Chapter 13 - Harbor Point
No one spoke until the call ended.
Then Patricia said, “We’re calling the police.”
Rachel shook her head. “Peter expects that.”
“Good.”
“He also expects Emily to bring the approval.”
“There is no approval,” I said.
Daniel looked at me.
“There could be.”
I stared at him.
“Absolutely not.”
“I mean a fake one.”
Rachel leaned forward.
“He only needs to believe it long enough to show us Ryan.”
Lila was already on speaker with law enforcement by the time we finished arguing. The detective assigned to the intrusion case wanted us nowhere near Harbor Point.
I agreed.
Then he said it would take hours to coordinate a tactical response because the site was outside city jurisdiction.
I stopped agreeing.
At 8:15 p.m., I printed a copy of the draft approval memo and signed a version marked INVALID in microtext across the footer. Owen embedded a tracking chip inside the presentation folder. Police knew what we were doing, disliked it, and positioned units two miles away.
Harbor Point had once been Caldwell Development’s biggest project: three luxury residential towers overlooking the river.
Now it was a skeleton of concrete floors and rusting rebar.
Rain hissed across the unfinished slabs.
Daniel drove. I sat beside him. Rachel stayed behind with police and remote access to the tracker.
“You don’t have to come in,” Daniel said.
“Yes, I do.”
“If Peter wants you—”
“He wants the paper.”
“He may want leverage.”
“I stopped being leverage when I froze the funding.”
Daniel glanced at me.
“That’s not what I meant.”
I knew.
At 8:57, we entered the ground floor.
A work light glowed near the center of the open concrete space.
Peter stood beside it wearing a dark raincoat.
Ryan sat in a folding chair twenty feet away.
He was not tied up.
That was the first problem.
The second was that he was holding a gun.
Daniel stopped.
“Ryan?”
His brother’s face looked wrecked.
“I’m sorry.”
Peter smiled.
“Family reunions are exhausting.”
I held the folder at my side.
“You said he was your hostage.”
“I said if you wanted him back.”
Ryan rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand.
“He gave me a choice.”
Daniel’s voice shook. “Between what?”
“Prison and helping him finish this.”
I looked at Ryan.
“Those were never the choices.”
“You don’t know what I did.”
“I know enough.”
Peter stepped closer.
“Give me the approval.”
“No.”
His smile thinned.
“Emily, you are remarkably confident for a woman standing in an abandoned building with a man who has very little left to lose.”
“I’ve negotiated with private equity.”
Ryan made a strangled sound that might have been a laugh.
Peter did not.
He held out his hand.
“The folder.”
I lifted it.
“First tell Daniel who forged my signature.”
Peter looked at Ryan.
Ryan stared at the floor.
Daniel whispered, “You?”
Ryan’s eyes filled.
“I copied it from the marriage license.”
Daniel took a step toward him.
Peter raised one finger.
Ryan lifted the gun.
Daniel stopped.
I asked, “Why?”
Ryan’s breath hitched.
“Peter said the rescue money would erase everything. The Northlight holes. My debt. Bracken. He said once the money landed, we could refinance and nobody would ever know.”
“So you forged me into a crime.”
“I thought it was temporary.”
I almost admired the phrase.
Temporary fraud.
Peter held out his hand again.
I threw the folder onto the wet concrete between us.
He walked forward and picked it up.
At that exact moment, every work light in the building went out.
Rachel’s voice came through the tiny earpiece hidden under my hair.
“Tracker is live. Police are moving.”
May you like
Peter’s flashlight snapped on.
Then Ryan fired.
