Chapter 8 - THE DEAD MAN CAME HOMEThomas Vale made his first mistake at a gas station outside Albuquerque.
A security camera captured his face.
Gray beard.
Baseball cap.
Sunglasses.
But definitely him.
He bought coffee, bottled water, and a prepaid phone.
Then disappeared again.
Federal agents locked down Eleanor’s property.
Rebecca and Leo were moved to a secure location.
I refused to go.
“You’re a target,” Alvarez said.
“Exactly.”
“That isn’t an argument for staying exposed.”
“It is if Thomas wants me.”
Rebecca hated the idea.
“He threatened Leo.”
“That’s why Leo won’t be anywhere near me.”
“You think turning yourself into bait makes you brave?”
“No.”
“What does it make you?”
“Useful.”
Eventually, investigators agreed on a controlled plan.
We leaked information through a channel Thomas was known to monitor.
The leak said I had recovered a complete copy of the Continuity Circle financial ledger.
It was false.
But Thomas didn’t know that.
The message said I would trade the ledger for an agreement protecting Rebecca and Leo.
Thomas responded within three hours.
Midnight. Prescott Mill. Alone.
The same mill where Rebecca had been held.
Of course.
Men like Thomas loved symbolism.
At 11:58 p.m., I entered the building wearing a wire and tracking device.
Agents surrounded the property beyond visual range.
The mill was dark.
Moonlight entered through broken upper windows.
My footsteps echoed across concrete.
“Thomas?”
Nothing.
Then an overhead light came on.
He stood on the old supervisor’s platform.
A dead man.
Older.
Thinner.
But unmistakable.
My former brother-in-law.
“You look good, Jon.”
“You look alive.”
He smiled.
“Technicality.”
“You destroyed Eleanor.”
“She survived.”
“That’s your defense?”
“Eleanor was always stronger than she believed.”
“You let her mourn you.”
“I needed freedom.”
“To steal companies?”
“To preserve them.”
There it was again.
The same language Nathaniel used.
Continuity.
Protection.
Preservation.
Words criminals used when “greed” sounded too ugly.
“You threatened a three-year-old.”
Thomas’s smile faded.
“I threatened you.”
“You wrote his name.”
“Because it guaranteed you’d take me seriously.”
I stepped closer.
“You dug up Marianne’s grave.”
“No.”
I stopped.
“What?”
“I had nothing to do with that.”
“Don’t lie.”
“I have done many things you would call unforgivable. Desecrating Marianne’s grave is not one of them.”
My mind raced.
“Then who?”
Thomas looked amused.
“You still don’t understand how many people are playing this game.”
“Tell me.”
“Give me the ledger.”
“There is no ledger.”
His face changed.
Tiny movement.
Enough.
“You lied.”
“Yes.”
He reached inside his coat.
Agents listening through my wire tensed.
I did too.
Thomas removed a phone.
Not a weapon.
He tapped the screen.
A live video appeared.
Rebecca.
My daughter sat in the secure house.
Leo beside her.
I panicked.
“How?”
“Relax. It’s surveillance footage.”
“How did you get it?”
“I still have friends.”
My anger shifted toward terror.
Government protection had been compromised.
Thomas lowered the phone.
“Nathaniel made a mess because he became emotional.”
“You call kidnapping a mess?”
“Yes.”
“And Florence?”
“Another mistake.”
“You recruited her?”
“Nathaniel did.”
“Why me?”
Thomas sighed.
“Because Prescott Development controls land we need.”
“What land?”
“Seventy-three logistics properties across six states. Warehouses. Transportation corridors. Data-center parcels.”
“Need for what?”
“A consolidation.”
“You tried to steal my company for real estate?”
“Billions have been stolen for less.”
I shook my head.
“You could have offered to buy.”
“You would refuse.”
“Yes.”
“Exactly.”
He moved closer.
“Your father understood that family companies survive because strong people make decisions weak people cannot.”
“My father was many things. He wasn’t you.”
Thomas smiled.
“You never knew him.”
Before I could answer, gunfire erupted outside.
Thomas’s head snapped toward the windows.
My earpiece crackled.
