Chapter 2 - The Man at the Elevator
Rachel stopped breathing.
The stranger looked enough like Daniel to explain the photograph, but only from a distance.
Up close, he was older.
Maybe fifty.
A thin scar crossed his jaw.
Margaret stepped out of the elevator.
"Rachel, thank God."
"Don't come near me."
Margaret stopped.
The man remained inside.
Charles stared at him.
"You shouldn't be here."
The stranger smiled without warmth.
"Neither should you."
Rachel moved between her parents.
"Who is he?"
Neither answered.
"WHO IS HE?"
The stranger stepped from the elevator.
"Michael Grant."
Rachel knew the name.
Not personally.
From Daniel.
Michael Grant had been an outside auditor working with Daniel on the Whitmore accounts.
Three weeks ago Daniel had mentioned that Michael had suddenly resigned.
Rachel looked at him.
"Daniel said you moved to Chicago."
"I was supposed to."
Margaret grabbed Rachel's arm.
"Don't listen to him."
Rachel pulled away.
"You threw my children into a blizzard."
"I was protecting them."
Emma's voice came from the hospital room.
"No, you weren't."
Everyone turned.
Emma stood in the doorway wrapped in a hospital blanket.
A nurse rushed toward her.
Rachel reached her first.
"Baby, you shouldn't be standing."
Emma pointed at Margaret.
"She said the bad man would take us if we stayed."
Margaret's face crumpled.
Rachel stared at her mother.
"What bad man?"
Margaret said nothing.
Michael did.
"Me."
Rachel looked at him.
Michael reached slowly into his coat.
Charles moved instinctively in front of Rachel.
Michael stopped.
"It's paper, Charles."
He removed a folded document.
"I came to the house because Daniel asked me to."
"When?"
"Yesterday."
Rachel stared.
"Daniel was already sick yesterday."
"He knew something was wrong."
Michael unfolded the paper.
It was a bank-transfer record.
At the top was the Whitmore Development logo.
At the bottom was a company Rachel had never heard of.
NORTHSTAR HOLDINGS LLC.
Amount transferred:
$4,800,000.
"What's this?"
Michael looked at Charles.
"Ask your father."
Rachel did.
Charles lowered his head.
"Northstar was a shell company."
"Was?"
"It doesn't exist anymore."
"Who owned it?"
Margaret said sharply, "This is not the place."
Rachel turned on her.
"You lost the right to decide the place when you locked my children outside."
Margaret flinched.
Charles answered.
"Northstar belonged to your mother."
Rachel stared at Margaret.
Michael shook his head.
"That's only half true."
Margaret's expression changed.
"Michael."
"The paperwork belonged to Margaret. The money didn't."
"Stop."
"It belonged to Daniel."
Rachel felt the corridor tilt.
"My husband?"
Michael nodded.
"Or that's what someone wanted investigators to believe."
Rachel looked at the transfer.
Daniel's name appeared beside an authorization number.
"No."
"Daniel found it three weeks ago," Michael said. "Someone had been moving money through accounts using his credentials."
Rachel thought of Daniel's sleepless nights.
His strange silence.
His sudden insistence that they postpone buying a new house.
He had known.
"Why didn't he tell me?"
"Because he was trying to find out who was doing it."
Margaret stepped closer.
"Rachel, your husband was reckless."
"He was poisoned."
The words came from Charles.
Everyone went still.
Rachel slowly turned.
"What?"
Charles looked devastated.
"His collapse wasn't natural."
Rachel couldn't process the sentence.
"Doctors said internal bleeding."
"Because he was taking anticoagulants."
"He wasn't."
Charles met her eyes.
"Exactly."
Rachel's stomach turned.
"How do you know?"
Charles looked at Margaret.
Rachel followed his gaze.
Her mother didn't deny it.
"You knew?"
Margaret's eyes filled with tears.
"I knew someone had tampered with his medication."
"And you didn't tell me?"
"I was trying to protect you."
"Stop saying that!"
Rachel's shout echoed down the corridor.
Two officers approached.
Michael stepped backward.
Charles whispered, "Not here."
Rachel almost laughed.
All her life, that had been her family's answer.
Not here.
Not now.
Don't embarrass us.
Don't ask questions.
Keep the Whitmore name clean.
But Emma was shivering beneath a hospital blanket because of their secrets.
Rachel was finished protecting anyone.
She turned to the officers.
"My mother deliberately locked my daughters outside during a blizzard."
Margaret gasped.
"Rachel—"
"And my father believes my husband was poisoned."
