Chapter 3 - The Wrong Agents
Emma watched city lights disappear behind them.
The highway narrowed to two lanes bordered by thick trees. No office buildings. No police stations. No federal courthouse.
Only darkness.
She pressed her shoulder against the door and tried the handle discreetly.
Locked.
Agent Chen sat beside her with both hands folded in her lap.
“Where are we going?” Emma asked.
“A secure location.”
“Where?”
“We’ll explain when we arrive.”
Agent Reece looked back from the front seat.
“You’ve had a traumatic evening, Mrs. Mercer. Try to relax.”
The suggestion sounded absurd.
Emma’s pulse hammered beneath her jaw.
She opened the map on her phone without lifting it from her lap. The blue dot showed them moving south, away from Nashville.
The newest message remained at the top of the screen.
They brought you to the wrong agents. Do not tell them where the evidence is.
She typed a reply.
Who are you?
The answer appeared seconds later.
Someone who watched Daniel bury the last person who trusted him.
Emma swallowed.
Are Reece and Chen real FBI agents?
No immediate response.
The SUV accelerated.
Emma studied the people around her.
Reece’s identification had looked authentic, but she had seen it for only seconds. Chen had behaved professionally. Both knew about the financial investigation.
Yet Daniel had not seemed surprised when the agents arrived.
Alarmed, yes.
But not surprised.
Had the entire scene been arranged to separate Emma from the house?
She looked toward the front.
“Agent Reece, what field office are you assigned to?”
He answered too quickly. “Memphis.”
“The Nashville Resident Agency reports through Memphis,” Emma said.
“That’s right.”
“Who is the special agent in charge?”
Reece paused.
It lasted less than a second.
For Emma, it was enough.
“I’m not discussing internal personnel matters.”
Emma had practiced law long enough to recognize someone hiding behind authority.
She shifted her purse onto her lap.
Inside were her wallet, keys, a makeup bag, and a small canister of pepper spray Margaret had given her two Christmases earlier.
At the time, Daniel mocked the gift.
“Who’s going to attack you in Brentwood?” he had asked.
Emma quietly wrapped her fingers around it.
Chen noticed the movement.
“You can place the purse on the floor.”
“I’d rather hold it.”
“That wasn’t a request.”
Emma met her gaze.
Before either woman moved, the SUV’s headlights caught a vehicle parked sideways across the road.
The driver slammed on the brakes.
Emma was thrown forward. Her seat belt locked against her chest.
A pickup truck blocked both lanes.
A man stood beside it, waving a flashlight.
Reece cursed.
“Back up.”
The driver shifted into reverse.
Headlights appeared behind them.
Another vehicle.
They were trapped.
Chen reached inside her coat.
Emma pulled the pepper spray and fired.
The cloud struck Chen across the eyes.
She screamed and clawed at her face.
Emma unlatched her seat belt, lunged forward, and sprayed Reece before he could turn. The driver grabbed Emma’s wrist, but she bit down hard on his hand.
He shouted.
The SUV’s side window shattered.
Glass exploded across the seat.
A gloved arm reached through and unlocked the rear door.
“Emma, get out!”
She recognized the voice.
Aunt Margaret.
Emma kicked Chen away and threw herself through the open door.
Cold air and broken glass cut across her skin. Margaret grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the ditch.
Gunfire cracked behind them.
Emma dropped to the ground.
“Stay down!” a man shouted.
The people from the pickup truck were armed, but their weapons were pointed toward the SUV.
Reece stumbled from the passenger side, one hand covering his eyes. He fired blindly.
A bullet struck the pickup’s windshield.
Someone returned fire.
Reece fell.
Margaret dragged Emma through wet grass toward the trees.
“You sent the messages?” Emma gasped.
“Only the last two.”
“Then who sent the first?”
“I don’t know.”
They reached a sedan hidden behind the tree line. A woman stood beside the driver’s door holding a handgun.
She was in her early forties, with short dark hair and a scar along her chin.
“Get in,” she ordered.
Emma stopped.
“No more cars until someone tells me the truth.”
The woman lowered the weapon.
“My name is Sarah Cole. I’m an investigator with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.”
Emma laughed bitterly.
