flash
The fluorescent lights of Lakeview General hummed a jagged, aggressive tune that seemed to vibrate directly behind my eyes. I sat in a plastic chair that had been bolted to the floor sometime in the late nineteen-nineties, staring at my hands. / Chapter 6 / 20

Chapter 6 - The Missing Files

I dropped the phone onto the kitchen counter, my mind racing through a labyrinth of terrifying possibilities.

If Claire had been targeted because of her audit, and if those documents were missing, where were they? Maya? Did Claire leave them with her daughter? Did she hide them somewhere safe before she left her apartment yesterday evening?

I walked quietly down the hall and cracked open the guest bedroom door. Maya was curled up under the heavy duvet, fast asleep, her breathing deep and even. On the bedside table sat her purple backpack, zipped shut.

I couldn't search her bag. She was a traumatized nine-year-old child whose mother was fighting for her life in an ICU. I wasn't going to violate her trust like that.

Instead, I grabbed my car keys, my coat, and my laptop bag, determined to drive straight to Claire’s apartment before heading to the hospital. If there were clues, if there was anything that could protect Maya—and keep Claire safe when she woke up—I had to find it myself.

An hour later, I stood outside Apartment 3B in a rundown, brick-faced complex off Federal Boulevard. Yellow police tape crisscrossed the wooden doorframe, held in place by evidence seals.

Fortunately, as an architect working on historic restorations, I knew a thing or two about old building vulnerabilities. Working quickly while the rain masked any sound, I used a slim plastic card to bypass the loose latch on the sliding kitchen window.

The apartment inside was small, modest, and heartbreakingly ordinary. A single bookshelf lined with paperback novels, a worn floral sofa, a small dining table with half-finished homework assignments scattered across it. There was no sign of wealth, no luxury cars, just the quiet life of a single mother trying to keep her head above water.

I moved directly to the small home office in the corner. The desktop computer had already been seized by federal agents, but as I crouched down to examine the back of the wooden desk, I noticed something odd.

The baseboard trim behind the desk was slightly misaligned.

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The ink on the emergency audit report was barely dry when the secure terminal on my desk flashed a violent crimson. I hadn't slept in thirty-six hours, my eyes burning from staring at columns of ghost figures, duplicate invoices, and shell corporations linked to Dominic Rossi. But the red alert wasn’t from Rossi’s faction. It was an internal security flag originating from the estate’s main vault deep beneath the west wing.

The ink on the emergency audit report was barely dry when the secure ter...

The glass shattered into a thousand tiny diamonds on the marble, scattering the light from the chandeliers. The muffled laughter died instantly, replaced by a suffocating, heavy silence that crept outward from the grand staircase.

The glass shattered into a thousand tiny diamonds on the marble, scatter...

The heavy oak doors of my private study clicked shut behind us, locking out the clinical, terrifying silence of the kitchen. Evelyn Crane stood stiffly in front of my mahogany desk, her hands folded over her apron with the rigid precision of someone who had spent decades micromanaging every square inch of my estate. Behind her, Norah hovered near the doorway, clutching her clipboard like a shield.

The heavy oak doors of my private study clicked shut behind us, locking...

Using the flathead screwdriver from my pocket multi-tool, I popped the wooden molding loose. Tucked inside the narrow wall cavity was a heavy, waterproof manila envelope labeled in bold capital letters: IF ANYTHING HAPPENS TO ME — GIVE TO OWEN.

My hands shook as I pulled the envelope free. Inside was a flash drive and a stack of printed bank transfers, shell company deeds, and signed contracts bearing the letterhead of Ridgeline Design—my own architectural firm.

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