Chapter 9 - The Warehouse
“Absolutely not,” Anna said.
Richard had put Nolan on speaker, but the line had gone dead before Alvarez could trace it.
The meeting location arrived by text one minute later: an abandoned Mercer storage warehouse near the river.
Alvarez wanted surveillance teams in position before Richard entered.
Nolan had anticipated that too.
A second message appeared.
NO COPS. I SEE ONE, I BURN EVERYTHING.
Attached was a photograph of a metal lockbox.
On its lid sat Anna’s missing trust documents.
Beside them was a flash drive.
Richard looked at Alvarez. “He has evidence.”
“He says he has evidence.”
“I’m going.”
Anna grabbed his wrist. “He helped your sister push our son down the stairs.”
“We don’t know what he helped her do.”
“That sentence is not comforting.”
Richard covered her hand with his.
“I need to know how far this goes.”
Alvarez compromised. Richard would enter alone wearing a concealed audio transmitter. Officers would stay beyond Nolan’s likely line of sight.
The warehouse smelled like rust, river water, and old oil.
Nolan stood under one hanging work light.
He looked exhausted.
“You came.”
Richard stopped twenty feet away. “You used my passwords.”
“Yes.”
“You helped Vanessa spy on my wife.”
“Yes.”
“You disabled the staircase camera.”
Nolan swallowed. “Yes.”
Richard took one step forward.
“Did you know she was going to push Leo?”
“No.”
Richard hit him.
The punch dropped Nolan against a crate.
He did not fight back.
“I deserved that,” Nolan said, blood on his lip.
“You deserve worse.”
“I know.”
“Then talk.”
Nolan dragged himself upright.
“Vanessa came to me five months ago. She said Anna was manipulating you, isolating you, trying to take control of the company through Leo’s trust.”
“And you believed her?”
“At first.”
Richard laughed without humor.
Nolan continued. “She wanted proof Anna was unstable. I set up the nursery camera. I gave Vanessa access. I helped her collect footage.”
“You replaced Anna’s medication?”
Nolan looked confused. “What?”
Richard studied him.
Nolan’s shock looked real.
“You didn’t know.”
“No.”
“Then why did you erase the staircase feed?”
“Vanessa called me at 7:10. She said Anna was having some kind of breakdown and might hurt Leo. She told me to disable the camera because she was going to physically remove Leo from the house and didn’t want Anna twisting the footage.”
Richard’s hands curled into fists.
“When did you realize she lied?”
“After the fall. I checked the cloud queue. I saw the thumbnail.”
“So you restored it.”
“I copied it before deleting the access trail.”
“Why not call me?”
Nolan looked toward the dark end of the warehouse.
“Because by then I knew Vanessa wasn’t working alone.”
A metallic click sounded above them.
Nolan’s face changed.
May you like
“Get down!”
The first gunshot shattered the hanging light.
