Chapter 6 - The AccidentWe reached Vale Tower after the police.
The forty-second floor was sealed.
Two security officers had been found unconscious near the private elevator.
Alive.
Drugged.
Victoria was gone.
So was the contents of Adrian’s office safe.
“This woman attends charity luncheons for a living,” Nathan muttered. “When exactly did she become a criminal mastermind?”
Eleanor looked at him.
“She didn’t.”
“What?”
“She has help.”
The answer became obvious an hour later.
The security system had been professionally disabled for exactly thirteen minutes.
Not broken.
Not hacked from a coffee shop.
Someone with internal knowledge had overridden it.
Adrian sat in the middle of his office while technicians moved around him.
“What was in the accident file?” I asked.
“Everything my private investigator collected after the crash.”
“You investigated your own accident?”
“Briefly.”
“Why?”
He looked toward the windows.
“I didn’t remember it.”
I hadn’t known.
“What happened?”
“Rain. Highway. A truck crossed the center line.”
“You were driving?”
“Yes.”
“Alone?”
He nodded.
“I woke up six days later.”
“Did they catch the truck driver?”
“There wasn’t one.”
I frowned.
“The truck was found abandoned two miles away.”
“What about cameras?”
“Traffic cameras malfunctioned.”
“That seems convenient.”
“It didn’t then.”
“And now?”
“Now convenience is becoming a pattern.”
He wheeled toward a cabinet.
“My investigator found traces of hydraulic fluid near the crash site that didn’t belong to either vehicle.”
“What does that mean?”
“We never knew.”
Nathan entered.
“Police found Victoria’s car.”
“Where?”
“Parking garage beneath her mother’s townhouse.”
“Victoria?”
“No.”
Adrian sighed.
“What did she take from the safe?”
“The entire accident folder and a flash drive.”
“What was on it?”
“The investigator’s raw files.”
Adrian rubbed his forehead.
“She knows.”
“Knows what?”
“That I never believed the crash was random.”
His grandmother became pale.
“Adrian, you never told me that.”
“Because the investigator found nothing.”
“But Victoria knew about the file?”
“She knew I hired him.”
“When?”
“The month after the crash.”
“And when did Pierce become your doctor?”
Adrian looked at her.
“Three weeks later.”
Silence.
The timeline was turning into a map.
Accident.
Pierce.
False scans.
Medication.
Money transfers.
Marriage.
Inheritance.
I hated where the map pointed.
“What if the accident wasn’t supposed to paralyze you?” I said.
Adrian turned.
“What?”
“What if you were supposed to die?”
Nobody answered.
I continued.
“You survived. So Victoria needed another plan.”
Nathan looked grim.
“Keep Adrian dependent, marry him, then eventually arrange something that appears medically natural.”
Eleanor whispered, “My God.”
Adrian’s face remained unreadable.
“Speculation.”
“Yes.”
“Dangerous speculation.”
“Yes.”
“But possible.”
“Yes.”
He stared at me for a long moment.
Then said, “Find the investigator.”
Nathan made the call.
The investigator’s name was Peter Sloan.
Former NYPD.
He hadn’t spoken to Adrian in nearly a year.
His phone went directly to voicemail.
His apartment was empty.
His office was closed.
Nathan’s staff found something else.
Sloan had boarded a flight to Costa Rica ten months ago.
There was no record of him returning.
“He disappeared too?” I asked.
“Apparently.”
Adrian looked disgusted.
“Every person connected to this case disappears.”
“Not every person.”
Everyone looked at me.
“I’m still here.”
Adrian’s expression softened.
“That may not be comforting.”
It should have frightened me.
Instead, it made me angry.
Victoria had spent more than a year building a world around Adrian in which everyone who might challenge her was removed.
Nurses.
Doctors who disagreed.
Household staff.
Investigators.
Now me.
I understood something.
Abusers don’t always need physical strength.
Sometimes they use access.
Sometimes money.
Sometimes sympathy.
Sometimes they convince everyone that the person resisting them is the problem.
Late that afternoon, my mother called.
