” Mason continued. “Copies of your medical information, your company passwords, and the name of the person who could certify the transfer.”
“Elias Voss?”
Silence answered her.
“Mason, who is he?”
“My mother called him the Architect. She said he helped families correct unfair inheritances.”
“By stealing property?”
“She never described it that way.”
“You knew what you were doing.”
“I knew enough,” Mason admitted. “But not everything.”
He told Nora that Vivian had communicated with Voss through a woman named Celeste Ward. Mason met Celeste only once, inside a private dining room at a hotel. She never gave him a business card and never appeared in photographs.
“She looked familiar,” Mason said.
“Familiar how?”
“Like someone from one of the pictures in your hallway.”
Nora looked toward the box of family photographs.
Her aunt Celeste Hale had disappeared twenty-four years earlier during a boating accident. Search teams recovered pieces of the vessel but never found her body.
Mason lowered his voice.
“Celeste told my mother that Ada stole something from her family. She said your house was payment.”
“Why are you telling me this now?”
“Because two nights ago, a guard delivered a photograph to my cell.”
“What photograph?”
“You standing outside Hale House.”
Nora glanced toward the window.
A dark vehicle was parked across the street.
“I think they’re cleaning up everyone connected to the deeds,” Mason said. “Including me.”
The line suddenly crackled.
Another voice replaced his.
A woman whispered, “You should ask Nora why her father left.”
Then the call disconnected.
Across the street, the dark vehicle began moving.
May you like
Leah looked at the photograph of Celeste Hale.
“Nora,” she said quietly, “I think your dead aunt just spoke on that call.”
