Chapter 13 - JONATHAN’S SECOND SECRET
Police searched Northbridge House until sunrise.
They found four listening devices.
One beneath June’s windowsill.
One inside Elise’s office.
Two hidden in the music room.
Someone had entered the house without setting off the alarms.
Someone with access.
That possibility frightened Elise more than the gunshots.
At seven in the morning, Sheriff Reeves gathered Elise and Thomas inside the kitchen.
“No one leaves alone.”
Thomas shook his head.
“You don’t understand who these people are.”
Reeves leaned closer.
“I understand bullets.”
Thomas looked at Elise.
“Jonathan’s second letter.”
“What about it?”
“The brass key.”
He placed it on the table.
“Jonathan told me you would know where it belonged.”
Elise examined it.
Small.
Old-fashioned.
A tiny number engraved along the side.
June, sitting nearby with hot chocolate, suddenly spoke.
“Locker twenty-seven.”
Elise looked at her.
“What?”
“At Dad’s train station.”
Jonathan had loved old railway stations. Before his death, he occasionally took June on Saturday train rides for no reason other than buying hot chocolate in another town.
“The station in Millbrook,” June continued. “Dad always used locker twenty-seven.”
Thomas stared at her.
“You’re certain?”
June nodded.
“He said twenty-seven was lucky.”
Within an hour, Sheriff Reeves arranged an escort.
The Millbrook station had barely changed.
Elise approached the old storage lockers beside the waiting room.
Number 27.
Her hands trembled as she inserted the key.
Click.
Inside sat a blue metal box.
Nothing else.
Reeves carried it into an empty office.
Elise opened the lid.
Inside were photographs.
Jonathan standing outside warehouses.
Jonathan meeting a man Elise didn’t recognize.
Helena entering a private airport terminal.
And one photograph that made Elise’s stomach drop.
Her father.
Michael Bennett.
Dead for sixteen years.
Standing beside Helena Vale.
The photograph was dated eighteen years earlier.
Elise stared at it.
“My father didn’t know Helena.”
Thomas said nothing.
Elise turned toward him.
“You knew?”
Thomas’s silence answered.
“Tell me.”
“Your father worked for Marlowe Holdings.”
“No, he didn’t. He owned a hardware store.”
“That came later.”
Elise felt the room spinning.
“What did he do?”
Thomas swallowed.
“He was head of internal security.”
Elise laughed once, disbelieving.
“My father?”
“He discovered the laundering network before Jonathan did.”
“Then why didn’t he expose it?”
Thomas looked at the photograph.
“Because two weeks later, his car went off a bridge.”
Elise stopped breathing.
Her father’s death had been ruled an accident.
Rain.
A slippery road.
A broken guardrail.
Exactly like Jonathan’s death years later.
Her knees weakened.
Reeves caught her arm.
“There’s more,” June whispered.
At the bottom of the box was another envelope.
Jonathan’s handwriting.
Elise opened it.
The second letter contained only four sentences.
Your father tried to protect you.
I married you before I understood what Helena had done to him.
When I discovered the truth, I promised myself I would finish what Michael started.
If I am dead, find Samuel Cross before Helena does.
Reeves asked, “Who’s Samuel Cross?”
Thomas looked horrified.
“He’s still alive?”
“You know him?”
Thomas stared toward the station windows.
“Samuel Cross was Helena’s driver.”
Elise frowned.
May you like
“So?”
“He drove your father the night he died.”
