Chapter 3 - A NAME BURIED TWICE
Sebastian called his chief of security, Marcus Hale.
Marcus arrived in seven minutes with six armed officers and an expression that revealed nothing.
He examined the photograph under the kitchen lights.
“This was taken fourteen years ago,” he said.
“Twelve,” Sebastian corrected.
“The date says fourteen.”
Sebastian looked again.
The photograph predated his father’s disappearance by two years.
Valerie stood wrapped in a robe beside the window.
“My father died fourteen years ago.”
“What was his name?” Marcus asked.
“Daniel Bennett.”
Marcus went still.
The reaction lasted less than a second.
Sebastian saw it anyway.
“You know the name.”
“I know too many names.”
“That one frightened you.”
Marcus placed the photograph on the counter.
“Daniel Bennett was not her father’s legal name.”
Valerie turned.
“What are you talking about?”
“His name was Daniel Voss.”
The room seemed to contract.
Voss had been chief financial officer of Ward Meridian before Sebastian joined the company.
He had been accused of stealing eighty million dollars from the pension fund.
Three months later, he had died in a car fire outside Albany.
Sebastian remembered his father calling him a traitor.
He remembered Adrian celebrating when the newspapers stopped printing the story.
“My mother said he was an accountant,” Valerie said.
“He was,” Marcus replied.
“He was also the only man who ever tried to expose Conrad Ward.”
Sebastian’s jaw tightened at the sound of his father’s name.
“Expose him for what?”
Marcus looked toward the guards in the hall.
Then he lowered his voice.
“For building Ward Meridian with money that never belonged to him.”
Valerie’s phone began to vibrate on the bed.
The caller ID displayed MOM.
She answered immediately.
No one spoke.
A wet choking sound came through the line.
Then a man’s voice said, “Bring the key to Pier Seventeen before noon.”
Valerie gripped the phone.
“Let me speak to her.”
“You already did.”
The call ended.
Sebastian checked the time.
They had forty-three minutes.
Marcus reached for the silver key.
Sebastian closed his hand over it first.
“Tell me why they want this.”
Marcus looked directly at him.
“Because it does not open your office.”
May you like
He nodded toward the tower beneath their feet.
“It opens the room your father built under Manhattan.”
