Chapter 6 - THE MAN BENEATH THE RIVER TERMINALMy father’s body had been cremated.
I had watched the coffin enter the crematorium.
I had signed the papers.
I had carried the urn.
Yet by sunset, I was driving toward an abandoned river terminal wondering whether Richard Whitmore had ever been inside that coffin.
Marcus hated the plan.
So did Hannah.
We went anyway.
The river terminal had once processed freight along the Chicago River.
My grandfather built it.
My father closed it twenty years later.
Now broken windows stared over black water.
Rebecca instructed me to come alone.
I did not.
Marcus placed teams outside her likely surveillance radius.
Daniel insisted on joining.
His shoulder was bandaged beneath a black coat.
Hannah stayed at the mansion with Lily.
That decision lasted thirty minutes.
When we reached the terminal, Hannah stepped out of Marcus’s second vehicle.
Daniel stared.
“What are you doing?”
“Making my own terrible decisions.”
“Hannah.”
“You disappeared for two years.”
“I was tortured.”
“And somehow you’re still annoying.”
Marcus muttered:
“I’m beginning to understand the marriage.”
Inside, the terminal smelled like rust and wet concrete.
One light burned on the third floor.
We climbed.
A speaker crackled.
Rebecca’s voice.
“Leave the case.”
I set my father’s leather ledger case on a metal table.
“Show me Michael.”
A light switched on.
Michael Crane sat tied to a chair behind reinforced glass.
Alive.
Bleeding from the forehead.
Evelyn would at least get her son back if we survived.
“Now my father.”
Rebecca laughed through the speaker.
“You still think this is about Richard.”
“You said family reunion.”
“I said what you needed to hear.”
Daniel stepped into view.
“Where are the other prisoners?”
Silence.
Then:
“Hello, Daniel.”
His jaw tightened.
“What did Nathan do with them?”
“They became expensive.”
“What does that mean?”
“People with useful information are valuable until they become liabilities.”
Hannah stepped forward.
“You destroyed my family.”
Rebecca’s voice softened.
“I protected mine.”
“By murdering people?”
“Every fortune is built on bodies, Hannah. The difference is whether the owners admit it.”
I had heard versions of that philosophy my entire life.
Usually in boardrooms.
Usually dressed as pragmatism.
I was tired of it.
“Take the case,” I said. “Release Michael.”
A door opened.
Nathan Cole entered with two armed men.
My CFO.
My friend.
The man who had toasted my promotions and attended my father’s funeral.
“Grant.”
“Nathan.”
He smiled.
“You look disappointed.”
“I’m deciding which part disappoints me most.”
“You always were sentimental.”
He picked up the case.
Opened it.
Then frowned.
The case was empty.
Marcus smiled from the shadows.
Nathan’s men raised their weapons.
I said:
“The originals are already with federal prosecutors.”
A lie.
But Nathan believed it for three seconds.
Three seconds was enough.
Marcus killed the lights.
Gunfire erupted.
We dropped.
Daniel dragged Hannah behind a steel support.
Marcus’s team entered through the rear loading doors.
Nathan ran.
I chased him.
We crossed an old conveyor platform suspended above the terminal floor.
He fired once.
Missed.
I tackled him.
We hit metal hard.
Nathan punched me.
I hit him back.
He laughed.
“You really think this ends with me?”
I grabbed his coat.
“Where is Rebecca?”
“Already gone.”
“Where is my father?”
That stopped him.
Then he smiled.
“You finally asked the right question.”
My fist tightened.
Nathan whispered.
“Richard survived the stroke.”
I felt the world narrow.
“What?”
“Dr. Marr stabilized him.”
“Then whose body—”
“A terminal cancer patient approximately his size.”
I almost threw Nathan over the railing.
“Where?”
“Rebecca moved him.”
“Why keep him alive?”
“He controlled accounts we couldn’t access.”
“Where is he?”
Nathan smiled through blood.
“She’ll never tell you.”
A shot rang out.
Nathan jerked.
Blood appeared across his chest.
Behind him stood Charles Sinclair.
Gun smoking.
Audrey’s father had followed us.
Nathan looked shocked.
Then fell over the railing.
I watched him hit the lower platform.
Dead.
I turned on Charles.
“You idiot!”
“He was going to kill you.”
“He was going to tell me where my father is!”
Charles lowered the gun.
“I know where Richard is.”
That stopped everyone.
Marcus approached.
“You’d better start talking.”
Charles looked twenty years older.
“Rebecca kept him at a private estate in Wisconsin.”
“Kept?”
“She moved him last month.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
Daniel suddenly shouted.
“Michael!”
During the gunfight, a bullet had shattered part of the reinforced glass.
We broke through.
Michael was alive.
Barely.
He looked at Hannah.
Then Daniel.
“I’m sorry.”
Daniel knelt.
“Save it.”
Michael grabbed his sleeve.
“Rebecca moved Richard to Saint Agnes.”
Charles reacted.
“That hospital closed.”
Michael shook his head.
“Under it.”
“Under what?”
“Old civil-defense bunker.”
Marcus called for medics.
Michael caught my wrist.
“She’s not going to kill Richard.”
“Why?”
“Because he remembers the account phrase.”
“What account?”
“The Ashford Trust.”
Charles went white.
Audrey, who had arrived with her father, whispered:
“What is that?”
Charles said:
“Your mother’s money.”
Rebecca had not only stolen from Whitmore Holdings.
She had stolen the Sinclair inheritance Victoria intended for Audrey.
The Ashford Trust contained more than three hundred million dollars.
Only Richard and Victoria had known the original access phrase.
Victoria was dead.
If Richard still remembered it, Rebecca needed him alive.
Hannah stared at Charles.
“So all of this was money?”
Charles shook his head.
“No.”
He looked at me.
“For Rebecca, it was revenge.”
We reached Saint Agnes before midnight.
The abandoned hospital sat outside Kenosha, surrounded by dead trees and chain-link fencing.
Marcus found the bunker entrance behind the old boiler room.
Inside were twelve underground rooms.
Eleven empty.
Room 214 was at the end.
Daniel stopped walking.
Same number.
Rebecca liked symbols.
Marcus broke the lock.
The room smelled of antiseptic.
A hospital bed sat beneath fluorescent lights.
An old man lay under blankets.
Thin.
Gray-haired.
Motionless.
I knew the shape of his hands before I saw his face.
“Dad?”
His eyes opened.
Richard Whitmore looked at me.
For eight months, I had spoken to his ashes.
Now he whispered:
“Took you long enough.”
I laughed.
Then cried.
I had not cried at his funeral.
I did now.
My father was weak but alive.
Marcus called medical transport.
I sat beside him.
“Rebecca?”
His eyes hardened.
“Grant, listen.”
“What?”
“She has Lily.”
My blood stopped.
“No. Lily is at the mansion.”
Richard shook his head.
“That’s what she wanted you to believe.”
My phone rang.
Hannah answered hers at the same time.
The nanny assigned to Lily was screaming.
Atlas had been found sedated.
The nursery window was open.
Lily was gone.
A video arrived.
Lily sat in the back of a car clutching Button.
Rebecca’s face appeared beside her.
“Now,” Rebecca said calmly, “we discuss what a daughter is worth.”
Hannah screamed.
Daniel stared at the screen.
And my father whispered:
“Rebecca finally found the only leverage you’ll never sacrifice.”
He was wrong.
Lily was not leverage.
She was family.
And Rebecca had just made the mistake of teaching me exactly what my father meant.
Truth first.
May you like
Name second.
This time, I was willing to burn the Whitmore name to the ground.
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