Chapter 3 - The Man Behind the Voice
The handle turned.
Adrian raised his weapon.
“Stay behind me.”
Mara pressed herself against the filing cabinet while Daniel moved to the opposite side of the room.
Victor stood frozen near the table.
The door opened six inches.
Then stopped.
Nobody entered.
Adrian waited.
Ten seconds.
Nothing.
Daniel looked at him.
Adrian gave a small nod.
Daniel moved forward, reached the doorway, and looked into the corridor.
“Clear.”
Victor shook his head.
“No.”
Daniel checked both directions.
“There’s nobody here.”
“That’s impossible.”
The speaker above the door crackled again.
A low laugh came through it.
Mara looked up.
The footsteps.
The voice.
The threat.
They had been manipulated.
Adrian understood at the same moment.
“He was never outside.”
Daniel looked at the speaker.
“Recorded footsteps.”
Victor stared at the ceiling.
“No. The voice was live.”
Adrian turned toward him.
“You recognized it.”
Victor said nothing.
Mara stepped out from behind the cabinet.
“He called me his daughter.”
Victor looked at her.
“You said Richard Mercer is my biological father.”
“Yes.”
“Was that Mercer’s voice?”
Victor hesitated.
“Yes.”
Mara felt something tighten inside her chest.
She had spent twenty years believing her father was dead.
Now she had heard him before she had even seen his face.
And the first thing he had done was claim ownership of her.
Adrian lowered his weapon but didn't holster it.
“Mercer knows we're here.”
Victor nodded.
“He knows everything that happens in this building.”
“Then why hasn't he sent anyone?”
Victor looked toward the open door.
“Maybe he has.”
Daniel returned to the computer station.
“I'm checking the security system.”
Mara picked up her mother's folder.
Adrian noticed.
“What are you doing?”
“Taking this.”
“That's evidence.”
“It's my mother.”
“That doesn't make it safe to carry.”
“I've spent twelve years believing she died because she drove too fast in the rain.”
Her voice trembled.
“I am not leaving her here.”
Adrian studied her for a second.
Then nodded.
“Take it.”
Victor watched them.
“We need to get out before Mercer locks the building down.”
Adrian turned to him.
“You're coming with us.”
Victor laughed without humor.
“I don't think you understand my position.”
“I understand perfectly.”
“No, you don't.”
Victor pointed toward the wall of photographs.
“Some of those people are Mercer's enemies. Some are his employees. Some don't know which one they are.”
“And you?”
Victor's expression darkened.
“I stopped knowing years ago.”
Daniel looked up from the terminal.
“Boss.”
“What?”
“I found the camera network.”
“Can you access it?”
“Some of it.”
Several monitors came alive.
Black-and-white security feeds appeared.
The Obsidian Room's kitchens.
Dining rooms.
Private lounges.
Main entrance.
Service corridor.
Mara searched the screens.
Everything looked normal.
Too normal.
Guests continued drinking upstairs.
A bartender polished glasses.
A couple laughed in a booth.
Nobody knew a hidden room beneath their feet contained enough secrets to ruin half the people in the building.
Daniel changed feeds.
One showed the hallway outside Room 417.
Empty.
Another showed the underground staircase.
Empty.
Then Daniel found a third feed.
He stopped.
Adrian moved closer.
“What?”
Daniel enlarged the image.
A man stood inside the Obsidian Room's security office.
Silver hair.
Charcoal suit.
Back to the camera.
Victor whispered:
“Mercer.”
Mara couldn't move.
The man turned slightly.
She saw his face.
Richard Mercer.
She knew him.
Not personally.
From newspapers.
Television interviews.
Magazine covers in grocery stores.
Richard Mercer had built towers across Manhattan.
He donated millions to hospitals.
His foundation funded scholarships.
He appeared beside governors and senators.
And according to Victor, he had ordered Evelyn Bennett's murder.
Her biological father was a man whose face had been in front of her for years.
She simply hadn't known she was looking at him.
Richard turned toward the security camera.
Then smiled.
Directly at it.
At them.
The feed disappeared.
Mara felt sick.
“He knew we were watching.”
“Of course,” Victor said.
Adrian looked at Daniel.
“Get us another exit.”
Daniel pulled up architectural diagrams.
“This level connects to a service tunnel under the kitchen.”
“Where does it come out?”
“Parking structure on Forty-Sixth.”
Adrian turned toward Mara.
“We leave now.”
She looked at the folder.
“What about the other files?”
“We photograph what we can.”
“We can't leave all this.”
“We don't have time to carry a filing cabinet.”
Mara looked at the photographs.
Then remembered the memory card.
“What about the card?”
Daniel removed it from his pocket.
“I copied the contents.”
“To where?”
