Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN WHO MISSED THE TRAIN
Isabella could have called Adrien. She understood that. With one sentence she could have summoned men who knew how to make threats vanish, and with another she could have returned to the estate where no stranger crossed the gate without permission. But those gates had not protected her from Daniel Mercer. The bruise beneath her sleeve proved how little protection a powerful man's walls provided when he trusted the wrong people.
She put her phone on Nora Finch's desk. "I need to call my brother."
"Use mine," Nora said. "If that man's watching your number, we don't want him learning where we are."
Isabella knew neither how to trace a phone nor whether Mercer could do so. She knew only that the photograph had been taken recently. Tomas had worn the same green backpack when she saw him yesterday.
Miriam Ward answered on the second ring.
"Tell me he's with you," Isabella said.
"He's here. He's making an enormous mess with my good pots. What happened?"
"Has anybody come to the house?"
"No. Why?"
Isabella shut her eyes. "Someone photographed him near school. Somebody who's angry with me."
Miriam went silent. She was a retired social worker and one of the few people left who knew Isabella's real name. After Mateo died, she had taken Tomas in when Isabella couldn't afford an apartment large enough for two.
"I'll get him away from the windows," Miriam said. "You know where the spare bedroom is at my sister's place. I'll take him there for now."
"Don't tell anyone else."
"I understand." A beat passed. "You didn't go back to that mansion, did you?"
"Not yet."
"Isabella, your father would never have wanted you living in fear for his sake."
"This isn't only for him. There were six other families." Her voice broke. "And somebody is willing to watch Tomas to keep them quiet."
Nora set a cup of tea in front of her without interrupting. When the call ended, she pointed at the shift sheet.
"Mateo was responsible for the night logs. I supervised deliveries. Nobody gave me access to the accounting system, but I remember the calls. A man from Voss Headquarters told us to keep everyone on-site because the last truck was delayed. We were supposed to go home by eleven."
"Did you recognize his voice?"
"No. There was a storm. The phone kept cutting out. But somebody signed off on that order."
"Mercer?"
"I never saw the name."
"Then we need the original log."
"The city archived the fire investigation."
Isabella shook her head. "I requested it twice. They sent the revised version."
"I know where the handwritten copy went," Nora said. "There was an office with a blue door. Not at the pier. An accountant came to collect the physical dispatch records after the fire. The driver told me he was taking them to Voss Manor because the secure archive was still operational."
The tea had gone cold before Isabella touched it. For twenty-three months she had passed that blue door, dusting its frame, never imagining her father might have left her an answer just feet from the silverware.
"We can't just walk in," Nora said.
"I know."
"Do you know somebody on the inside who would help us?"
Isabella thought of Hester Bell, the elderly head housekeeper who remembered every anniversary in the mansion and had slipped Isabella extra soup when she was ill. Hester could be trusted with a casserole, a blanket, a private grief. Trusting her with Daniel Mercer's crimes was something else.
"Maybe," she said.
A knock sounded against the staff-office door. Both women froze. The second knock was lighter.
"Nora? It's Cal."
Nora relaxed and opened it. A broad-shouldered maintenance worker entered holding a flashlight and a torn envelope. "Found this stuck in the outgoing-mail slot. It's addressed to Reyes."
Isabella read her surname in pencil. Inside was a single newspaper clipping, its edges worn almost transparent. The headline announced the Voss Foundation's annual memorial grant for the West Channel families. Beneath the article, someone had written: ASK WHERE THE MONEY WENT.
"Did you see who left it?" Isabella asked.
Cal shook his head. "Could've been here for days."
They were being helped by someone who didn't dare show their face. Or manipulated by someone who knew exactly which questions would keep them moving.
Across town, Adrien sat with Marco in his library while rain tracked down the tall windows. On the table lay every documented withdrawal from a charity called the West Channel Family Relief Fund. Daniel had administered the fund after the fire, and Adrien had signed the annual audit summaries without reading the supporting records. He had told himself it was routine philanthropy, something to do after the difficult business of rebuilding the pier.
"There are missing payment confirmations," Marco said, sliding a paper across the table. "The fund paid out nearly eight million. But these transfer reports don't show household recipients for more than half of it."
"Who audited it?"
"Mercer's office."
Adrien looked at a column of initials. M.R. appeared beside an entry for temporary housing. Mateo Reyes. He remembered the name from the investigation: the dispatcher blamed for leaving alarm equipment disconnected. At the time he had been thirty-four and obsessed with preventing an alliance from breaking apart after a disastrous shipment. The investigator had declared the fire an industrial accident. Adrien had accepted the declaration. There had been funerals to attend and businesses to stabilize.
"Isabella's surname is Reyes," he said.
"We believe so. Her hiring file says Valez."
"Find the original application. Don't alter it."
