Chapter 9 - The Gunshot
“Daniel!”
The line stayed open.
Claire heard glass breaking, footsteps, then a heavy crash.
“Daniel!” she shouted again.
A man’s voice, distant: “Check upstairs.”
Not Daniel.
Claire ended the call.
Evan stood. “We leave. Now.”
“Daniel’s in trouble.”
“He tried to frame you for murder.”
“He also knows something about my father.”
“That does not make him safe.”
Claire grabbed her coat. “I didn’t say safe.”
They drove to the Whitmore mansion but parked two blocks away.
The front gate was open.
One security camera hung broken from its mount.
Inside, the foyer was shattered.
A vase lay in pieces.
There was blood on the floor.
Not much, but enough.
“Daniel?” Claire called.
No answer.
They moved toward the study.
The room had been torn apart.
Drawers dumped. Books ripped from shelves. Eleanor’s desk overturned.
“Someone was searching,” Evan whispered.
“For what?”
Claire looked at the old letter on her phone.
Something Thomas had hidden.
A floorboard creaked upstairs.
Evan grabbed Claire’s arm.
A man appeared at the landing.
Officer Hale.
He wore plain clothes and held a pistol.
Claire’s mouth went dry.
“Hale?”
He looked surprised to see her.
Then his gun lifted.
Evan shoved Claire behind a column.
A shot cracked through the foyer.
They ran through the kitchen.
Hale followed.
Claire slammed the pantry door behind them and pushed a shelf across it.
“Back exit!” Evan shouted.
They burst into the courtyard.
A black SUV was parked beside the garden wall.
The rear door opened.
Daniel stumbled out, one hand pressed to his shoulder.
Claire froze.
He was alive.
“Get in!” he shouted.
“Why should I trust you?”
“Because Hale isn’t working for me.”
The pantry door crashed open behind them.
Daniel raised a handgun with his good arm and fired once above Hale’s head, forcing him back.
“Claire!” Daniel yelled. “If Martin gets your father’s ledger, your father died for nothing!”
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Claire got into the SUV.
And immediately saw Martin Shaw sitting in the driver’s seat.
