CHAPTER 10: CLAIRE’S SECRET
Ethan sat handcuffed inside the hotel’s private security office.
Detective Harris stood across from him.
“What did Claire find at Halcyon Field?”
Harris’s expression changed.
Only slightly.
But Ethan saw it.
“My wife died four years ago,” Ethan continued. “Her car went off a bridge during a storm.”
“I know.”
“Do you also know she investigated the Vale Foundation before she died?”
Harris placed a folder on the table.
“You are not asking questions here.”
Ethan looked through the glass wall.
Ava sat outside with Arthur Bell. Bianca stood near them, arguing with Eleanor.
Ethan lowered his voice.
“Claire told me she was researching missing charity money. She never mentioned Halcyon Field.”
Harris leaned closer.
“Maybe your wife had secrets.”
“She did.”
Ethan remembered the weeks before Claire’s death.
The late-night calls.
The locked files.
The way she had started checking the rearview mirror whenever they drove.
The final voicemail she had left him had contained only six seconds of breathing and one faint metallic sound.
A locker door closing.
Ethan had listened to it hundreds of times.
Until now, he had never understood.
Harris unlocked one handcuff.
“You are going to give me the location Conrad revealed.”
“You already heard it.”
“I need you to open the locker.”
“Why me?”
“Samuel Mercer designed the old player lockers. Some required fingerprints from registered family members.”
Ethan stared at him.
“You knew my father was alive.”
Harris smiled without warmth.
“I know many things.”
The office door opened.
Eleanor entered alone.
“Leave us,” she told Harris.
He obeyed.
Eleanor sat opposite Ethan.
“You believe Samuel was a victim,” she said. “He was not.”
“Then what was he?”
“A man who discovered he could control powerful people.”
She slid a small audio recorder across the table.
Ethan pressed play.
Claire’s voice filled the room.
“If Ethan hears this, then I failed. Samuel Mercer is alive. But the man hiding beneath Halcyon Field is not the man Ethan remembers.”
The recording crackled.
Claire began to cry.
“He told me what they did to the children.”
The audio ended.
Ethan’s blood ran cold.
“What children?”
May you like
Eleanor stood.
“Open locker 927, and you will learn why your father should have stayed dead.”