“Do you have any idea how many fake badges I’ve seen tonight?”
Sarah removed her credentials and tossed them onto the hood.
“Examine them.”
Emma did.
The identification appeared legitimate, but so had Reece’s.
Margaret squeezed her arm.
“She’s real. I contacted her three months ago.”
Emma turned.
“Three months?”
Margaret’s eyes filled with shame.
“I knew something was wrong at the foundation. I didn’t know how bad it was.”
Behind them, another shot rang out.
Sarah opened the rear door.
“We can explain while moving, or Daniel’s people can find us standing here.”
“Those agents worked for Daniel?”
“They were private contractors using stolen credentials,” Sarah said. “Reece’s real name is Malcolm Reed. He provides security for several Mercer properties.”
Emma remembered seeing him once at a foundation gala.
He had been standing near the service entrance.
“What about Chen?”
“Former police officer. Fired for evidence tampering.”
Emma got into the sedan.
Margaret slid beside her while Sarah took the wheel.
The pickup moved, allowing the sedan onto the highway. Two men remained behind to deal with the SUV.
Sarah drove north.
Emma stared at Margaret.
“You watched Vivian assault me.”
Margaret flinched.
“I know.”
“You waited until federal agents arrived before you spoke.”
“I was afraid.”
“So was I.”
Margaret looked down at her hands.
“That isn’t an excuse.”
“No. It isn’t.”
Silence filled the car.
Emma wanted to be furious. She was furious.
But Margaret had risked her life to pull her from the SUV.
People were rarely only cowards or heroes. Sometimes they were both within the same hour.
“Tell me everything,” Emma said.
Margaret took a shaking breath.
“Three months ago, I found a second set of foundation books in Charles’s study. I photographed several pages. The numbers didn’t match the public reports.”
“Why were you in his study?”
“Because my husband left me a letter before he died.”
Margaret’s husband, Robert Mercer, had died two years earlier in what the family described as a boating accident.
Emma had attended the funeral.
Daniel cried more openly for Robert than she had ever seen him cry for anyone.
“What did the letter say?” Emma asked.
“That if anything happened to him, I should look at a property called Bellweather Ridge.”
Sarah glanced at them through the mirror.
“Bellweather Ridge was supposed to be an affordable housing development funded partly through charitable donations.”
Emma knew the name.
The project had been abandoned after a landslide made construction impossible.
“At least, that’s what Daniel told donors,” she said.
Sarah nodded.
“The landslide report was falsified. Construction continued under a different company.”
“For what?”
“A private luxury community.”
Emma felt sick.
Sarah continued. “The Mercers collected donations and public subsidies to build housing for veterans. Then they used the money and land to build multimillion-dollar homes for private investors.”
“And Robert discovered it?”
Margaret wiped tears from her face.
“He confronted Charles. Two weeks later, his boat exploded.”
Emma looked at the scar on Sarah’s chin.
“What connects the explosion to Daniel?”
“A mechanic who worked at the marina disappeared after the accident,” Sarah said. “He resurfaced last month.”
“Where is he?”
“Protective custody.”
The sedan entered a warehouse district.
Sarah drove through a gate that closed behind them.
Inside a converted industrial building, two uniformed TBI officers waited.
Emma’s phone buzzed again.
A new message.
Margaret is telling you only half the truth. Ask her why Robert named you in his will.
Emma looked up slowly.
“Did Robert name me in his will?”
Margaret’s face went white.
Sarah stopped the car.
For several seconds, no one spoke.
Then Margaret began to cry.
“He left you controlling interest in Bellweather Ridge.”
Emma stared at her.
“I barely knew Robert.”
“He knew your father.”
The words struck with unexpected force.
Emma’s father, Thomas Hale, had died when she was seventeen. A highway accident. Rain, a damaged guardrail, a car found in a ravine.
Or so she had always believed.
Margaret reached for her, but Emma pulled away.
“Why would Robert leave me anything?”
“Because Bellweather Ridge originally belonged to your father.”
Emma could barely hear her own voice.
“What are you saying?”
May you like
Margaret’s next sentence shattered the last stable piece of Emma’s past.
“Your father didn’t die in an accident. He died because he refused to sell that land to Charles Mercer.”
