Chapter 9 - The Tunnel Choice.
Darkness swallowed the body-camera image, but Ethan could still hear water and broken radio static.
At the command post, officers tried to restore contact with Ortiz.
Margaret gripped Ethan’s shoulders and begged him to step away from the screen.
He refused because Claire’s clues were built from memories only he could interpret.
Inside the tunnel, Ortiz found her radio signal blocked by a portable jammer attached to a drainage pipe.
Daniel had expected pursuit.
She disconnected the device and heard footsteps splashing ahead.
The tunnel opened beneath the river warehouse, where rusted stairs climbed toward a loading platform.
Claire was sitting against a support column with her hands restrained in front of her.
Daniel stood beside her holding the keys to a small motorboat moored beyond the warehouse doors.
He no longer had a weapon, but he controlled a steel gate that could divert fast-moving runoff into the lower chamber.
“Let her walk out,” Ortiz said.
Daniel smiled.
“You already believe her, so what would that change?”
Claire looked toward a yellow valve behind Ortiz and moved her fingers twice.
Ortiz understood that Daniel’s flood threat depended on the wrong control.
She kept him talking while another officer circled through the upper level.
Daniel claimed the company had always belonged to him in everything but name.
Claire inherited the deciding shares from her father, while Daniel did the work and received none of the credit.
When she discovered the false accounts, she planned to remove him from the board and report the transfers.
“You could have faced the truth,” Claire said.
Her voice was weak but steady.
“Instead, you built a funeral.”
Daniel’s expression tightened.
He pulled the gate lever.
Nothing happened.
Claire had loosened the control cable while waiting for the police.
Ortiz moved forward.
Daniel grabbed Claire and dragged her toward the boat platform.
The officer above dropped a cargo net across the exit, blocking his path.
Daniel released Claire and ran along the narrow walkway.
He reached a side ladder leading to the roof.
Ortiz chose not to chase him immediately.
She cut Claire’s restraints and guided her to higher ground as rainwater rose through the tunnel.
Daniel escaped into the storm, but Claire was safe again.
At the command post, Ethan heard his mother’s voice over the restored radio.
“Tell him the hammer worked.”
He laughed and cried at the same time.
Then Mason called from the evidence warehouse with troubling news.
One page had been removed from the ledger before Claire hid it.
The missing page contained the master account number connecting Daniel’s companies to an unknown senior partner.
Claire admitted she had given that page to someone she trusted.
Margaret asked who it was.
Claire looked at her mother and hesitated.
“Paul Reeves,” she said.
May you like
The funeral director had disappeared from police protection twenty minutes earlier.
THE WOMAN BENEATH THE WHITE LID
