Chapter 18 - The Room Went Black
In the darkness, chairs scraped and someone screamed. My phone slipped from my hand as a heavy shoulder hit me. I caught the edge of the table and shouted for everyone to stay down.
"Vanessa, where are you?"
A glass shattered. The emergency lighting flickered on, washing the room in red. Blake was gone. So was Cole. Vanessa crouched against the wall, holding her phone against her chest.
"He tried to take it," she whispered.
The boardroom doors had been locked electronically. Evelyn found the manual release beneath a panel while our building manager reported that the power had been cut to one floor only. It wasn't a city outage. It was deliberate.
When the doors opened, Brooks and uniformed officers entered. My attorney had called them the instant the meeting turned hostile. Vanessa surrendered the phone voluntarily and asked for counsel.
"I'll tell them everything," she said to me. "But you need to understand something. Blake keeps a second set of books. The hard drives from Harbor Seven aren't complete."
"Where are they?"
"In his car. He said if anything went wrong, he'd leave from North Pier."
Brooks dispatched officers to the garage and harbor routes. Cole was caught at a service entrance carrying a bag of documents and cash. Blake's parking space was empty.
The recovered recording contained Blake's voice describing the scheme in cold detail: counterfeit equipment purchased cheaply, legitimate contracts billed at full price, money diverted through North Pier companies. Cole had built false trust documents to move the profits once auditors began asking questions.
Then Blake said something that made my blood run cold.
"Aaron needed to learn that a truck can be an accident. Richard should have learned the same lesson before he started talking."
Vanessa's voice asked whether he was serious. Blake replied, "You don't survive in my business by leaving loose ends."
It was evidence, not a verdict, and we still needed to connect every statement to a real act. But the recording gave investigators a path toward the truth about both deaths.
My phone rang from an unfamiliar number.
"Daniel," Blake said pleasantly, "I know you're standing with the police. Tell them you've got ten minutes to come to the pier."
"Why would I do that?"
May you like
He breathed out slowly.
"Because I have the last thing your father ever wrote, and I'm about to burn it."