“Encrypted drive.”
“Make another copy.”
Daniel looked at Adrian.
Adrian nodded.
“Do it.”
Victor shook his head.
“You're treating this like ordinary evidence.”
“What should we treat it like?” Mara asked.
“A death sentence.”
She looked at him.
“You're still afraid of Mercer.”
“You should be too.”
“I am.”
Victor seemed surprised by the answer.
Mara continued.
“But being afraid doesn't mean I have to give him what he wants.”
Victor stared at her.
For a moment his expression softened.
“You sound exactly like Evelyn.”
Mara's anger returned.
“You don't get to talk about her like you were friends.”
Victor lowered his eyes.
“We were.”
“Then why did you let her die?”
The question silenced him.
Adrian watched.
Victor finally sat.
“Because I was a coward.”
Mara hadn't expected that.
“I knew Mercer suspected her. Evelyn asked me to help her disappear.”
“And?”
“I told her to give the evidence back.”
“Why?”
“Because I believed Mercer would let her walk away.”
“You believed him?”
“I needed to.”
Victor looked at his hands.
“I had a wife. A son. A business. I convinced myself Mercer had limits because admitting otherwise would have required me to do something.”
Mara swallowed.
“What happened?”
“Evelyn refused.”
“And you abandoned her.”
“Yes.”
No excuse.
No attempt to soften it.
Victor looked at Mara.
“Three days later, her car went off the road.”
Mara's eyes burned.
“You knew he did it.”
“I suspected.”
“You said earlier you knew.”
“I found proof afterward.”
“What proof?”
Victor looked toward Evelyn's folder.
“A payment.”
“To whom?”
“A mechanic named Peter Sloan.”
Daniel stopped working.
“That name is on the memory card.”
Victor stood.
“What?”
Daniel reopened the copied files.
“There are transaction records. Sloan received two hundred thousand dollars through a shell company.”
Victor approached.
“What company?”
Daniel read it.
“Northstar Holdings.”
Victor's face changed.
Adrian noticed.
“You know it.”
“Northstar belonged to Dominic Vale.”
Adrian's voice became dangerously quiet.
“My father paid the man who sabotaged Evelyn's car?”
“No.”
“You just said—”
“I said the company belonged to him.”
Victor looked at Adrian.
“Dominic lost control of Northstar months before Evelyn died.”
“To Mercer?”
“Not directly.”
“Then who?”
Victor shook his head.
“I don't know.”
Adrian grabbed the front of his jacket.
“Start knowing.”
Victor didn't resist.
“Your brother was trying to find out.”
Adrian released him.
“Julian?”
“He contacted me two years ago.”
“That doesn't fit. Evelyn died twelve years ago.”
“Julian spent years tracing the old transactions.”
“Why?”
“Because Dominic asked him to.”
Adrian went still.
“My father knew?”
Victor nodded.
“Dominic discovered Mercer had used Vale companies. He wanted proof.”
“Why didn't he tell me?”
“I don't know.”
Adrian turned away.
Mara recognized the expression.
It was the same one she had worn minutes earlier.
The expression of someone discovering that the dead had left behind an entirely different life.
Daniel finished copying the files.
“We're ready.”
Adrian looked at Mara.
“Your apartment.”
She frowned.
“What about it?”
“You said your mother's music box is there.”
“Yes.”
“If she made you memorize 417 and left something behind, Mercer may already know.”
Victor interrupted.
“He definitely knows where she lives.”
Mara looked at him.
“How?”
“Employment records.”
“The club gave him my address?”
Victor almost smiled at her innocence.
“Mercer doesn't ask permission.”
Adrian made the decision.
“We go to Mara's apartment.”
Daniel shook his head.
“Too obvious.”
“Exactly. If Mercer already searched it, we need to know what he found.”
Mara clutched Evelyn's folder.
“And if he hasn't?”
“Then we get there first.”
They moved through the service tunnel.
Adrian remained ahead.
Daniel covered the rear.
Victor walked between them.
Mara stayed close to Adrian.
Halfway through the tunnel, she asked:
“Why are you doing this?”
He didn't turn.
“Doing what?”
“Helping me.”
“You asked.”
“I looked at you.”
“That was enough.”
“You didn't know me.”
“I didn't need to know you to know what Langley was doing was wrong.”
Victor looked down.
Mara studied Adrian.
Men at the club feared him.
She had seen it.
Waiters straightened when he passed.
Guests lowered their voices.
Victor had released her because Adrian told him to.
Yet Adrian hadn't asked for anything in return.
Not yet.
“People say you're dangerous.”
Adrian glanced at her.
“They're not wrong.”
“That isn't reassuring.”
“It wasn't supposed to be.”
Despite herself, Mara almost smiled.