The officers immediately separated them.
For the next forty minutes, Rachel told the story repeatedly.
Emma gave a statement with a pediatric social worker present.
Margaret insisted she'd received a threatening phone call saying someone was coming to take the girls.
She claimed she'd put them outside because a car was supposed to be waiting.
There had been no car.
Charles confirmed he'd tried to stop her.
Michael voluntarily handed over his documents.
Then Thomas Hale appeared at the hospital.
Rachel almost didn't recognize him.
Six years had changed him.
His hair had gone gray.
His shoulders were thinner.
But his eyes were the same.
Thomas looked through the glass at Emma and Lucy.
"They're alive."
"Because you found them."
He nodded.
"Why were you there?"
"Daniel called me."
"When?"
"Yesterday afternoon."
Rachel's anger faltered.
Thomas removed an old phone from his pocket.
"Your husband found me six months ago."
"Six months?"
"He wanted to know why I stole from your father."
"You did."
"No."
Thomas looked directly at Charles.
"Your father knew that."
Charles said nothing.
Rachel turned.
"Dad?"
Charles sat down.
His face seemed twenty years older.
"I let Thomas take the blame."
The words were almost inaudible.
Rachel stared at him.
"Why?"
"Because I thought I was saving this family."
Thomas gave a bitter laugh.
"You saved your company."
Charles didn't argue.
Thomas continued.
"Six years ago I discovered fraudulent transfers. Same pattern Daniel discovered."
"Northstar?"
"Different shell companies. Same destination."
"Where?"
"An investment trust in Switzerland."
Rachel looked at Margaret.
Her mother seemed suddenly very interested in the floor.
Rachel understood.
"Mom."
Margaret didn't look up.
"Was it you?"
"No."
"Then who?"
Margaret finally raised her eyes.
"Someone who had access to everything."
"Who?"
Before she could answer, a nurse rushed toward Rachel.
"Mrs. Bennett?"
Rachel's heart stopped.
"Your husband's awake."
Everything else disappeared.
She ran.
Daniel looked impossibly weak.
Machines surrounded him.
His face was pale.
But when Rachel entered, his eyes opened.
"Hey."
She began crying.
"You idiot."
A faint smile.
"Good Christmas?"
She laughed through tears.
"Absolutely terrible."
She took his hand.
"The girls are okay."
His smile vanished.
"What happened?"
Rachel told him.
Not everything.
Just enough.
Daniel closed his eyes.
"I should've told you."
"Yes."
"I'm sorry."
"Tell me now."
He looked toward the door.
"Your parents' company has been laundering money."
Rachel waited.
"For who?"
"I don't know."
"Daniel."
"I really don't."
He swallowed painfully.
"But I know who created the accounts."
"Who?"
"Your mother's signature is everywhere."
Rachel closed her eyes.
"But she didn't create them."
Rachel looked at him.
"How do you know?"
"Because the first account was opened twenty-eight years ago."
"So?"
Daniel squeezed her hand.
"Your mother was in the hospital when it was opened."
Rachel remembered.
Twenty-eight years ago.
The year her younger brother Matthew had been born.
Margaret had nearly died during delivery.
"Then who signed her name?"
Daniel looked toward the door.
"Your father knows."
Rachel returned downstairs.
Charles was gone.
Margaret was speaking to detectives.
Thomas stood alone.
"Where's my father?"
"He left."
"What?"
"He got a message."
Rachel pulled out her phone.
There was one waiting for her too.
From Charles.
DON'T COME HOME.
A second message appeared.
I SHOULD HAVE TOLD YOU WHO REALLY OWNS NORTHSTAR.
Then a photograph loaded.
Charles stood inside his study.
Behind him was an open wall safe.
Inside the safe sat a thick black ledger.
Across its cover were three handwritten words:
FOR RACHEL ONLY.
A final message appeared.
SOMEONE IS IN THE HOUSE.
Rachel called him.
No answer.
She called again.
Nothing.
Thomas was already putting on his coat.
"Let's go."
Rachel stared at him.
"My father told me not to."
Thomas looked toward the falling snow beyond the hospital windows.
"That's because he knows who's waiting for him."
Rachel opened the photograph again.
She zoomed in.
At first she saw only the safe.
Then she noticed the reflection in the glass cabinet behind Charles.
A second person stood inside the study.
Rachel enlarged the image.
The face came into focus.
Her phone slipped from her hand.
May you like
The person standing behind her father was her mother.
But Margaret was still sitting twenty feet away.