Marco waited. "She entered the estate under false identity."
"Yes."
"That may explain why Mercer confronted her."
"It doesn't explain the money. And it doesn't excuse the bruise."
Marco rubbed the bridge of his nose. "If she has proof against him, why didn't she tell you?"
Adrien almost replied that she should have. Instead he remembered taking a call in the kitchen while Isabella was mopping the floor. His brother had once joked that house staff heard every dangerous conversation because powerful men never bothered lowering their voices around people they considered furniture. Adrien had laughed.
"Because she didn't know whether I was involved," he said.
Marco turned a page. "You are involved. This is your trust."
Adrien absorbed the rebuke. "Then I need to know how much."
He took Isabella's envelope from his coat and laid it on the table. Still sealed. Daniel Mercer's name on the front.
"Open it," Marco suggested.
"She addressed it to someone else."
"Mercer may be trying to kill her."
Adrien looked at the paper. "If she's in danger, that doesn't automatically give me the right to read everything she wrote."
Marco regarded him for a long moment. "You could ask her."
"If she wanted me to find her, she would have left me a way."
"You have her phone number."
Adrien picked up his mobile, hesitated, and wrote a message instead of calling: I know Mercer came to the house. I will not send anyone after you. If you need help, you can ask me directly. You do not have to return here.
He sent it and returned the phone to the table. He expected silence.
Five minutes later a reply arrived.
YOUR TRUST PAID SEVEN FAMILIES. SIX OF THEM SAY THEY NEVER RECEIVED THE MONEY. ASK DANIEL WHAT HAPPENED TO THE SEVENTH.
Adrien read it twice.
"She's not asking me to rescue her," he said.
"No," Marco answered. "She's giving you work."
At the station, Isabella had almost deleted her reply before sending it. The seventh family was her own. A bank statement in the settlement file showed a transfer in her mother's name for $412,000. Pilar Reyes had never had more than a few hundred dollars in checking. The record carried a signature she didn't recognize.
Nora read it over her shoulder. "That amount could change your brother's life."
"It wasn't our money if someone stole it from other people."
"It was meant for you."
"That doesn't mean we ever received it."
Nora nodded slowly. "You're right."
An hour later, the women left through a service exit and took a taxi to a modest apartment above a flower shop. Nora's cousin kept the place available for relatives visiting the city. It had a narrow kitchenette and a view of an alley, but no connection to the Voss family.
Isabella sat at the kitchen table with the documents scattered before her. There were seven families, seven bank records, and seven signatures. Only one of the victims had a living spouse who still lived in Boston. The rest had moved away or died. Someone had targeted people least able to question a payment.
"How did you get these?" Nora asked.
"Mercer's printer. It jammed last week. I fixed it and saw that he was printing the old relief files."
"You should have taken the whole packet."
"I took three pages. Then he noticed the paper count."
She looked down at her wrist. "He waited until Adrien left for a meeting."
Nora regarded her carefully. "You call him Adrien."
Isabella lifted her eyes. "That's his name."
"Not to most employees."
She could not explain the way he had started leaving a second cup by the library fireplace when he worked after midnight, or how he had remembered that she preferred jasmine tea on the anniversary of her mother's death. She could not explain why a man feared by half the city sometimes looked unbearably lonely in his own home.
"He was decent to me sometimes," she said. "That doesn't tell me what he did to my father."
A text arrived from an unfamiliar number.
HE ISN'T YOUR ENEMY. BUT HE SIGNED THE ORDER THAT KEPT YOUR FATHER AT THE PIER.
Isabella felt the floor shift beneath her. She stared at the words until they stopped looking like language.
"Who sent it?" Nora asked.
"I don't know."
"What does it mean?"
Isabella opened her notebook. Over months of employment she had memorized the names of men Adrien met, the sound of arguments behind the office door, the nights Daniel sent files up at midnight. She had believed Adrien was unaware of the fire's details. Now she remembered a framed photograph on his desk: Adrien shaking hands with a shipping director in front of West Channel Pier.
The date on the photograph was the morning before the fire.
A sound came from the alley below, the slam of a car door, followed by footsteps that stopped beneath the kitchen window. Nora turned off the light. They waited. A flashlight beam swept once across the curtains, then vanished.
Isabella's phone buzzed again. This message contained a picture of the sealed envelope she had left behind.
BENEATH HER HANDWRITING, in smaller letters, someone had typed one sentence: MERCER DOESN'T NEED TO OPEN IT TO KNOW WHAT'S INSIDE.
Isabella stared at the photograph. The envelope was on Adrien's desk. There was no way a stranger should have known where it lay.
May you like
Someone inside the Voss house was feeding information to the person hunting her.
And whoever it was had been close enough to watch Adrien make the one choice Isabella hadn't expected: letting her leave.
