Chapter 12 - CLAIRE
Nathan called Claire before the trust company finished explaining how she had entered the vault.
She did not answer.
He called again.
Voicemail.
A third time.
Nothing.
Nathan stared at his phone.
Claire Harper had been Emily's older sister, Sophie's godmother, and one of the few people Nathan trusted without reservation.
She lived two thousand miles away.
She had spoken to Sophie by video three nights earlier.
She had never mentioned coming to town.
"Maybe her identity was stolen," Rebecca said.
Nathan looked at the security director on speakerphone.
"Did you physically see her?"
"I am not in the branch, sir."
"Then call someone who is."
The line transferred.
A vault supervisor answered.
"The woman presented a driver's license for Claire Elise Harper."
"Did the photograph match?"
"Yes."
"Did she pass security questions?"
"Yes."
Nathan's chest tightened.
"Put her on the phone."
The supervisor hesitated.
"She is inside a private viewing room."
"Then knock."
"Mr. Mercer-"
"Knock on the door."
The supervisor complied.
Nathan listened to distant footsteps.
A knock.
No answer.
Another knock.
Then the supervisor said, "The door is open."
Nathan stood.
"Is she there?"
Silence.
"Hello?"
The supervisor's breathing changed.
"The room is empty."
Rebecca leaned toward the phone.
"What about the safe deposit contents?"
More silence.
"The box is open."
"What is missing?"
"I need to compare the inventory."
Nathan's patience broke.
"Do it now."
Paper moved on the other end.
The supervisor counted.
Emily's will remained.
The jewelry case remained.
One sealed letter remained.
The digital storage device remained.
The trust amendment was gone.
The guardianship preference form was gone.
One of the two letters to Sophie was gone.
Nathan closed his eyes.
Three items.
All connected to Emily.
"How did she leave?"
"There is a staff corridor behind the viewing rooms."
"Why was she allowed into it?"
"She should not have been."
Nathan ended the call.
Marcus was already pulling traffic feeds.
Rebecca searched court systems for the order used to authorize Claire's access.
It took four minutes.
"The order is real."
Nathan looked at her.
"Real?"
"Issued this morning in Oregon."
"For what?"
"Emergency access to family records relating to a minor child's safety."
Nathan stared at the document.
Claire had gone to court in Oregon at dawn.
She had then flown or somehow reached his city before night.
The timing made no sense.
His phone rang.
Claire.
Nathan answered instantly.
"Where are you?"
Claire sounded confused.
"At home."
"In Oregon?"
"Yes."
"Are you alone?"
"Nathan, what is happening?"
He looked at Rebecca.
"Turn on video."
Claire did.
Her face appeared on screen.
Behind her was the familiar kitchen of her Portland home.
Rain streaked the windows.
Nathan had been there last Christmas.
"Show me today's newspaper or something live."
Claire stared at him.
"Are you serious?"
"Please."
She turned the camera toward a television showing a local evening broadcast.
Nathan exhaled.
"You did not travel today?"
"No."
"You did not file a court request this morning?"
"No."
"You did not go to Mercer Trust?"
"I do not even have an account there."
Rebecca leaned into frame.
"Claire, someone used your identity to remove documents from Emily's safe deposit box."
Claire went pale.
"What documents?"
Nathan told her.
She sat down hard.
"No."
"What?"
"The letter."
Nathan felt a new weight in her reaction.
"What letter?"
Claire looked at him.
"Emily wrote two letters for Sophie before her surgery."
Nathan frowned.
Emily had undergone emergency heart surgery four years earlier and died from complications two days later.
He knew she had prepared estate documents.
He knew about letters.
He had never opened them because they were addressed to Sophie for later in life.
"Why are there two?"
Claire swallowed.
"One was for Sophie's eighteenth birthday."
"And the other?"
"For you to open if anyone ever challenged Sophie's trust or guardianship."
Nathan stared at her.
"Why did nobody tell me that?"
"Emily told me not to unless there was a challenge."
Nathan's anger flared.
"There is a challenge."
"I know that now."
"What was in the letter?"
Claire shook her head.
"I do not know."
"You just said Emily told you about it."
"She told me why she wrote it, not what it said."
Nathan paced away.
Every secret in his family seemed to have been stored behind another secret.
Claire spoke again.
"Nathan, there was one more thing."
He stopped.
"What?"
"Emily was afraid of someone before the surgery."
The room went quiet.
"Who?"
"She never told me a name."
"Then why are you telling me now?"
"Because she changed the trust amendment the same week."
Nathan looked at Rebecca.
Claire continued.
"Emily said someone had been asking too many questions about Sophie's inheritance."
"Four years ago?"
"Yes."
Nathan's thoughts raced.
