CHAPTER 24 The First Mrs. Mercer
Her name was Margaret Mercer.
Samuel’s wife.
Catherine’s mother.
My grandmother.
Every family record claimed she had died in a boating accident thirty-nine years earlier.
There had been a funeral.
A memorial scholarship.
A bronze plaque at Mercer Maritime.
No body had ever been recovered.
Catherine sat with the photograph in her hands.
“I was ten when she disappeared.”
“Did Samuel believe she was dead?” Adrian asked.
“At first.”
“And later?”
Catherine looked toward the cassette tapes.
“He stopped speaking about her.”
The unnamed file contained almost nothing.
A blood type.
Several medication records.
And one handwritten note.
M.M. retains operational command.
Samuel remains emotionally compromised.
The note was signed with a symbol rather than a name.
A lighthouse surrounded by a circle.
The same symbol engraved on Hollis’s rings.
Margaret had not been a victim of Hollis’s organization.
She may have commanded it.
I remembered the child’s voice on the tape.
I saw Grandpa push the woman into the water.
Perhaps Samuel had not tried to kill Margaret.
Perhaps he had tried to stop her.
We removed every file from the underground room.
Alvarez placed the facility under federal control.
Before leaving, Lena found a narrow passage behind the archive shelves.
It opened into a private train platform.
Fresh footprints marked the dust.
Evelyn had escaped through the tunnel.
One set of prints belonged to her.
Another belonged to someone using a cane.
I looked down at mine.
The pattern was different.
Someone else with a damaged leg had been there recently.
Back at Mercer House, Lily was waiting in the entrance hall.
She ran toward us, then stopped when she saw my expression.
“You found something bad.”
“Yes.”
She did not ask whether I was all right.
She had learned that adults often lied when answering that question.
Instead, she handed me an envelope.
“It came while you were gone.”
No postage.
No delivery record.
Inside was a birthday card Samuel had given me when I turned seven.
I remembered the card.
I did not remember the sentence now written beneath his original message.
Madeline, one day you may remember Margaret.
Do not let Catherine see her.
Catherine read the warning.
“My father was protecting me from my own mother.”
“Or controlling you,” Adrian said.
She looked at him. “You have every reason not to trust me. But Margaret terrified Samuel.”
Lily turned the card over.
A musical staff had been drawn along the bottom.
Another code.
She played the notes on her violin.
The melody was incomplete.
Then Catherine began humming.
She knew the missing section.
“It was my mother’s lullaby.”
Together, the notes translated into an address.
A private retirement residence outside Washington, D.C.
The facility housed former diplomats, judges, and corporate executives under assumed names.
Federal records showed one resident had lived there for twenty-seven years.
Margaret Shaw.
Age eighty-six.
No photograph.
No fingerprints on file.
Alvarez arranged surveillance.
Before he could obtain a warrant, the facility sent an emergency notice.
Margaret Shaw had died that morning.
Her body had already been removed by a private funeral service.
The funeral company did not exist.
We traced the vehicle to an airport hangar.
It was empty.
On the wall, someone had projected a live video feed.
An elderly woman sat in a high-backed chair.
A red scarf covered her silver hair.
Catherine moved closer to the screen.
“Mother?”
Margaret smiled.
“My daughter.”
Her voice was soft.
Controlled.
Nothing like Hollis.
That made her more frightening.
“You have spent thirty years believing Samuel was the center of this story,” Margaret said. “He was only the man who stole it from me.”
“What do you want?” I asked.
“To finish the work your grandfather interrupted.”
“What work?”
She looked directly at me.
“Returning Mercer Maritime to the person Samuel took it from.”
A second camera activated.
Lily appeared on the screen.
I turned.
The chair beside me was empty.
My daughter was no longer in the room.
Margaret placed a hand on Lily’s shoulder.
“She came willingly,” Margaret said.
Lily stared at the camera.
May you like
“No, Mom. I didn’t.”
The feed went black.
