Chapter 10 - The Man in the Stairwell
Ruiz drew her weapon and ordered everyone away from the windows.
A crash echoed in the stairwell outside Evelyn’s office.
Daniel ran before anyone could stop him.
“Daniel!” Ruiz shouted.
He shoved through the fire door and saw a man one flight below.
Grant.
“Stop!”
Grant looked up and smiled.
Then he ran.
Daniel chased him down three flights. Grant kicked open a service door and cut through a parking garage. Tires squealed somewhere ahead.
Daniel gained on him.
“You killed my father!” he shouted.
Grant spun and swung a metal flashlight. Daniel ducked, drove him into a concrete pillar, and grabbed his coat.
Grant head-butted him.
Pain exploded across Daniel’s nose.
Grant tore free and reached a black SUV.
Before he got in, he called back, “Ask your wife why she was really on that road the night she disappeared!”
The SUV sped away.
Daniel stood bleeding in the garage as Ruiz arrived.
Back upstairs, Evelyn was shaken but unharmed. Security footage showed Grant entering the building in a maintenance uniform forty minutes earlier.
The safe had been opened with Evelyn’s own combination.
“I never wrote it down,” she insisted.
Sarah stared at Grant’s watch.
“He wanted us to find that.”
“A message?” Ruiz asked.
Sarah nodded. “He’s telling us he can get anywhere.”
Daniel remembered Grant’s words in the garage.
“Sarah, why were you really on River Road?”
She looked away.
“I told you. I was coming to meet you.”
“He said otherwise.”
“Grant lies.”
“So do people who are terrified.”
Her eyes hardened. “You think after everything he did to me, I’m protecting him?”
“I think there’s something you haven’t said.”
Sarah stood.
“Yes. There is.”
She reached into her bag and pulled out a folded hospital envelope.
“I found this in my coat after they rescued me. Grant must have put it there while I was unconscious.”
Inside was an old photograph.
Robert Mercer—Daniel’s father—stood beside Grant at the family hunting lodge.
The date stamp was the day Robert died.
On the back, written in Robert’s handwriting, were five words:
DANIEL CAN NEVER KNOW WHY.
May you like
Daniel stared at the message.
Then Evelyn whispered, “I know what that means.”
