Chapter 16 - In the Dark
I drove my elbow backward.
It connected with a rib.
A man grunted.
Dad shouted my name as emergency lights flickered on.
I saw Elliot for half a second.
Gray suit. Blood on his mouth. Moving toward the service corridor.
“Police!” someone yelled.
He ran.
I chased him before anyone could stop me.
The corridor led past kitchens and storage rooms to a private stairwell. Elliot kicked a cart behind him. Plates crashed across the floor.
I jumped over the mess.
He looked back and smiled.
That smile made me understand something terrible.
He wanted me to follow.
I stopped.
A second later, a gunshot cracked from the stairwell.
The bullet hit the wall where my head would have been.
I dropped behind the cart.
Officers rushed past me.
Elliot disappeared upstairs.
Dad reached me seconds later and pulled me into his arms.
“You never listen.”
“I stopped.”
“Eventually.”
Another shot echoed.
Then silence.
Police cleared the second floor room by room.
They found the office window open and a rope hanging down the side of the building.
Elliot was gone again.
But he had left something on Dad’s desk.
My mother’s wedding ring.
Dad stared at it for a long time.
“How did he get that?” I asked.
Mom’s ring had never been recovered from the crash.
Dad picked it up with gloved fingers.
Inside the band was the tiny inscription I knew from photographs.
T + E, ALWAYS.
Real.
Elliot had access to evidence from the crash itself.
Detectives reopened every old chain-of-custody record overnight.
At 3:00 a.m., they found the break.
A deputy assigned to the crash scene had resigned six months later and moved to Arizona.
His name was Paul Denton.
Records showed one major unexplained payment into his account two days after my mother died.
The source company was long gone.
But its authorized signer was not.
Dad read the name aloud.
“Richard Marsh.”
Elliot’s father.
Then Miriam looked at the second signature.
She stopped breathing.
“What?” I asked.
She turned the page toward us.
May you like
The co-signer was someone still sitting on Hawthorne Group’s board.
Someone Dad trusted with everything.
