Chapter 13 - Don’t Go Alone
Eleven months of grief had made Elena susceptible to a single impossible hope: maybe the envelope contained Marcus's voice, his explanation, some last proof that he'd been brave and frightened and human. She wanted to go immediately. Her hand was on the door before she caught herself.
"No," she said aloud to the empty apartment. "That's how he wins."
She called Pierce. The detective checked the message, logged the number, and arranged a controlled exchange through counsel. Whoever possessed the envelope could hand it to a neutral representative at the police station. Elena would not appear at a deserted parking lot to satisfy an anonymous threat.
For forty minutes the sender refused. Then another text arrived: THEY ARE GOING TO DESTROY IT.
Pierce traced the message to a prepaid phone briefly active near a storage garage owned by a Ward subsidiary. Investigators obtained authorization to enter. Inside they found packing crates, discarded gala decorations, and a melting pool of water beneath a bare metal sculpture frame.
Tessa's copy was not in the ice. It had been taped inside the metal base. The storage team had missed the small compartment when they moved it. Pierce photographed the seam before opening it.
A memory card was there, sealed in plastic. Tessa wept when she heard.
"I thought I'd gotten Noah killed," she said.
"You tried to preserve evidence," Elena told her. "That took courage. Now let the people with badges carry some of the weight."
The card contained photographs of the ledger and a short video Tessa had filmed while pretending to adjust lights. In the background, Celia spoke to Victor beside the banquet podium. The sound was faint but recoverable.
"You promised the bridge problem was finished," Victor said.
"It was," Celia replied. "Until your wife decided to become curious."
Then Victor glanced toward the camera and the recording stopped.
Pierce played it twice. Elena's blood ran cold, not because it solved anything, but because it confirmed that the people closest to her had spoken of Marcus's death as a problem to manage.
The envelope from the threatening text still hadn't turned up.
May you like
Then the police evidence clerk called Pierce. "Detective, a man just walked into the front lobby carrying a brown package. He says he used to drive for Mrs. Ward."
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