“MOVE! MOVE!”
I dropped behind an old machine.
Shots shattered glass.
Thomas ran.
Agents entered from two doors.
Someone outside was firing at both police and Thomas.
Meaning a third group had arrived.
Thomas was telling the truth about one thing.
He was not the only player.
A vehicle crashed through a side gate.
Thomas sprinted toward it.
I saw the driver.
Charles Mercer.
The missing lawyer.
Mercer shouted, “GET IN!”
Thomas jumped into the passenger seat.
The vehicle accelerated.
Federal SUVs pursued.
I was evacuated.
Within minutes, police cornered Mercer’s SUV near an overpass.
Thomas and Mercer fled on foot.
Mercer surrendered.
Thomas climbed the barrier.
An agent ordered him to stop.
He looked down at the river thirty feet below.
Then jumped.
Divers searched until dawn.
No body.
Again.
Eleanor laughed bitterly when she heard.
“Of course.”
Thomas Vale had apparently become very good at dying.
Mercer, however, was alive.
And terrified.
He immediately requested protection.
His testimony exposed the final layer.
Thomas had returned to the United States not to hurt us.
He came because someone had stolen from the Continuity Circle.
Over sixty million dollars.
The thief had manipulated Nathaniel, Florence, Adrian, and Thomas into destroying one another while moving money offshore.
“Who?” Alvarez demanded.
Mercer answered.
“Florence.”
I stared at him.
“That’s impossible. Florence was working for Nathaniel.”
“Yes.”
“She was in custody when half this happened.”
“Yes.”
“So how?”
Mercer shook his head.
“You all keep assuming Florence Fairmont is her real name.”
My stomach tightened.
“It isn’t?”
“No.”
“Who is she?”
Mercer looked directly at me.
“Ask Nathaniel about a woman named Claire Bennett.”
We did.
For the first time since his arrest, Nathaniel lost his composure.
“That’s not her.”
Alvarez placed Florence’s photograph in front of him.
Nathaniel stared.
Then whispered:
“Oh God.”
Claire Bennett had been the daughter of the first CEO destroyed by the Continuity Circle twenty years earlier.
Her father lost his company.
Then his home.
Then his life.
Claire was fourteen.
She spent the next two decades studying everyone responsible.
Nathaniel.
Thomas.
Mercer.
The Prescott family.
Including me.
Florence had not joined their conspiracy to get rich.
She infiltrated it.
She manipulated the manipulators.
She intended to steal their hidden fortune and expose the network.
But somewhere along the way, Rebecca discovered her.
And Florence chose her mission over my daughter’s safety.
That still made her guilty.
But it changed everything else.
Alvarez rushed to the detention center.
Florence was gone.
Not escaped.
Released.
A judge had granted emergency bail based on sealed representations from a federal attorney.
A federal attorney whose name appeared on Marianne’s list.
The system itself had been compromised.
Florence had walked out forty minutes earlier.
A taxi camera captured her leaving downtown.
Destination unknown.
Then my phone received a message.
From Florence.
I can end this tonight. Come alone if you want the truth about Marianne.
An address followed.
Rebecca saw it.
“No.”
I looked at her.
“We finish this.”
“Dad—”
“No more secrets.”
The address was a cemetery.
Marianne’s cemetery.
When I arrived with Alvarez secretly following from a distance, Florence was standing beside my wife’s grave.
The disturbed earth had been repaired.
Florence held something in her hand.
Marianne’s ring.
The same ring supposedly left at Eleanor’s house.
Except that one, forensic testing had revealed, was a replica.
Florence held the real one.
She looked at me.
“I’m the one who opened the grave.”
My hands curled.
“Why?”
“Because Marianne was buried with evidence.”
I stared at her.
Florence knelt beside the headstone.
“She knew someone would eventually come looking.”
Then she pulled a tiny waterproof capsule from beneath the stone.
Inside was a memory card.
Marianne’s final secret.
Florence handed it to me.
Before I could take it—
a red laser dot appeared on Florence’s chest.
She whispered:
“Down.”
May you like
A shot cracked through the cemetery.
Florence fell.
