Chapter 17 - The First Attempt
I laughed because the alternative was breaking something.
“My father is dead.”
“I said first attempt.”
Lauren told me the story in pieces.
Years before the office shooting, after my father learned I planned to remove several of his old allies from the company, he hired men to frighten me during a racing weekend. Not kill me. Make me back down.
The plan went wrong.
The crash that injured my spine in college wasn't an accident.
My father covered up the medical report because it connected back to him.
I wanted to call her a liar.
Then Ruiz placed a recovered email on the table.
It came from my father's archive.
Handle the track problem. No permanent harm.
I recognized his writing style immediately.
My hands went numb.
The man I had spent half my life trying to impress had built the first crack in my body. Thomas Whitmore had simply discovered it and learned how to widen it.
“Why tell me now?” I asked Lauren.
“Because Thomas will destroy me too.”
“You're asking for sympathy?”
“No. A deal.”
She offered the location of Thomas's original trust documents and the name of the shooter from six months earlier.
In exchange, she wanted prosecutors to know she cooperated.
Ruiz leaned forward. “Name.”
Lauren swallowed.
“Caleb Voss.”
Marcus knew him. Former private military contractor. Disappeared after the shooting.
“Where is he?”
“Thomas keeps him close now.”
“Where?”
Lauren wrote an address.
An abandoned riverside factory owned by a Whitmore shell company.
Ruiz stood to organize the arrest team.
Lauren grabbed my wrist.
“One more thing.”
I pulled away.
“What?”
“Tomorrow's board meeting isn't about the trust anymore.”
“What is it about?”
She looked terrified.
“Thomas knows the transfer may fail.”
May you like
“So?”
“So he's going to destroy Hale Industries before you can take it back.”
