Chapter 12 - THE VOICE OF REBECCA MERCERDominic listened to the recording seventeen times.
By the eighteenth, I took the laptop away.
“Enough.”
“Give it back.”
“No.”
“Eleanor.”
“Listening again won't change the waveform.”
His eyes lifted.
That was when I understood.
He wasn't analyzing it.
He was remembering her.
Rebecca had been dead for eight years.
Dominic had buried her.
Caleb had grown up visiting her grave.
Yet someone had just sent us a recording in her voice.
Alexander ran forensic analysis overnight.
The next morning, he entered the kitchen looking exhausted.
Caleb was eating cereal.
Dominic hadn't eaten anything.
“Well?” I asked.
Alexander set down his laptop.
“The recording is old.”
Dominic looked up.
“How old?”
“At least eight years.”
Relief and disappointment crossed his face simultaneously.
Rebecca wasn't alive.
We had known that.
Knowing it again still hurt.
Alexander continued.
“The audio wasn't generated. No evidence of synthetic reconstruction. Based on compression artifacts, it was probably recorded before Rebecca died.”
“Then who sent it?”
“That remains the extremely inconvenient question.”
The necklace offered our first clue.
Rebecca had worn it constantly.
Dominic believed it had been buried with her.
It hadn't.
Her personal effects had been catalogued after her death.
The necklace was missing.
Caleb pushed his cereal away.
“So someone was with her before she died.”
“Yes,” Dominic said.
“Someone she trusted?”
Probably.
Caleb stood.
“I want to help.”
“No.”
“Dad.”
“No.”
“I’m fourteen.”
“Correct. Which is younger than fifteen.”
“That isn't an argument.”
“It is in this house.”
Caleb looked at me.
I raised both hands.
“Don't involve me.”
“Coward.”
“Survivor.”
He left annoyed.
Dominic watched him go.
“He's getting too much like Alexander.”
From the doorway, Alexander said, “Thank you.”
“That wasn't praise.”
Our investigation led us back to Rebecca's charitable foundation.
After her death, most of its programs had been absorbed into Mercer Capital's philanthropic division.
One remained separate.
A small legal-aid fund for whistleblowers.
The fund had quietly made monthly payments for eleven years.
Always the same amount.
Always to the same recipient.
A woman named Grace Holloway.
She lived in Vermont.
Dominic wanted twenty security officers.
I negotiated him down to six.
He brought nine.
Marriage is compromise.
Grace Holloway lived in a white farmhouse outside Burlington.
She was seventy-two.
When she opened the door and saw Dominic, she began crying.
“You finally came.”
Dominic froze.
“You knew Rebecca?”
Grace looked at me.
Then at him.
“Come inside.”
Her house smelled like cinnamon and old books.
She brought us tea nobody drank.
Then she placed a wooden box on the table.
“Rebecca gave me this three days before she died.”
Dominic's hands tightened.
“Why didn't you contact me?”
“She told me not to.”
“Why?”
“She didn't know who she could trust.”
That wounded him.
Grace noticed.
“She loved you.”
“Apparently not enough to trust me.”
“No. Enough to protect you.”
Grace opened the box.
Inside were cassette tapes, documents and a journal.
Rebecca's handwriting covered the first page.
Dominic touched it carefully.
Grace looked at me.
“She was looking for you.”
My chest tightened.
“Why?”
“Because she discovered Nathaniel Vale wasn't the first accountant to uncover the network.”
“Who was?”
Grace's expression changed.
“A woman named Evelyn Cross.”
Alexander leaned forward.
“Cross?”
“Julian's wife.”
I stared.
Julian had never mentioned a wife.
Grace continued.
“Evelyn discovered what her husband was doing years before Nathaniel. She tried to expose him.”
“What happened?”
“She disappeared.”
“When?”
“Twenty-seven years ago.”
Dominic opened Rebecca's journal.
Several pages contained names.
One had been circled repeatedly.
EVELYN CROSS.
Beside it:
FIND THE DAUGHTER.
“What daughter?” I asked.
Grace stood and walked to a cabinet.
She removed another photograph.
A young woman stood beside Rebecca.
She appeared approximately twenty-five.
Dark hair.
Gray eyes.
Around her neck was Rebecca's silver necklace.
Dominic stared.
“Who is she?”
Grace swallowed.
“Her name was Lydia.”
“Was?”
“She disappeared after Rebecca died.”
I turned the photograph over.
Rebecca had written one sentence.
If anything happens to me, Lydia knows why.
Dominic's phone rang.
Blackthorne security.
He answered.
His expression changed immediately.
“What?”
He listened.
Then looked toward me.
“When?”
Another pause.
“We're coming.”
He disconnected.
“What happened?” I asked.
His voice became dangerously quiet.
“Caleb left school.”
My heart stopped.
“With whom?”
May you like
Dominic looked at the photograph of Lydia.
“A woman matching her description.”
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