Chapter 14 - The Room Without Windows

Heavy doors slammed at both ends of the archive. A ventilation fan roared to life. Eli smelled something bitter in the air.

Daniel's breath rasped while they rested beneath the trees. "June asked me to testify," he said. "I told her to wait until I had everything ready." He shook his head. "I kept finding reasons to wait." Nora was too tired to be kind. "Then don't wait now." He nodded and pulled out his phone, calling the federal tip line despite the risk to himself. It wasn't enough to make the past right. No one in that muddy ditch could make the past right. But it was a start, and Nora had learned to count starts instead of speeches.

"Cover your mouths."

Tessa ripped sleeves from her jacket and tied them across their faces. Nora photographed the documents with shaking hands while Daniel attacked the emergency panel with a crowbar he'd taken from the elevator.

"It's gas," Eli said. "We have maybe two minutes."

Nora found an old maintenance hatch behind a cabinet. Eli kicked the hinges until the metal bent. They crawled through one by one, the air burning their lungs, and dropped into a storm drain beneath the estate.

Daniel landed badly and cried out. His ankle had twisted. "Go," he said. "I'll slow you down."

"I've heard enough men tell me to leave people behind," Nora snapped. "Not happening."

She and Eli hauled him through knee-deep water while Tessa led with a flashlight. They surfaced beyond the fence, soaked and coughing.

Nora's phone held the photos, but the cloud upload hadn't completed. One image kept troubling her: an invoice for surveillance equipment delivered to Grant's penthouse three years earlier. The dates started before Eli's disappearance.

"Grant was watching me when we met," she said.

Eli stared at the screen. "He wasn't courting you. He was assigned to you."

Another message appeared, this one from Frank. It contained a location and a single sentence: I can get Vale out, but you'll have to believe me one last time.

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Attached was a photo of a hospital bracelet with Nora's name and a date seven months after her mother's death.

Nora had never been hospitalized that year.