Chapter 6 - The Son Who Came Back
Gregory arrived at Mercer House shortly before midnight.
He came alone, unarmed, and bleeding through his shirt.
Security found him walking beside the outer wall after abandoning a damaged car half a mile away. Someone had slashed one tire and fired through the windshield.
I watched from the command center as officers searched him.
Joanna folded her arms.
“This could be staged.”
“It probably is.”
“You’re still going to speak with him.”
“Yes.”
We met in a glass-walled interview room near the security office. Gregory sat on one side of the table while a medic cleaned a cut along his ribs.
He looked exhausted.
Not attractively disheveled.
Broken.
“You came back,” he said when I entered.
“This is my house.”
“I meant from the courthouse. You could’ve left the country.”
“You don’t know me well enough to predict what I’ll do.”
Pain moved through his expression.
“I know.”
I remained standing.
“Why are you here?”
“My father knows about the steel mill.”
“So do we.”
“He has teams searching it now.”
“What is he looking for?”
“The original inspection ledger from the bridge project. It contains handwritten signatures he couldn’t erase from digital records.”
“Who told him?”
“Someone inside your company.”
“Name.”
“I don’t know yet.”
I turned toward the door.
“Camille.”
“What?”
“I can get you inside.”
I almost laughed.
“You expect me to trust you after you tried to have me committed?”
“I expect you to use me.”
That stopped me.
Gregory placed both palms on the table.
“My father’s people believe I’m still loyal. The shooting was meant to frighten me, not kill me.”
“How comforting.”
“He knows I called you. He warned me not to do it again.”
“And you came here anyway.”
“I saw the footage.”
“What footage?”
“My mother’s recordings. My attorney gave me copies during the hearing because he wanted to argue she was unstable.”
Gregory stared at his own hands.
“I watched my father hurt her. I remembered some of it, but I had changed the memories. I told myself she provoked him. I told myself he lost control because he cared about the family.”
He swallowed.
“Then I watched myself in your dining room.”
The medic finished and left.
Gregory continued.
“I sounded exactly like him.”
“You did more than sound like him.”
“I know.”
“You didn’t lose control, Gregory. You followed a plan.”
“Yes.”
“You courted me under false pretenses.”
“Yes.”
“You attempted to isolate me, control my finances, and create fraudulent evidence.”
“Yes.”
Each admission stripped another defense away.
“I don’t expect forgiveness,” he said. “I’m offering testimony.”
Joanna entered the room.
“Testimony about what?”
“The psychiatric plan, the surveillance, and my father’s involvement in Mercer’s internal systems.”
“Who is the insider?” she asked.
“My uncle, Charles Vale.”
I knew the name.
Charles had served on Mercer Global’s audit committee for nine years. He was not related to us but represented one of the pension funds holding company shares.
My father had appointed him before his conflict with Harrison.
“He accessed the vault,” I said.
Gregory nodded.
“He also altered maintenance records after your father’s crash.”
The room went silent.
“Can you prove it?” Joanna asked.
Gregory removed a key from inside his shoe.
“My father keeps offline backups at the steel mill. This opens the records room.”
“Why tell us now?”
“Because he ordered me to bring Camille there tomorrow.”
I felt cold.
“For what?”
“To force her to decode the ledger. After that, he planned to stage a fire.”
Joanna studied him.
“And you agreed?”
“I told him I could convince her.”
“You’re either very brave or catastrophically stupid,” she said.
“Probably both.”
I sat across from him.
“Tell me exactly what happened to my father.”
Gregory’s eyes met mine.
“He found evidence that Harrison’s contractors used defective steel in six federal projects. He planned to testify at a closed Senate hearing. My father bribed Charles to alter the helicopter maintenance schedule.”
“Who installed the defective part?”
“A mechanic named Owen Blake.”
“Where is he?”
“Dead. Supposedly an overdose.”
“Supposedly?”
“Before he died, he sent a letter to my mother. She never received it. My father kept it.”
“Where?”
“The steel mill.”
The plan formed quickly.
Federal agents would surround the property while Gregory entered wearing a recording device. I would remain in a command vehicle. Once Harrison revealed the location of the records, agents would move in.
It was logical.
Which was why I distrusted it.
Harrison knew Gregory had contacted me. He had to assume his son might cooperate.
“He’ll search you,” I said.
Gregory looked toward Agent Ortiz, who had joined us.
“He expects me to be monitored. That can work in our favor.”
Ortiz nodded.
“We use an obvious transmitter as bait and conceal a secondary device inside the lining of his wound dressing.”
Gregory gave a faint smile.
“I’ve always wanted to be useful as medical equipment.”
No one laughed.
At dawn, he prepared to leave.
I found him alone near the side entrance.
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
Then he removed his wedding ring.
“I don’t deserve to wear this.”
“No.”
He placed it in my palm.
“I did love you, Camille.”
“You loved how I made you feel about yourself.”
He flinched.
“Maybe.”
“Love does not require someone to become smaller.”
“I know that now.”
“Knowing is the beginning. It isn’t redemption.”
He nodded.
Outside, a vehicle waited.
Before entering it, he turned back.
“If I don’t come out—”
“Come out.”
His eyes held mine.
Then he left.
Three hours later, Gregory entered the abandoned steel mill.
The obvious transmitter went silent within four minutes.
The concealed device continued broadcasting.
We heard Harrison’s voice.
“You’ve disappointed me.”
Then a blow.
Gregory grunted.
“You went to her house,” Harrison said.
“I told you—I’m bringing her.”
“No. You’re bringing federal agents.”
Metal scraped against concrete.
Someone removed Gregory’s wound dressing.
The concealed transmitter clattered to the floor.
Harrison laughed.
“Did you really believe I wouldn’t search the bandage?”
The signal distorted.
Before it died, Gregory shouted four words.
May you like
“Camille, don’t come here!”
Then gunfire erupted inside the mill.
