Chapter 13 - The Other Files
The federal prosecutor arrived before noon.
Assistant United States Attorney Nicole Ward had handled the initial seizure of Margaret’s reproductive-service records. She was disciplined, skeptical, and almost impossible to surprise.
The photograph surprised her.
The message terrified her.
Ward stood beside Daniel’s kitchen island examining the paper through a transparent evidence sleeve.
“We searched every file recovered from Harrison’s clinic,” she said.
“And?” Olivia demanded.
“We found nothing establishing another unauthorized pregnancy.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Ward met her eyes.
“No. It isn’t.”
Daniel paced behind them.
“What did you find?”
Ward exhaled.
“Accounting codes we couldn’t identify.”
Arthur looked up.
“How many?”
“Twenty-seven transactions over fourteen years.”
Evelyn closed her eyes.
Daniel noticed.
“You know what they are.”
She didn’t answer.
He stepped closer.
“Evelyn.”
“They were listed as continuity expenditures.”
“What does that mean?”
“It was Margaret’s language.”
“For what?”
Evelyn finally looked at him.
“Succession contingencies.”
Daniel’s voice turned dangerously quiet.
“Children?”
“I don’t know.”
“You wrote the trust.”
“I wrote portions of it. Margaret compartmentalized everything. Calvin handled payments. Harrison handled procedures. I handled legal insulation.”
Olivia looked toward the nursery.
Grace and Amelia were asleep.
Every revelation made the walls feel less secure.
Ward opened another folder.
“There’s one thing we never understood. Harrison’s clinic records contain references to an organization called Northstar Maternal Services.”
Arthur frowned.
“I’ve never heard of it.”
“Neither had we. It doesn’t legally exist.”
Vance entered from the hallway carrying his phone.
“I may have found it.”
Everyone turned.
“Northstar isn’t a company. It was an internal billing label for a network of private obstetric practices.”
“Where?” Daniel asked.
“New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Colorado.”
Colorado.
Aspen.
Daniel’s stomach tightened.
Vance continued.
“Most of the physicians had some past connection to Mercer philanthropic grants.”
Olivia stared at him.
“Margaret funded doctors, then used them?”
“That’s one possibility.”
Daniel looked at Ward.
“You need to reopen everything.”
“I already did.”
His phone rang.
Rachel.
Daniel answered immediately and put the call on speaker.
“Rachel?”
Her breathing sounded fast.
“I’m okay.”
“Why didn’t you answer?”
“Someone broke into my office.”
Olivia closed her eyes.
“Are you hurt?”
“No. I wasn’t there. I was at a community meeting.”
“What did they take?”
“Nothing expensive.”
Rachel hesitated.
“My desk was ripped apart. My apartment was searched too.”
Vance leaned toward the phone.
“Rachel, listen carefully. Did you ever take a black handwritten ledger from Margaret?”
“What?”
“A ledger. Leather cover. Handwritten transactions.”
Silence.
Then Rachel said something that changed the entire investigation.
“I have a black notebook.”
Everyone froze.
Rachel continued.
“I didn’t know what it was. After I decided to leak my chart, I went through everything Margaret had ever left at my apartment. I found a small black book behind a drawer in my bedroom dresser.”
“Where is it?” Daniel asked.
“I mailed it.”
“To whom?”
Rachel’s voice softened.
“Olivia.”
Olivia stared at the phone.
“You mailed it to me?”
“Two days before Grace was born. I didn’t want it in my apartment anymore, and I didn’t trust anyone connected to the Mercer family. I wrote ‘college photographs’ on the customs form and sent it to your gallery storage office.”
Olivia’s thoughts raced.
Her gallery maintained an off-site storage facility in Queens for archived exhibitions, personal correspondence, and pieces awaiting restoration.
She had barely visited since late pregnancy.
“When?”
“January twenty-eighth.”
Olivia looked at Daniel.
The notebook could have been sitting untouched in Queens for weeks.
Vance was already moving.
“Nobody calls the gallery. Nobody warns the staff. We go now.”
They left the babies with two vetted nurses and four security officers.
Thirty-five minutes later, Daniel, Olivia, Vance, Ward, and Arthur entered the warehouse through a private side entrance.
Rows of climate-controlled shelves stretched beneath fluorescent lights.
Olivia found the personal archive section.
Box 214.
She lowered it onto a worktable.
Inside were old photographs, college letters, two sketchbooks—
and a padded shipping envelope from Oregon.
Unopened.
Daniel looked at Vance.
Vance photographed it before cutting the seal.
Inside was a black leather notebook.
Arthur whispered, “Jesus.”
Olivia opened the first page.
Dates.
Initials.
Amounts.
Locations.
Hundreds of entries.
Then Daniel saw a familiar name.
D.M.
Next to it was a date from four years earlier.
The same month Daniel’s biological samples had been stored.
Below it appeared another set of initials.
C.R.
Calvin Rourke.
And beneath that—
an entry made only six months ago.
PROJECT NORTHSTAR — PHASE II.
AUTHORIZED: M.M.
TRANSFER COUNT: 3.
Olivia’s hand began trembling.
“Three?”
Nobody answered.
Then a crash echoed from the far end of the warehouse.
The lights went out.
Vance drew his weapon.
May you like
“Everybody down!”
Somewhere between the shelves, footsteps started running toward them.
