Chapter 12 - Savannah’s Midnight Call
At 12:17 that night, my private phone rang.
Only six people had the number.
The caller ID showed UNKNOWN.
I almost ignored it.
Then I answered.
“Rosalind?”
The voice was trembling.
I recognized it immediately.
Savannah Brooks.
I hadn’t spoken to her since the day I ordered her out of the Hamptons estate.
“Savannah?”
“Please don’t hang up.”
I sat upright in bed.
“What happened?”
Someone was crying in the background.
A baby.
Her son.
“I think somebody followed me home.”
My irritation vanished.
“Where are you?”
“I moved again. I’m outside Indianapolis now. I work at a medical billing office during the day and a restaurant at night.”
“Did someone threaten you?”
“There was a black SUV outside my apartment yesterday. Same one this morning. Tonight, when I got home, my door was open.”
“Call the police.”
“I did. They said nothing obvious was stolen.”
“Then why are you calling me?”
Savannah went silent.
When she spoke again, her voice was barely audible.
“Because something was stolen.”
I waited.
“A flash drive.”
My grip tightened around the phone.
“What flash drive?”
“Grant gave it to me before your sentencing.”
I closed my eyes.
Of course.
“He told me if anything ever happened to him, I should keep it somewhere safe. I thought it had financial records on it.”
“And you kept it for over a year without telling prosecutors?”
“I was scared!”
“You testified under immunity.”
“I know.”
Her baby cried louder.
Savannah whispered something soothing before returning to the phone.
“Rosalind, I didn’t understand what it was until two weeks ago.”
“What changed?”
“I found the password.”
I got out of bed.
“Tell me.”
“Grant used to joke that rich people always use birthdays and poor people use their dogs’ names. I tried Tessa’s birthday.”
A chill moved through me.
“It opened?”
“Yes.”
“What was on it?”
“Hundreds of files. Contracts. Emails. Shipping records. Names.”
“Whose names?”
“I only recognized one.”
I already knew the answer before she said it.
“Malcolm Reeve.”
Silence filled the line.
I walked toward the window.
“How do you know Reeve?”
“He came to the penthouse once.”
“When?”
“About a month before Walter died.”
That stopped me cold.
“You never testified to that.”
“I forgot.”
“You forgot an eight-billion-dollar private equity owner visiting my husband?”
“I didn’t know who he was! Grant called him Mr. M. They locked themselves in the library.”
I forced myself to remain calm.
“What did you hear?”
“Grant was angry. He said Walter had discovered something too early.”
My heart thudded once.
Savannah continued.
“Then the other man said, ‘Your problem is Walter. Mine is the daughter.’”
I looked down at the sleeping city.
“Did you see his face?”
“Only when he left. I searched him online tonight after I saw your company on the news.”
That explained the call.
“Savannah, listen carefully. Take your baby and leave the apartment.”
“I don’t have anywhere to go.”
“You do now.”
I called Nathan from another phone and placed Savannah on speaker.
Within minutes, Nathan had contacted federal agents in Indiana.
“Do not pack,” he instructed her. “Take identification, your child, medication, and nothing else. An unmarked federal vehicle will arrive in twelve minutes.”
Savannah began crying.
“Rosalind, I know you hate me.”
“I don’t hate you.”
“You should.”
“Hate requires more energy than I’m willing to spend.”
She gave a broken laugh.
“I deserve that.”
“No, Savannah. Right now, what matters is your child.”
The baby had gone quiet.
“I named him Michael,” she said suddenly.
I didn’t know why that detail hurt.
Perhaps because this frightened young woman had once stood in my home imagining that her unborn baby would inherit everything my father built.
Now she was working two jobs and checking apartment windows for men following her.
“Keep Michael close.”
“I will.”
Before hanging up, she whispered, “I’m sorry.”
I could have said a hundred things.
Instead, I answered, “Stay alive long enough to prove it.”
At seven the next morning, Savannah and Michael arrived at a secure federal facility.
Nathan came into my office carrying a preliminary report.
“The apartment was professionally searched.”
“Fingerprints?”
“None.”
“Cameras?”
“Building system was disabled for eleven minutes.”
“The flash drive?”
“Gone.”
I looked toward Preston.
“If Reeve sent people after it, he knows Savannah had evidence connecting him to Grant.”
Preston nodded slowly.
“And if Grant had evidence against Reeve, he must have been protecting himself.”
Nathan’s phone buzzed.
He read the message.
His expression changed.
“What?”
“Federal tech recovered Savannah’s laptop browser cache. She opened seventeen documents from the drive before it disappeared.”
“Can they reconstruct them?”
“Some.”
He turned the screen toward us.
The first recovered file was an email dated six weeks before my father’s murder.
Sender: G. Sterling.
Recipient: M. Reeve.
Subject: WALTER PROBLEM.
The body contained one sentence.
I read it twice.
THE OLD MAN KNOWS YOU FUNDED TESSA’S SILENCE.
For several seconds, nobody spoke.
Preston finally whispered, “My God.”
Grant had murdered Tessa.
Grant had poisoned my father.
But suddenly, the crimes no longer looked like isolated acts of one greedy psychopath.
There had been someone standing behind him.
Someone richer.
More patient.
May you like
More dangerous.
And that man had just returned to New York.
