Chapter 7 - The Night Daniel Chose Grace
Grace could not move.
The man descended another step.
“Grace.”
Her knees nearly gave way.
Daniel caught her.
Then the figure entered the light.
It was not Thomas.
It was Evan.
Grace shoved Daniel away and crossed the room.
She struck Evan across the face.
“You knew what that would do to me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You sound exactly like him.”
“I know.”
Grace turned away, shaking.
Daniel wanted to intervene, but this grief belonged to them.
Evan explained why he had disappeared.
Danner had contacted him.
“He wants immunity.”
Daniel frowned.
“For what?”
“Murder.”
Grace turned.
“Thomas?”
Evan shook his head.
“Rebecca.”
Daniel went still.
Danner had been working security at the hospital when Rebecca died.
He had allowed someone into a restricted medication area.
That person altered Rebecca's treatment after she collapsed.
The aneurysm had been real.
Her death might not have been.
“Who?” Daniel asked.
“Danner says he'll tell us only in exchange for federal protection.”
The meeting was arranged inside an abandoned church.
Danner arrived terrified.
“I never touched Rebecca.”
Daniel stood across from him.
“You helped someone who did.”
“I didn't know what they planned.”
“Who?”
Danner swallowed.
“Charles Mercer.”
Grace closed her eyes.
But Danner shook his head.
“Mercer ordered it. He wasn't the one who entered.”
“Then who?”
“Elaine Porter.”
The prosecutor.
Daniel felt the room tilt.
Porter had been Rebecca's college roommate.
She had attended their wedding.
She had stood beside Daniel at Rebecca's funeral.
“Why?”
“Mercer owned her.”
“How?”
“Her son.”
Porter's son had killed a pedestrian while driving drunk at nineteen. Mercer had made the evidence disappear.
From then on, Porter belonged to him.
Daniel looked physically ill.
Danner continued.
“Rebecca discovered the foundation payments. Raymond tried to help her. Mercer realized they were building a case.”
“And Thomas?”
“Thomas had the accounting records.”
“So Mercer framed him.”
“Yes.”
“Why did my father interfere with the plea?”
“He was trying to move Thomas into federal protection.”
Daniel shut his eyes.
“But you changed the paperwork.”
Danner nodded.
“Mercer told me to.”
Grace stepped forward.
“You sent my husband to the prison where he was killed.”
Danner began crying.
“Yes.”
Grace slapped him.
Then again.
Daniel caught her.
“Grace.”
“Let me go!”
“Don't give him another victim.”
She struggled.
Then collapsed against Daniel.
He held her.
Danner whispered, “There's something else.”
Grace lifted her head.
“What?”
“Thomas wasn't killed because Mercer ordered it.”
Everyone stared.
“He was killed because he refused to tell someone where the original ledger was.”
“Who?”
Danner looked toward the church entrance.
The doors exploded open.
Gunfire cracked.
Daniel threw Grace behind a pew.
Agents returned fire.
Danner ran.
A bullet struck him.
He fell near the altar.
Daniel crawled toward him.
“Who wanted the ledger?”
Danner coughed blood.
“Not Mercer.”
“Who?”
“Someone worse.”
His eyes closed.
He died before answering.
The attack changed everything.
Daniel was placed under protection.
So was Grace.
They spent the night in adjoining rooms at a federal safe house.
At two in the morning, Daniel found Grace sitting on the kitchen floor.
He sat beside her.
“I almost believed it was him.”
“Evan?”
“When he called my name.”
Daniel said nothing.
“I hated myself for wanting Thomas to walk down those stairs.”
“You loved him.”
“I love you too.”
Daniel looked at her.
Grace began crying.
“I don't know what that makes me.”
“Human.”
She laughed through her tears.
“You've been saving that judicial wisdom?”
“No. I'm improvising.”
For the first time in months, she smiled.
Daniel touched her cheek.
“I don't want you to choose between loving Thomas and loving me.”
“He's dead.”
“That doesn't mean the love is.”
Grace closed her eyes.
Daniel kissed her forehead.
He expected nothing.
Grace leaned into him.
For several minutes they sat together in silence.
Then Daniel's phone vibrated.
A message from an unknown number.
One photograph.
Thomas standing outside the courthouse seven years earlier.
Beside him was Raymond Whitaker.
Behind them stood a third person.
Daniel enlarged the image.
Grace stopped breathing.
The third person was Charles Mercer.
May you like
But the handwritten caption underneath named someone else as the man controlling them all.
Chief Justice Arthur Bell.