They reached the parking structure.
Two black SUVs waited.
Adrian stopped Mara before she entered.
“From now on, if I tell you to run, you run.”
“What if you're wrong?”
“Then you can complain afterward.”
“And if you're right?”
“You'll be alive to complain afterward.”
She got in.
The drive to Queens took twenty-eight minutes.
Mara watched Manhattan disappear behind them.
Her mother's folder remained on her lap.
She opened it again.
This time she looked beyond the forensic report.
Bank statements.
Employment records.
A copy of her birth certificate.
Mara stared at it.
Father:
SAMUEL BENNETT.
She touched the name.
Whatever Victor said, Samuel was still her father.
Blood couldn't rewrite love.
She turned another page.
A photograph fell out.
Mara picked it up.
Evelyn stood beside a younger Victor.
And another man.
Mara recognized Adrian's father from photographs she'd seen online while secretly searching the Vale family during her breaks at work.
Dominic Vale.
On the back Evelyn had written:
THE THREE MEN WHO PROMISED TO KEEP MARA SAFE.
Mara looked at Victor.
“You promised her.”
Victor saw the photograph.
His face collapsed.
“Yes.”
“And you broke it.”
“Yes.”
Adrian looked over.
Mara handed him the photograph.
He stared at his father.
“When was this?”
The date was twelve years earlier.
Four days before Evelyn died.
Adrian said nothing for the rest of the drive.
They reached Mara's apartment building at 3:16 a.m.
Daniel entered first.
Two minutes later he called.
“Clear.”
Mara climbed the stairs.
Her apartment door looked normal.
No damage.
No broken lock.
Inside, everything appeared untouched.
Textbooks remained on the table.
Coffee mug in the sink.
Jacket over the chair.
Mara walked toward her bedroom.
Adrian followed.
“The box is in my closet.”
She opened the door.
A cardboard container sat behind winter coats.
She pulled it out.
Inside were her mother's belongings.
Photographs.
Letters.
A scarf.
Cheap jewelry.
And the small wooden music box.
Mara lifted it.
A painted ballerina decorated the lid.
She turned the key.
Nothing.
“It hasn't worked since I was a kid.”
Adrian took it carefully.
“May I?”
She nodded.
He examined the base.
Four screws.
Daniel handed him a screwdriver.
Adrian removed them.
The bottom panel lifted.
Something metallic dropped onto the bed.
A brass key.
Mara stared.
Beside it was a folded note.
Her name was written on the front.
MARA.
Her hands shook as she opened it.
Sweetheart,
If you found this, then the game was never just a game.
Remember Grand Central.
Remember the star.
And if anyone tells you Richard Mercer is your father, believe them.
Mara stopped.
The next sentence had been underlined twice.
But never let him convince you that means you belong to him.
Her eyes filled.
Adrian stood silently beside her.
There was more.
If Adrian Vale is with you, ask him why Julian wore two watches.
Mara looked up.
“Why did your brother wear two watches?”
Adrian's expression changed.
“You noticed that?”
“My mother wrote it.”
She handed him the letter.
Adrian read the sentence.
For several seconds he said nothing.
Then:
“One was his.”
“And the other?”
“Our mother's.”
“Why wear both?”
“He said one showed where he was.”
Adrian looked at the brass key.
“And one showed where he wanted to be.”
“Where did he want to be?”
Adrian frowned.
“Our mother was born in Switzerland.”
“Geneva?”
“No. Lausanne.”
Daniel entered.
“Boss.”
Something in his voice made everyone turn.
“What?”
“Someone was here.”
Mara looked around.
“You said the apartment was clear.”
“It is.”
“What do you mean?”
Daniel held up a small black device.
“I found this under her desk.”
A listening device.
Mara's skin crawled.
“How long has that been there?”
“Can't tell yet.”
Victor checked the windows.
Adrian's phone vibrated.
Unknown number.
A photograph arrived.
Mara asleep in her bedroom.
Taken from inside the apartment.
The timestamp was from the previous night.
Mara covered her mouth.
Adrian immediately checked the rooms again.
Daniel moved toward the hallway.
Victor drew his weapon.
Then Mara noticed something on her pillow.
A second photograph.
It hadn't been there when they entered.
She picked it up.
A woman stood outside Mara's building.
Dark coat.
Gray-streaked hair.
Mara knew the face.
Her aunt Claire.
Claire had supposedly died twelve years earlier.
Mara turned the photograph over.
Three words had been written across the back.
SHE KNOWS EVERYTHING.
A floorboard creaked in the living room.
Adrian raised his weapon.
The apartment door slowly opened.
May you like
Then a woman's voice called Mara's name.
It was the same voice Mara had heard at her mother's funeral twelve years ago.
