Chapter 19 - The Son Nobody Mentioned
Thomas Whitmore had a son.
Evan.
Lauren's older brother.
No public records connected them because Evan changed his name after a juvenile hacking case and disappeared from the family business.
“He hates me,” Thomas said.
“Get in line,” Daniel muttered.
The countdown showed three minutes.
Marcus traced the deletion command to an internal maintenance terminal two floors below.
I looked at the stairs.
Daniel saw my face. “Absolutely not.”
“The elevators are locked.”
“You can barely walk.”
“Then keep up.”
Marcus and I took the stairs.
Forty-one to thirty-nine felt like forty miles.
My knee burned. Sweat soaked my shirt. Twice I nearly fell.
But fear no longer controlled the leg.
At the maintenance room, Marcus kicked the door open.
A man in a gray hoodie sat at the terminal.
Evan Whitmore looked nothing like Lauren except around the eyes.
He raised both hands.
“Don't shoot. The delete is fake.”
Marcus kept his weapon trained on him.
“Stop the clock.”
Evan typed one key.
The countdown froze at 01:12.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“To make all of you watch.”
He opened a folder.
Hundreds of files appeared—payments, recordings, offshore accounts, surveillance orders, messages between Thomas, Lauren, Keller, directors, contractors.
Everything.
“I've been collecting this for five years,” Evan said. “My father destroys people and calls it strategy.”
“You put spyware in my house?”
“No. I found it. Then I copied everything it recorded.”
Marcus frowned. “Why not go to the police?”
“Because my father owned the story. I needed him in a room where he couldn't deny it.”
He clicked SEND.
The archive transferred to Ruiz, federal investigators, and three law firms.
Then one final file opened automatically.
Audio.
My father's voice.
Thomas's voice.
A conversation from twelve years earlier.
My father said, “If anything happens to me, Vincent gets everything.”
Thomas replied, “Then maybe Vincent should get nothing.”
There was a long pause.
My father said quietly, “If you touch my son again, I bury you.”
I closed my eyes.
He had hurt me.
May you like
He had also tried, too late, to stop the monster he helped create.
Then a gunshot echoed from the floor above.
