Chapter 6 - The Scavenger HuntTime seemed to freeze.
Mrs. Gable stopped in her tracks, her sharp eyes locking onto the piece of paper on the floor. She took two slow steps forward, her sensible heels clicking against the hardwood, and bent down to pick it up.
My fingers curled into fists inside my pockets, my nails digging into my palms until I drew blood. If she saw Vance’s signature or read the legal headers, the entire game was over. Sterling would have my head on a spike before dinner.
Mrs. Gable squinted at the paper, turning it over in her hands.
"What is this?" she murmured, her cold gaze snapping up to meet mine.
"Scrap paper," I said, stepping forward with a manufactured air of annoyed boredom. "Sterling brought me some fashion catalogs yesterday. I was tearing out dresses I liked, and I suppose some of the scraps fell off the nightstand. Do I need your permission to throw trash away now, Mrs. Gable?"
She stared at me for three agonizingly long seconds, searching my face for any sign of panic. I held her gaze, letting out a heavy, dramatic sigh of exhaustion that perfectly mirrored a trapped, miserable bride at her wit's end.
Slowly, a contemptuous sneer touched the corners of Mrs. Gable’s mouth. She crumpled the paper into a tight ball and tossed it into the nearest wastebasket.
"Keep your trash off the floor, Mrs. Kane," she said coolly. "Mr. Sterling is downstairs with his attorneys. He requested your presence in the study in twenty minutes. Wear something respectable."
She turned and walked out, the heavy doors latching shut behind her.
I let out a breath I felt like I'd been holding for a century. My knees shook, but I didn't have a second to waste. Twenty minutes.
I rushed across the room to Everett’s massive mahogany executive desk. The wood was cold, carved with intricate Victorian scrollwork. I dropped to my knees on the Persian rug and pulled frantically at the bottom drawer.
It slid open smoothly, revealing a neat stack of leather-bound ledgers, medical bills, and old tax documents.
I dumped everything out onto the floor, running my fingers along the interior wooden panels. Near the back left corner, my fingernail caught a slight ridge. I pressed down hard, and with a soft click, a secret false bottom sprang open.
Inside lay a heavy, matte-black steel lockbox and a velvet pouch containing three heavy iron keys.
I pulled the lockbox out just as the grandfather clock in the hallway chimed the quarter-hour. I had ten minutes before the guards came to escort me down to the study.
I grabbed the smallest key, slid it into the lockbox latch, and turned it.
Click.
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The lid sprang open. Inside weren't jewels or bearer bonds. It was a thick stack of bank statements, encrypted flash drives, and a handwritten journal signed with Everett’s bold, slashing signature.
And right on top was a certified copy of Dr. Alan Whitfield’s medical license—with a massive, red stamp across it marked: REVOKED FOR ILLEGAL NARCOTICS DISTRIBUTION, 2021.
