Chapter 15 - The Price of Proof
Nora pulled the drive free before Richard’s hand reached it. Adrian shoved a rolling tool cart between them, buying enough time for Luis to get the evidence into Simone’s hands. The agents moved into the room, weapons lowered but ready, and ordered Richard to the floor.
He did not surrender. He grabbed a metal flashlight and swung it at Adrian’s head. Adrian ducked, but the blow struck his shoulder and drove him into the console. Nora seized the fire extinguisher from the wall and blasted Richard in the face with white chemical foam.
He stumbled, coughing. Two agents tackled him and cuffed his hands behind his back.
For a moment, the room was filled with nothing but the alarm, the agents’ commands, and Nora’s ragged breathing.
Then Richard began to laugh.
“You think this ends with me?” he said through the foam. “The board knew about the risk. Voss knew. Your father signed the first prototype waiver.”
Nora felt the words hit. “What?”
Simone stepped between them. “You’ll have a chance to make a statement.”
Richard’s smile turned cruel. “Ask your mother. Ask her what your father agreed to before he died.”
Celeste, who had arrived with the second group of agents, stood frozen at the doorway. Nora turned to her.
“Is it true?”
Her mother closed her eyes. “Your father signed a waiver for the early test program. It was standard at the time. When the first safety issue appeared, he ordered the program stopped. Richard restarted it after your father’s death.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I thought it would bury your father’s name. Because I thought I could protect what was left of our family.”
Nora looked at the drive in her hand. The truth was bigger than Richard, bigger than a single murder. It reached back through years of choices made in boardrooms and signed on clean paper by people who told themselves the danger was temporary.
Simone placed the drive in an evidence bag. “We have enough to open the case. But there will be questions about the original waiver, and the board may try to claim this was a series of isolated mistakes.”
“Then we show them the whole chain,” Nora said.
Adrian’s shoulder was swelling. He tried to hide the pain, but Nora saw it and helped him sit against the wall.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
She wanted to say she forgave him. She wasn’t there yet.
“You can start by telling the investigators every single thing you did,” she said. “No more deciding what I can handle.”
He nodded.
May you like
Outside, snow kept falling over the test track, covering the tire marks and the broken fence. Nora knew the evidence would survive only if they got it to the public before Richard’s allies could bury it.
And at that exact moment, every screen in the building went black.
