Chapter 5 - Eight Minutes of Darkness.
"I'm not leaving you exposed."
"I didn't ask you to."
She looked at the file bearing her own name.
"Use me."
Adrian's eyes narrowed.
"No."
"He already thinks I'm the reason you stopped the deal."
"That doesn't make you bait."
"It makes me the one thing he is already watching."
Marcus interrupted.
"She's right about one part."
Adrian gave him a warning look.
Marcus continued anyway.
"If Victor believes Olivia has evidence, he'll make a move to learn what it is."
Olivia took a slow breath.
"And when he does, maybe we finally see who he uses."
Adrian looked at the photograph in the file.
Olivia was nineteen in the picture, smiling without fear.
He closed the folder.
"We do this my way."
"Meaning?"
"You are never alone."
Olivia nodded.
Adrian picked up the handwritten note from his father.
"First, we go to my mother's room."
When they returned to the estate, the door to Anna Vale's writing room was already open.
The lock had been broken.
Inside, every drawer had been emptied onto the floor.
And on the desk, someone had left a fresh white rose.
Olivia stared at it.
"Grant sends those after he thinks he's won."
The white rose changed the investigation from hidden to personal.
Adrian ordered the entire east wing sealed, but the person who had entered Anna Vale's room was already gone.
The staff access log showed only one badge opening that corridor during the previous hour.
Marcus Reed's.
Marcus looked at the screen and gave a humorless laugh.
"Again."
Adrian said nothing.
Rachel asked the question no one wanted to ask.
"Where were you forty minutes ago?"
"With you in the car from headquarters."
"Before that?"
"Archive room."
"Anyone outside this group see you?"
Marcus's expression hardened.
"No."
The problem was obvious.
Every new piece of electronic evidence pointed toward him.
The apartment photograph.
The location tracking logs.
Now the east-wing badge entry.
Adrian trusted Marcus with his life, but trust was becoming the exact weakness the other side was trying to exploit.
Marcus removed his badge and placed it on the table.
"Suspend my access."
Adrian looked at him.
"You don't have to do that."
"Yes, I do."
Marcus stepped back from the console.
"If I'm being framed, my credentials are poisoned anyway."
Olivia watched him carefully.
"Would Grant know enough about you to copy your habits?"
"Not directly."
Marcus paused.
"But Daniel Cross would."
Daniel had managed facilities at the estate for two years.
He knew Marcus's routes, clothing, vehicle schedule, and security procedures.
Rachel ordered an immediate search for Daniel.
His office was empty.
His company phone sat inside a drawer.
His car remained in the employee garage.
Daniel Cross had disappeared.
Adrian entered his mother's writing room with Olivia while Rachel coordinated the search.
The room smelled faintly of cedar and old paper.
Drawers lay overturned.
Books had been removed from shelves and dropped open on the carpet.
Olivia crouched beside the desk.
"Whoever did this was looking for something specific."
"The notebook?"
"Maybe."
She touched the base of the white rose vase without moving it.
"Or something my mother left with yours."
Adrian studied the room as he remembered it.
His mother had always kept her stationery in the left cabinet, personal letters in the center desk, and old photographs in a lacquered blue box beneath the window.
The blue box was gone.
"They took her photographs."
Olivia looked at him.
"Why photographs?"
"I don't know."
A sound came from the hallway.
Marcus appeared at the door despite having surrendered his badge.
"We found Daniel."
Adrian turned.
"Where?"
"At Union Station."
"Bring him back."
Marcus shook his head.
"He won't come."
"Why?"
"Because he says he's afraid of Victor Hale."
Olivia stood slowly.
"He talked?"
"Only enough to ask for a lawyer."
Marcus handed Adrian a phone.
"He sent this before turning himself in to outside counsel."
The message contained a single audio file.
Adrian played it.
Daniel's voice was strained.
"I copied badges."
A pause followed.
"I disabled cameras."
Another pause.
"But I never touched Olivia."
Olivia closed her eyes.
Daniel continued.
"Mercer paid me through a contractor account."
His breathing sounded uneven.
"Victor told me it was corporate intelligence and that Adrian knew."
Adrian's face darkened.
"He used my name."
Daniel's recording went on.
"I believed them until last night."
There was a long silence.
"Then Mercer told me to plant evidence against Marcus."
Marcus looked toward the floor.
"That explains the photograph."
The audio continued.
"I won't do the next thing."
Adrian leaned closer to the phone.
"What next thing?"
Daniel answered as if he had heard the question across time.
"They want Olivia removed from the house before the board meeting."
The recording ended.
Everyone turned toward Olivia.
She was no longer in the room.
The chair where she had been standing was empty.
Her borrowed cardigan lay across the armrest.
Her medical badge was on the carpet.
Adrian rushed into the hallway.
"Olivia!"
No answer.
Marcus ran toward the stairs while Rachel checked the elevator panel.
The security system showed one elevator moving downward.
It had been called using an executive override.
Destination: B2.
The Vale residence did not officially have a B2 floor.
Adrian stared at the panel.
"What is below the basement?"
Marcus's face changed.
"The old archive tunnels."
Adrian turned to him.
"You said they were sealed."
"They were."
The elevator indicator reached B2.
Then all movement stopped.
Inside the elevator, Olivia stood alone in dim emergency light.
Her phone had received one message from a sender marked only with the letter A.
THE TRUTH ABOUT YOUR MOTHER IS DOWN HERE.
Olivia knew she should have waited.
She knew every promise she had made Adrian about never being alone had lasted less than two hours.
But the message had used the one subject capable of overruling fear.
Her mother.
The elevator doors opened onto a narrow concrete passage lit by old wall lamps.
The air was cool and smelled faintly of dust.
Rows of steel storage doors lined both sides.
Olivia stepped out cautiously.
Her phone showed no signal.
A second message had arrived just before the elevator descended.
ROOM 14.
She counted the doors until she reached it.
Room 14 was unlocked.
Inside stood several filing cabinets, a wooden table, and a single old photograph taped to the wall.
Olivia stopped.
The photograph showed two women standing beside each other at a charity dinner nearly twenty years earlier.
One was her mother, Elise Hart.
May you like
The other was Anna Vale.
They were smiling like friends.
