Chapter 9 - The Woman in Room Twelve.
Rory explained that she had heard Sterling use the name Mrs. Voss during a phone call.
He had been standing outside the motel bathroom, believing Rory was asleep.
"He said, 'Mrs. Voss is getting impatient.'"
Gabriel's mother, Evelyn Voss, had supposedly died in a private rehabilitation clinic after a stroke.
Daniel Cross had arranged the facility.
Sterling had handled the estate paperwork.
Gabriel felt sick.
Too many deaths in his family had passed through the same two men.
Mateo pulled every record connected to Evelyn's final months.
The death certificate listed a physician who had lost his license three years earlier.
The clinic had closed two weeks after Evelyn's reported death.
Its patients had been transferred to several facilities.
One transfer log contained a woman identified only as E.V., age sixty-eight.
She had been moved to St. Agnes Residential Center under a sealed guardianship order.
Gabriel drove there with Mateo.
Lena and Rory remained under protection at a different location.
St. Agnes stood behind high brick walls at the edge of the county.
The administrator denied having any patient named Evelyn Voss.
Gabriel placed the transfer record on his desk.
The administrator stopped denying it.
"Room twelve."
Gabriel entered alone.
An elderly woman sat by the window with a blanket over her knees.
Her hair was white.
Her left hand trembled.
She turned when the door opened.
Gabriel forgot every prepared question.
"Mom."
Evelyn Voss stared at him.
Then she began to cry.
Gabriel crossed the room and knelt beside her chair.
"They told me you were dead."
Evelyn touched his face as though checking whether he was real.
"Arthur told me the same about you."
Gabriel looked up sharply.
Evelyn's speech was slow but clear.
After her stroke, Arthur had appeared in her hospital room.
She thought she was hallucinating because she believed him dead.
He told her Gabriel had been killed and that she needed protection.
Then Daniel moved her to a locked facility.
"Why?"
Evelyn's eyes hardened.
"Your father's trust."
Gabriel had inherited control of the Voss companies after Arthur's death.
But an old family trust contained a clause Gabriel had forgotten.
If Gabriel died without a recognized heir, controlling shares passed to the surviving eldest Voss sibling.
Arthur.
If Gabriel had a legal child, the shares passed to that child instead.
Rory was not merely leverage.
She was the person standing between Arthur and an empire.
Gabriel called Lena immediately.
She did not answer.
He called the guard stationed outside their new safe location.
No answer.
Mateo called another number.
Nothing.
Gabriel's pulse spiked.
They drove across town in silence.
The safe house door was unlocked.
Inside, a lamp had been knocked over.
One guard lay unconscious near the kitchen.
Lena was gone.
Rory was gone.
The purple-star notepad lay open on the floor.
A new sentence had been written across the final page in black ink.
May you like
BRING THE TRUST DOCUMENTS TO THE OLD VOSS HOTEL.
COME ALONE, LITTLE BROTHER.
