Chapter 9 - Uncle Raymond
Raymond Cole had attended Claire and Nicholas’s wedding.
He had danced with Claire’s mother.
He had stood beside Marcus at Nicholas’s funeral and cried during the eulogy.
He had also been Vincent Moretti’s closest friend for thirty years.
“Raymond is seventy-two,” Claire whispered as they escaped The Langley through a service elevator.
Marcus laughed bitterly.
“He’s seventy-two, not dead.”
Nathan kept his gun trained on him.
“Why would Raymond want me gone?”
“Because you were about to expose the Circle.”
“Then why not just kill me?”
“They tried.”
Marcus looked at Claire.
“The crash was supposed to be final. But the extraction team found Nicholas breathing.”
“And you saved him?” Claire asked.
“I moved him before Raymond’s men arrived.”
Nathan stared at him.
“You drugged me.”
“To keep you unconscious while I found somewhere to hide you.”
“You put me in a basement.”
“I put you with a retired combat medic who owed Dad his life.”
Nathan’s anger flickered into confusion.
Marcus said, “When that medic died of a stroke, you woke up alone. I lost you.”
Claire remembered the video.
“You said I would grieve the way you needed me to.”
Marcus looked ashamed for the first time.
“I needed Raymond to believe the plan was working.”
Nathan lowered the gun slightly.
Claire did not.
She had taken the dead attacker’s weapon from her penthouse.
“Why was I being watched?”
“Because Raymond wanted proof you were breaking down.”
“For the shares.”
“Yes.”
They reached a parking garage.
Marcus stopped beside a black sedan.
“There’s something else.”
Nathan groaned. “There’s always something else.”
Marcus looked at Claire.
“The man in Nicholas’s grave was not a stranger.”
Claire’s hand tightened around the gun.
“Who was he?”
Marcus hesitated.
Then said, “Daniel Shaw.”
Claire frowned.
The name meant nothing.
“Dr. Evelyn Shaw’s younger brother,” Marcus said. “He looked enough like Nicholas after the fire that dental records could finish the lie.”
Claire felt sick.
“You murdered an innocent man?”
Marcus’s face hardened.
“No.”
Nathan said, “Then who did?”
Marcus looked toward the garage entrance.
May you like
“Dr. Shaw did.”
A red laser dot appeared on Marcus’s chest.
