Chapter 18 - The Woman They Framed
Mrs. Thornbury did not run.
Again.
I was starting to think that was her most annoying quality.
The police arrived at the church within nine minutes.
Too fast.
Stellan noticed too.
“Someone tracked us.”
Rose swore under her breath.
Darius said, “Not us. Roman’s death was reported before we got here. They’re following Agnes’s phone.”
Mrs. Thornbury pulled it from her pocket and stared at it.
“I turned location off.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
Stellan took the phone and smashed it under his heel.
I looked at him.
“That was dramatic.”
“It helped.”
“Did it?”
“No.”
At least he was learning.
We exited through the church’s old service tunnel while police entered the front.
Fern slept through all of it.
I envied her deeply.
Darius received Roman’s preliminary autopsy photo from a contact.
Single gunshot.
Mrs. Thornbury’s registered handgun found under the driver’s seat.
Her fingerprints on the grip.
She stared.
“That gun has been locked in my room at the mansion for months.”
Stellan said, “Then somebody inside the house took it.”
Darius went quiet.
Everyone looked at him.
He shook his head.
“Only senior security can access staff lockboxes.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Me. Stellan. Deputy chief Grant Mercer.”
I looked at Dr. Mercer.
“Related?”
The doctor’s face fell.
“My son.”
Of course.
Grant Mercer had been Stellan’s deputy security chief for four years.
He had access to the mansion.
To Dr. Mercer’s biometric archive.
To hospital security contracts.
To my work schedule.
And he had been the man who approved Fern’s nurse rotation that morning.
Stellan’s voice went cold.
“Where is Grant?”
Darius checked.
“On duty at the mansion.”
Rose shook her head.
“No. If Grant is Northstar, he isn’t waiting there anymore.”
She was right.
By the time Stellan’s loyal team reached the house, Grant was gone.
So were three encrypted drives from Stellan’s office.
And Gideon Cross.
Someone had removed him from the rehabilitation center under an emergency transfer order.
Signed by Grant Mercer.
Dr. Mercer sat down hard.
“My son.”
I looked at him.
“You didn’t know?”
“No.”
“Everybody keeps not knowing what their children are doing in this family.”
The words came out harsher than I meant.
Stellan looked at Fern.
Then at me.
“Not anymore.”
That hit somewhere I was not ready to talk about.
Rose opened Roman’s last encrypted message.
He had scheduled it to send if he died.
A map appeared.
An abandoned Cross Biomedical facility near the river.
Under it, one line.
GRANT IS THE KNIFE. NOT THE HAND.
Stellan read it twice.
“If Grant isn’t leading Northstar, who is?”
Rose opened the attachment.
A list of people with secret ownership stakes in Northstar shell companies.
Judges.
Hospital executives.
Security contractors.
Then a name I recognized.
CURTIS VALE.
My landlord.
I laughed in disbelief.
“That idiot?”
Rose shook her head.
“His father.”
The next line read:
EDWARD VALE — NORTHSTAR FOUNDING PARTNER.
Stellan went silent.
I looked at him.
“You know that name.”
“Yes.”
“Who is he?”
Stellan’s face hardened.
“The man my father supposedly killed twenty years ago.”
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