Chapter 14 - The Man Who Knew Ethan’s Father
Ethan shoved me behind the granite wall before the second shot echoed through the lighthouse.
Federal agents shouted below.
Boots pounded across wooden floors.
“Stay here,” Ethan ordered.
“Absolutely not.”
“Meredith.”
“Alexander is under guard. Harbor Crown may be beneath our feet. I am not hiding upstairs while someone shoots at us.”
His jaw tightened.
“That is exactly why I married you and exactly why you terrify me.”
Another crash sounded below.
Marcus’s voice came through Ethan’s earpiece.
“Shooter contained. One suspect. We have a second vehicle fleeing north.”
Ethan touched the communication button.
“Get the driver.”
“Already moving.”
We descended.
A man lay face-down near the entrance, restrained by agents.
He was perhaps forty, broad-shouldered, with blood running from a wound near his temple.
I recognized nothing about him.
He looked at me and smiled.
“Hello, Meredith.”
Every agent tensed.
“You know me?”
“I know everything about you.”
Ethan stepped between us.
The man laughed.
“Still protecting everyone, Ethan?”
My husband froze.
“You know him?” I asked.
Ethan studied the prisoner.
“No.”
The man’s smile widened.
“But your father knew mine.”
Marcus searched him.
No wallet.
No identification.
Only a brass token stamped with a crown above three waves.
Harbor Crown.
“Name,” Marcus demanded.
The man stared at Ethan.
“Daniel Mercer.”
Ethan’s face lost color.
I had never heard the name.
But clearly he had.
“Mercer,” Ethan whispered.
Daniel nodded.
“My father was Thomas Mercer.”
Ethan looked as if someone had opened a grave beneath him.
“My father’s security chief.”
“And his friend.”
Ethan turned toward me.
“Thomas Mercer died in the warehouse fire.”
Daniel laughed bitterly.
“No. He disappeared after it.”
“What?”
“My father survived.”
The room went silent.
Daniel shifted against the agent holding him.
“Charles Cross didn’t die because of Robert Campbell.”
Ethan stepped closer.
“Then who killed him?”
“Charles Cross killed himself.”
I stared at Daniel.
Ethan’s voice became lethal.
“That warehouse fire killed sixteen people.”
“I didn’t say he started the fire.”
“Then explain.”
Daniel’s expression hardened.
“My father discovered Cross Industries had been infiltrated. Someone inside Charles’s executive team was copying restricted shipping manifests and selling them through Harbor Crown.”
“Who?”
“He never knew.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“I don’t care what you believe.”
Daniel looked at me.
“But Meredith has something I need.”
“The key?”
“Yes.”
“What does it open?”
“A vault.”
“Where?”
“That information costs me freedom.”
Marcus almost smiled.
“You fired on federal officers.”
“I fired into the ceiling.”
“He’s right,” one agent said reluctantly.
Daniel shrugged.
“I wanted everyone looking at me while my partner searched the lighthouse.”
“For the book?”
“For the key.”
I tightened my fist around it.
“Who hired you?”
“No one.”
“Then why are you doing this?”
His eyes darkened.
“Because Senator Reeves murdered my mother.”
That silenced everyone.
Daniel’s voice cracked for the first time.
“Twenty years ago my father tried to expose Harbor Crown. Reeves threatened us. We ran. My mother refused. Six months later she died in a supposed highway accident.”
“And your father?”
“Spent the rest of his life gathering evidence.”
“Where is he?”
Daniel looked away.
“Dead.”
“When?”
“Last month.”
I understood.
That explained why Harbor Crown had suddenly resurfaced.
“What did he leave you?”
“A warning.”
“About Reeves?”
“About all of you.”
He nodded toward Ethan.
“Cross.”
Then me.
“Campbell.”
Then the federal agents.
“Government.”
Daniel leaned forward.
“He said Harbor Crown had survived because everyone believed corruption belonged to one family or one party or one company. It doesn’t. It belongs to whoever thinks power makes them invisible.”
My phone vibrated.
A message from Marcus’s cyber team.
They had traced the anonymous call.
Washington, D.C.
A government building.
I showed Ethan.
His eyes narrowed.
“Which building?”
The answer arrived seconds later.
United States Senate Office Complex.
Daniel laughed when he saw our expressions.
“Now you understand.”
I crouched in front of him.
“You came here expecting the key.”
“Yes.”
“You knew Robert hid it.”
“My father knew.”
“And you threatened my son?”
Daniel’s face changed.
“No.”
“You sent the photograph.”
“No.”
“You called me.”
“No.”
I studied him.
I believed him.
That frightened me more than if he had confessed.
“Then someone else knows about the key.”
Daniel slowly nodded.
“And they’re closer than Reeves.”
Ethan looked toward the shattered doorway.
Marcus’s radio crackled.
The fleeing vehicle had been stopped three miles north.
The driver had escaped on foot.
But inside the car, agents found a laptop.
Marcus opened the first recovered image.
It showed Cross Manor.
Taken from inside our security perimeter.
The second showed Alexander sleeping.
Taken through his bedroom window.
The third photograph was different.
It showed Ethan and me standing in our Washington kitchen.
Taken from inside the house.
May you like
Someone wasn’t watching us from a distance.
Someone had already been inside.
