CHAPTER TEN The Room Without Windows
The tactical team reached the fourth floor in less than three minutes.
It felt like three years.
The unfinished hotel contained dozens of empty rooms, concrete corridors, and temporary steel doors.
Grant had pulled Hannah into a service room without windows.
The transmitter continued sending fragments of sound.
Grant pacing.
Hannah breathing.
The scrape of metal against concrete.
“You made me do this,” Grant said.
“No,” Hannah answered. “You chose this.”
“You could have had everything.”
“You mean I could have stayed quiet.”
“I protected you.”
“You framed me.”
“I protected the family.”
“From what?”
“People like your mother.”
His hand struck something near the transmitter.
The signal failed again.
I stood inside the command vehicle with Rebecca holding both my shoulders.
“Let the agents work.”
“That is my daughter.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
The hotel’s fire alarm suddenly began ringing.
Red lights flashed through the unfinished building.
Smoke drifted from the fourth-floor service corridor.
Grant had started a small fire near the door to delay the tactical team.
But Hannah remembered something from the fire-safety training she had been forced to attend for Holloway charity events.
She pulled the emergency suppression lever inside the utility room.
Water exploded from the ceiling.
The electrical lock failed.
Hannah ran into the hallway.
Grant caught her coat.
She slipped out of it and kept running.
The tactical team reached the corridor as Grant chased her toward the stairwell.
He stopped when he saw the rifles pointed at his chest.
For the first time since I met him, Grant Holloway obeyed without argument.
He dropped to his knees.
Agents handcuffed him on the wet concrete floor.
Hannah emerged twenty minutes later wrapped in a gray emergency blanket.
I pushed past everyone and held her.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“Never apologize for surviving.”
Grant was charged with unlawful restraint, witness intimidation, fraud, conspiracy, and multiple financial crimes. More charges were expected.
Nolan Briggs agreed to cooperate in exchange for consideration at sentencing.
Claire Dalton entered protective custody.
Detective Marcus Vale was suspended after investigators discovered unexplained deposits in his bank account.
But Margaret Holloway had disappeared.
Her attorneys claimed they did not know where she was.
Her phone had been turned off.
Her private jet had not left the country.
Grant refused to identify her location.
At midnight, the seventy-two-hour deadline expired.
I stood inside the burned kitchen at Carter’s Table.
Hannah joined me.
“He gave us three days,” she said.
“And lost everything before the third day ended.”
Rebecca entered carrying a new court filing.
“Not everything.”
Margaret’s lawyers had obtained an emergency injunction challenging Samuel’s trust.
They claimed the trust had expired.
They also claimed Evelyn Carter lacked legal standing to stop the merger or vote the disputed shares.
A special shareholder meeting had been scheduled for nine the next morning.
If Margaret won the vote, she could remove the current board, approve the merger under a restructured transaction, and use company money to defend Grant.
“How many votes does she control?” I asked.
“Forty-six percent.”
“How many do we have?”
“Your twelve, assuming the court recognizes them.”
“That leaves forty-two percent.”
Rebecca nodded.
“Most of those shareholders are loyal to Margaret.”
Hannah looked at the broken kitchen.
“So after everything, she can still win?”
Rebecca placed a sealed envelope on the table.
“This arrived from Margaret an hour ago.”
Inside was a single sheet of paper.
TRANSFER YOUR SHARES AND ALL CHARGES AGAINST HANNAH DISAPPEAR.
May you like
At the bottom, Margaret had written one more sentence by hand.
Ask Evelyn what really happened the night Samuel died.