“Elena.”
Her voice was wrong.
“Mom?”
“There’s a woman outside.”
I stood.
“What woman?”
“She says she is from the hotel.”
My heart dropped.
“Lock the door.”
“It is locked.”
“Where’s Mateo?”
“At class.”
“Do not open it.”
Adrian noticed my face.
“What happened?”
I put the call on speaker.
My mother whispered, “She keeps knocking.”
A voice sounded faintly from the other side of the apartment door.
“Mrs. Torres? We only need to speak with Elena.”
I knew that voice.
Rachel Langley.
Victoria’s mother.
“She’s at my house.”
Adrian immediately signaled security.
I heard my mother breathe faster.
Then Rachel spoke again.
“I know you can hear me. Your daughter has gotten involved in something she doesn’t understand.”
I grabbed my bag.
“I’m going home.”
“No,” Adrian said.
“That’s my mother.”
“Exactly.”
“I’m not sitting here.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
He turned to security.
“Car. Now.”
We reached my building in twelve minutes.
Police arrived first.
Rachel was gone.
But she had left an envelope beneath the door.
Inside was a photograph.
My father.
Taken thirteen years earlier.
He was younger.
Standing beside a black sedan.
Next to him was a man I recognized immediately.
Dr. Warren Pierce.
My mother sat at the kitchen table staring at the photograph.
“I don’t understand.”
Neither did I.
My father had died five years earlier.
He had worked maintenance at a university hospital before his stroke.
Or at least that was what I had always believed.
“Mom, did Dad know Pierce?”
Her face had gone white.
“Yes.”
The room stopped.
“How?”
She looked toward Adrian.
Then Eleanor.
“I think you all need to sit down.”
Nobody did.
My mother folded her hands.
“Your father didn’t work maintenance before his stroke.”
“What?”
“He was an orderly when we married. Later he became a medical-equipment technician.”
“Why did you tell us maintenance?”
“Because after the stroke, he made me promise.”
“Promise what?”
“To never discuss Dr. Pierce.”
Adrian moved closer.
“Why?”
My mother looked at him.
“Because your doctor tried to pay my husband to destroy medical records.”
Silence.
“When?” Nathan asked.
“Fourteen years ago.”
“What records?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did your husband?”
“No. He refused.”
“What happened after that?”
My mother’s eyes filled.
“Three weeks later, his car brakes failed.”
The air left my lungs.
I remembered the accident.
Dad hadn’t had the stroke randomly.
He crashed into a utility pole on his way home from work.
The stroke happened after emergency surgery.
“We were told it was mechanical failure.”
My mother shook her head.
“Your father never believed that.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because we had two children.”
Her voice broke.
“Because somebody came to the hospital and told me that if Carlos kept asking questions, next time our children might be in the car.”
Adrian went completely still.
“What hospital did your husband work for?”
My mother answered.
“Saint Matthew Medical Center.”
Nathan’s face changed.
“What?”
My mother repeated it.
Adrian looked at him.
“Why does that matter?”
Nathan opened his laptop.
“Because Saint Matthew was owned by Langley Healthcare.”
Victoria’s family.
Suddenly this wasn’t about Victoria.
It was older.
Much older.
Nathan began searching corporate records.
After several minutes he stopped.
“Rachel Langley was on the hospital board fourteen years ago.”
My mother covered her mouth.
I stared at the photograph of my father and Pierce.
A dead man.
A missing investigator.
A billionaire nearly killed in a suspicious crash.
One doctor connecting all of them.
Then Adrian’s phone rang.
Unknown number.
He answered.
Nothing.
Then a man’s voice.
Weak.
“Adrian Vale?”
“Yes.”
“My name is Peter Sloan.”
Everyone froze.
Adrian put the call on speaker.
“Where are you?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“We thought you were in Costa Rica.”
“I wanted people to think that.”
“Why?”
“Because I found the truck.”
The missing investigator coughed.
“And the person who paid for it.”
Adrian’s hand tightened around the phone.
“Victoria?”
“No.”
May you like
A pause.
“Her mother.”
