Chapter 8 - Before NathanRebecca could not look at her husband.
Now Marcus Hale claimed murder.
Evelyn denied it.
“Thomas was investigating corruption inside Charles’s companies.”
Raymond stepped closer.
“Did Charles kill him?”
“No.”
“Then who?”
Evelyn hesitated.
That hesitation nearly destroyed everything.
“Tell me.”
Evelyn looked at Rebecca.
Rebecca shook her head immediately.
“No.”
Nathan saw it.
“You know.”
Rebecca whispered, “I was sixteen.”
Raymond stared at her.
“What happened?”
Rebecca began crying.
Not theatrically.
Not strategically.
For the first time, she looked like someone remembering something she had spent decades trying to bury.
“My father and Thomas argued in the library.”
“About what?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do.”
“I heard Thomas threaten to go to the police.”
Raymond’s hands curled into fists.
“And?”
“My father told me to go upstairs.”
“What happened?”
Rebecca closed her eyes.
“I didn’t.”
She had hidden behind the hallway curtains.
Thomas Holt left through the front door.
Minutes later Charles made a telephone call.
Rebecca heard only part of it.
“Stop him before he reaches Richmond.”
Raymond stepped backward.
Nathan whispered, “Jesus.”
Rebecca looked at him.
“I didn’t understand.”
“You were sixteen,” Nathan said.
“I understood enough.”
Raymond’s voice broke.
“And you never told anyone?”
“My father scared me.”
“For thirty-seven years?”
Rebecca said nothing.
Raymond turned away.
Evelyn explained that Thomas had uncovered illegal payments involving Charles and several politicians.
Charles feared exposure.
The truck crash happened forty minutes later.
But Evelyn had never possessed proof tying Charles to it.
Marcus had apparently found additional evidence.
“Why would Marcus care about my father?” Raymond asked.
Evelyn looked at him.
“Because Thomas discovered Marcus too.”
A teenage Marcus had already been working as a courier for one of Charles’s political fixers.
Thomas documented it.
Marcus knew Charles had covered up his earliest crimes.
Years later he began collecting Charles’s old network for himself.
When Charles died, Marcus inherited secrets without inheriting the company.
So he used Rebecca.
Used Crane.
Used Rourke.
Used anyone he could.
Nathan asked the question everyone feared.
“How many people has he killed?”
Evelyn’s answer was quiet.
“I know of three suspicious deaths.”
Raymond sat down.
Donnelly began transferring the hard drive evidence to a secure federal system.
Then an alarm sounded.
Smoke.
Evelyn’s kitchen window shattered.
A burning object rolled across the floor.
“MOVE!”
Agents rushed Rebecca, Nathan, and Elena toward the rear.
Flames climbed the curtains.
Another incendiary device struck the living room.
Someone wanted the evidence destroyed.
Evelyn screamed.
“My notebooks!”
Elena grabbed her arm.
“Leave them!”
“They’re all we have.”
“No, you copied them.”
“Not everything!”
Evelyn ran back.
Elena cursed and followed.
Smoke filled the room.
She found Evelyn dragging a metal case from beneath a desk.
“Help me!”
Together they pulled it across the floor.
A ceiling beam cracked.
Fire exploded overhead.
Elena shoved Evelyn down.
The beam crashed inches away.
Outside, agents exchanged gunfire with a vehicle near the road.
Nathan yelled Elena’s name.
She and Evelyn crawled through the back door carrying the metal case.
The house burned behind them.
A federal agent was wounded.
The attackers escaped.
But surveillance cameras captured the license plate.
The SUV belonged to a company registered to a man named Peter Walsh.
Nathan knew him instantly.
Walsh was his deputy chief of staff.
Melissa looked stunned.
“Peter?”
Donnelly checked his phone.
Disconnected.
His apartment was empty.
A search of his office produced encrypted drives, cash, and photographs of Nathan’s schedule.
Rebecca whispered, “Marcus had someone inside Nathan’s staff.”
Nathan felt physically sick.
Every meeting.
Every flight.
Every security change.
Marcus had known.
Then they found something worse.
Peter Walsh had accessed medical files belonging to Nathan’s daughter, Caroline.
Caroline Cole was seventeen and living with her mother’s sister in Boston while finishing school.
Nathan grabbed his phone.
No answer.
He called again.
Nothing.
Donnelly contacted Boston authorities.
Police raced to the aunt’s house.
Empty.
The back door stood open.
A chair lay overturned.
Nathan nearly collapsed.
Andrew shouted at his mother.
“This is because of you!”
Rebecca began sobbing.
Nathan turned away from both of them.
His phone rang.
Marcus.
Nathan answered.
“If you hurt her—”
“Governor, finally.”
“Where is my daughter?”
“Safe.”
“You want me? Take me.”
Marcus laughed.
“This was never about your life, Nathan.”
“What do you want?”
“The hard drive Evelyn gave you.”
Donnelly shook her head.
Nathan ignored her.
“Where?”
“Tomorrow night.”
“Where?”
“You’ll receive instructions.”
Nathan gripped the phone.
“Let me speak to Caroline.”
A pause.
Then his daughter’s terrified voice.
“Dad?”
Nathan’s eyes filled.
“Baby, I’m here.”
“Dad, don’t give them anything.”
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
Someone pulled the phone away.
Marcus returned.
“She’s brave.”
Nathan whispered, “I will destroy you.”
“No, Governor.”
Marcus sounded amused.
“You’re going to resign.”
Nathan froze.
“Tomorrow morning, you will announce your resignation. You will admit the corruption allegations are true. You will destroy every copy of Evelyn’s evidence.”
“And Caroline?”
“She comes home.”
Nathan looked at Elena.
Marcus’s tone changed.
“One more condition.”
“What?”
“The maid.”
Elena’s blood chilled.
“She comes too.”
Nathan said, “No.”
“Then your daughter doesn’t come home.”
The line disconnected.
Nathan stared at Elena.
She already knew what he was going to say.
“I won’t let you go.”
Elena looked at him.
“Then we find another way.”
Behind them, Evelyn opened the metal case rescued from the fire.
Inside were hundreds of documents.
And one cassette tape.
Rebecca recognized the handwriting.
Her father had written:
FOR NATHAN COLE — IF MARCUS HALE EVER COMES FOR MY FAMILY.
Nathan stared.
Charles Whitmore had died eight years before Marcus’s affair with Rebecca supposedly began.
Yet he had left Nathan a warning.
Evelyn inserted the cassette into an old recorder salvaged from her car.
Charles’s voice filled the night.
“Nathan, if you are hearing this, Marcus has finally made his move.”
Rebecca covered her mouth.
The recording continued.
“There is something about your wife you were never told.”
Nathan turned slowly toward Rebecca.
May you like
Charles said:
“Rebecca met Marcus Hale long before she ever met you.”
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