Vanessa had not entered his life until two and a half years after Emily died.
"It could not have been Vanessa."
Claire looked uncertain.
"Are you sure?"
"I met Vanessa eighteen months ago."
Claire shook her head.
"You met her eighteen months ago."
Nathan froze.
"What does that mean?"
Claire got up from the kitchen table and walked out of frame.
She returned carrying an old cardboard box.
"I did not recognize her at first when you introduced us."
"Recognize her from where?"
"Emily's charity work."
Nathan stared.
Claire pulled out a photograph.
She held it toward the camera.
The image showed Emily at a pediatric mobility fundraiser five years earlier.
Several volunteers stood behind her.
One woman was younger, with shorter hair and a different last name printed on her badge.
But Nathan recognized the face immediately.
Vanessa.
"She knew Emily?"
"I do not know if they knew each other personally."
"Her badge."
Claire moved the photograph closer.
VANESSA COLE.
Nathan remembered Vanessa had told him Crowley was her maiden name and that she had never been married.
"Cole?"
Rebecca was already searching.
Within two minutes she found an old nonprofit staff directory.
Vanessa Cole had worked for the Emily Mercer Mobility Foundation for seven months.
Position.
Donor records coordinator.
Access level.
Financial gifts and beneficiary trust information.
Nathan sat down.
Vanessa had known how much Sophie was worth before Nathan knew Vanessa existed.
Claire's voice trembled through the phone.
"Emily fired someone from the foundation right before her surgery."
Nathan looked at her.
"Who?"
"I never knew the name."
Rebecca found the archived board minutes.
An employee had been terminated for unauthorized access to confidential beneficiary records.
The employee's name was redacted from the public copy.
Nathan called the foundation's retired executive director.
The man answered on the fourth ring.
Nathan identified himself.
"I need the name of the employee Emily fired five years ago."
The retired director went quiet.
"Why?"
"Because that woman is trying to take my daughter."
Silence.
Then the man exhaled.
"Vanessa Cole."
Nathan closed his eyes.
"What did she access?"
"Trust summaries."
"Sophie's?"
"Among others."
"What else?"
"Medical settlement records."
"Whose?"
"Children the foundation supported."
Nathan thought of the names on the St. Catherine wall.
Eleven children.
Large trusts.
Large settlements.
"Did any of those children later enter Blackthorn?"
The retired director did not answer.
Nathan heard the hesitation.
"Did they?"
"I do not know."
"That is not what your silence says."
The man's voice lowered.
"One family contacted us two years ago."
"Which family?"
"The Grants."
Lucas Grant.
The missing thirteen-year-old.
Nathan looked at Ruiz.
"What did they want?"
"They said someone from Blackthorn had approached them using information that could only have come from our private files."
"Did you report it?"
"We referred them to counsel."
"That is not what I asked."
The man sounded ashamed.
"No."
Nathan's anger was instant.
"Why not?"
"The foundation was already under scrutiny after Emily died."
"So you protected the foundation."
"I thought the family had lawyers."
Nathan ended the call before he said something useless.
Ruiz stood by the window.
"Vanessa did not discover Sophie through you."
Nathan looked at her.
"She discovered me through Sophie."
The realization was revolting.
Their first meeting at a museum benefit.
Her surprise when introduced.
Her gentle questions about fatherhood.
Her admiration for Emily's charity work.
None of it had been coincidence.
Vanessa had spent years close enough to Sophie's trust information to understand the value.
Then she had entered Nathan's life under a different surname.
Marcus's laptop chimed.
"I found the woman who entered the vault."
He turned the screen.
A security image showed a woman in a dark coat leaving through a staff corridor.
Her hair was blond.
Her face looked like Claire's at first glance.
But when Marcus enlarged the image, the disguise became obvious.
Prosthetic nose.
Colored contacts.
A wig.
Nathan recognized the real face beneath the changes.
It was not Vanessa.
It was the woman from Blackthorn's advisory board photographs who had stood beside Vanessa at three charity events.
Rebecca found her name.
Dr. Mara Keene.
A forensic psychiatrist.
And according to the forged competency evaluation on Nathan's laptop, she was the second doctor scheduled to certify him incompetent tomorrow morning.
Nathan stared at the screen.
Then Sophie's hospital room alarm sounded down the hall.
He ran.
Sophie was sitting upright in bed, terrified.
A nurse held an unplugged IV line.
"What happened?"
The nurse pointed toward the bathroom.
A man in hospital scrubs had fled through a service door seconds earlier.
On the floor beside Sophie's bed lay a syringe.
Not the same one from St. Catherine.
This one had been filled.
And taped to it was a small white label.
May you like
NATHAN MERCER.
