CHAPTER 3: THE WOMAN WHO DIED TWICE
I stared at the image.
For a moment, I could not hear the alarms or the shouting officers.
My mother had worn that pendant every day of my childhood.
A small silver circle with a blue stone in the center.
My father told me it had been recovered after the accident that killed her.
I had watched him place it inside her coffin.
“Take me to Rebecca,” I said.
Elias stepped in front of me.
“The laboratory hasn’t been cleared.”
“Then clear it.”
“Mara—”
“That pendant belonged to my mother.”
He looked at the image again.
Then he gave the order.
The restoration laboratory was two floors below the main gallery. We entered through a service staircase while the security team searched the ventilation tunnels.
Rebecca Shaw lay beside the vault.
But she was still breathing.
A thin stream of blood ran from a wound near her ribs.
“Medical team!” Elias shouted.
Her eyes opened when I knelt beside her.
“Mara?”
“I’m here.”
Her fingers closed around the pendant.
“She gave it to me.”
“Who did?”
Rebecca struggled to speak.
“Your mother.”
My entire body went still.
“My mother died eleven years ago.”
Rebecca looked directly into my eyes.
“No.”
The medical team arrived, but she refused to release my hand.
“She knew they were coming for her,” Rebecca whispered. “She found the ledger.”
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know.”
“You just said she gave you the pendant.”
“Two months ago.”
The room tilted around me.
Two months ago.
My mother had been alive two months ago.
Elias asked the paramedics to stabilize Rebecca before moving her.
“Who attacked you?” he asked.
Rebecca shook her head.
“I didn’t see.”
“Did the attacker take the Meridian Ledger?”
“Yes.”
“What does it look like?”
“It isn’t a book. It’s a biometric drive.”
“Whose biometric signature opens it?”
Rebecca looked at me.
“Hers.”
My mother’s.
The paramedics lifted Rebecca onto a stretcher.
Before they carried her away, she pulled me closer.
“There is something else.”
“What?”
“Arthur knows.”
My father.
The words struck harder than Grant’s fist.
Rebecca was taken upstairs to the emergency medical station.
Elias and I remained inside the laboratory.
“You knew my mother,” I said.
“I met her twice.”
“Did you know she was alive?”
“No.”
“Do not protect my father.”
His expression tightened.
“I’m not.”
“You have worked for him for twelve years.”
“I worked for your family.”
“That is not an answer.”
Elias looked toward the empty vault.
“Your father never told me your mother survived the accident.”
I wanted to believe him.
But the museum had become a building full of lies.
I could no longer separate loyalty from performance.
An officer approached.
“We recovered footage from the restoration corridor.”
The screen showed Rebecca entering the laboratory at 11:43 p.m.
Four minutes before Grant attacked me.
She carried a metal case.
At 11:45, another figure appeared.
The person wore a hooded maintenance jacket.
The face remained hidden.
Rebecca opened the vault.
The figure moved behind her.
The recording flickered.
Then the screen went black.
“Someone disabled the camera,” Elias said.
“For how long?”
“Three minutes.”
When the footage returned, Rebecca was on the floor and the metal case was gone.
The hooded figure walked toward the ventilation entrance.
For one second, the jacket shifted.
A white shirt cuff became visible.
There was a symbol embroidered near the wrist.
A black crown.
I knew that symbol.
Every executive security uniform used by Holloway Capital carried it.
“Grant’s people,” I said.
“Possibly.”
“No. Definitely.”
Elias enlarged the image.
Beneath the crown were two small initials.
G.H.
Grant Holloway.
We returned to the main gallery.
Grant sat in a chair surrounded by two security officers.
His father’s attorney, Calvin Rusk, stood beside him.
Rusk had not been present when the museum sealed.
Yet there he was.
Dry suit.
Polished shoes.
No sign that he had passed through the sprinklers.
Elias saw it too.
“How did you enter this building?” he asked.
Rusk smiled.
“I was already inside.”
“You were not on the guest list.”
“I arrived through the staff entrance.”
“All entrances were monitored.”
“Apparently not very well.”
I placed the image of the embroidered cuff in front of Grant.
“Rebecca Shaw was attacked by someone wearing your private security uniform.”
Grant examined it.
“That proves nothing.”
“Your initials are on the cuff.”
“Uniforms can be stolen.”
“Like the museum director’s keycard inside your jacket?”
His jaw tightened.
Calvin Rusk stepped between us.
“This conversation is over.”
“No one is leaving.”
“You misunderstand, Ms. Vale. My client will not answer additional questions.”
Grant leaned back.
His confidence had returned.
That worried me more than his fear.
He knew something had changed.
Calvin handed me a phone.
The screen displayed a live video feed.
My father was sitting inside his private study at Vale Manor.
A masked man stood behind him with a gun.
May you like
Grant smiled.
“You sealed the wrong building, Mara.”
