Chapter 11 - THE FIRE ON THE SECOND FLOOR
Smoke slipped beneath the conference-room door in a thin gray line.
Marcus Bellamy did not open it.
He touched the door with the back of his hand first.
"Warm."
Rebecca grabbed her phone.
No signal.
Henry pointed toward the ceiling.
"The building has an old repeater."
Marcus looked at him.
"Meaning?"
"Meaning when the power dies, half the phones die with it."
The smoke thickened.
I looked at the flash drive on the table.
Henry reached for it at the same moment.
"Leave the boxes," Marcus said.
"No," Henry snapped.
"Mr. Park, paper is replaceable."
"Not all of it."
A sharp crack sounded outside the room.
Then glass broke.
The smoke alarm finally began to scream.
I could barely hear myself think.
Marcus pulled his jacket over his mouth and opened the conference-room door two inches.
Smoke poured through the gap.
He closed it again.
"Hallway's blocked."
Rebecca looked toward the single window.
We were on the second floor.
Below us was the flat metal awning above the hardware store entrance.
It was not a good way out.
It was better than staying.
Marcus shoved the conference table toward the window.
"We go one at a time."
Henry still had both hands on a bankers box.
"Henry," I said.
"These are your father's originals."
"My father would tell you to get out."
"Your father would tell me to take the ledger."
"We already have the ledger."
Henry looked at me.
For one strange second, we both smiled.
Then he released the box.
Marcus broke the lower window with a chair.
Cold air rushed inside.
He knocked away the remaining glass with the chair legs.
Smoke filled the top half of the room.
Rebecca climbed onto the table first.
Marcus helped her through.
She lowered herself onto the awning and crawled toward the edge.
Henry went second.
He moved slower than he wanted anyone to notice.
I stayed behind him with one hand pressed against his back.
"I don't need help."
"Tonight you do."
"You're very much like your father."
"You already said that."
"It was not entirely a compliment."
Even then, I laughed.
We reached the awning.
People were gathering on the sidewalk below.
Someone had called the fire department.
Sirens approached from two directions.
Marcus came through last.
The conference-room ceiling disappeared behind smoke seconds after he exited.
Firefighters brought a ladder to the awning.
Rebecca climbed down.
Then Henry.
I was halfway down when the second-floor window behind us burst outward.
Heat rolled over my back.
People shouted.
I descended the rest of the ladder too quickly and landed hard on the sidewalk.
Rebecca caught my arm.
"Are you okay?"
"The drive."
She blinked.
"What?"
I looked at Henry.
"Where's the flash drive?"
Henry patted his cardigan.
His face changed.
"Conference room."
My stomach dropped.
The archival files proving the stock-transfer packet had been altered were upstairs inside a burning office.
Henry took one step toward the building.
Marcus grabbed him.
"Absolutely not."
"That drive—"
"Is not worth dying for."
Henry swore at him.
A firefighter ordered us farther back.
I stood across the street and watched flames appear behind the second-floor windows.
It felt impossible that we could find the evidence and lose it within ten minutes.
Then Henry began laughing.
I turned toward him.
"What?"
He bent forward, coughing and laughing at the same time.
"You think I keep one copy?"
Rebecca stared at him.
"Henry."
He wiped his eyes.
"I told you."
He straightened.
"Never trust the first set."
The flash drive in the conference room was a working copy.
A second encrypted copy sat in a safe at his home.
A third existed in an online archive under a name no one at Lawson Meridian knew.
Relief hit me so hard I nearly hugged him.
Then Marcus looked toward the alley.
"Don't celebrate yet."
A man was running behind the building.
Black cap.
Dark jacket.
The same general description my mother had given after the basement break-in.
Marcus shouted.
The man ran faster.
Two firefighters turned.
A police officer near the intersection heard Marcus and moved to block the alley exit.
The man climbed a chain-link fence.
His jacket caught on the top wire.
He ripped free and dropped awkwardly to the other side.
The officer reached him seconds later.
They disappeared behind a delivery truck.
Then another officer ran in.
A minute later, the first officer emerged with the man in handcuffs.
I recognized him before I knew from where.
He was in his early fifties, broad shouldered, with a gray beard.
I had seen him at company sites.
Henry recognized him too.
"Caleb Rourke."
The name pulled a file from my memory.
Rourke had been operations director for Harbor Safety Services.
The company in my father's ledger.
The company connected to the white security vehicle.
The company that had serviced my father's fleet car before his death.
Detective Ruiz arrived fifteen minutes later.
Rourke said nothing.
His pockets said more.
Police found a small bottle of accelerant, disposable gloves, two phones, and a printed photograph of Henry leaving his home that morning.
They also found a key.
My mother identified it from a photograph as a duplicate of her basement side-door key.
The break-in and the fire had finally become one line instead of two suspicions.
"Can you arrest Judith now?" I asked Ruiz.
"For what Rourke did?"
"He worked for her."
"Eight years ago."
"He's in my father's ledger."
"That gives me a direction, not a conspiracy charge."
I looked toward the handcuffed man sitting in a patrol car.
"Make him talk."
Ruiz gave me a tired look.
"Television has damaged everyone's expectations of interviews."
"Then undamage mine."
For once, she almost smiled.
"His phones will help."
The fire department determined the blaze had been deliberately set near the stairwell.
Whoever started it had intended to block the main exit.
That fact transformed the incident from property damage into something far more serious.
Rourke was taken away.
Henry was examined for smoke inhalation and then driven to a secure location Ruiz refused to tell me.
Before he left, he took my hand.
"Do not go to that board meeting tomorrow."
I looked at him.
"Why?"
"Because Daniel wants you there."
"He wants me gone."
"No."
Henry shook his head.
"If he only wanted you gone, he would have delayed the meeting until the court order settled everything."
"Then why call it now?"
"Because he needs you angry."
Rebecca heard that.
"Explain."
Henry looked at her.
"Daniel is at his most dangerous when he has paperwork."
He looked back at me.
"Judith is at her most dangerous when she wants you to stop thinking and start reacting."
I remembered the courthouse.
The reporters.
The grief-counseling photograph.
The carefully timed petition.
"They want me to make a scene."
Henry nodded.
"They have been building the story that you are unstable."
"So I stay home and let them remove me?"
"I didn't say that."
He reached into his cardigan pocket.
For one second, I thought he had somehow found the flash drive after all.
Instead, he handed me a folded photocopy.
It was a page from my father's handwritten notes.
At the top, in large block letters, he had written three words.
LET THEM TALK.
Below it were notes from an old negotiation.
My father had always believed people revealed themselves when they thought they had control of a room.
Henry tapped the page.
"Go to the meeting."
"You just told me not to."
"I told you not to go to the meeting they planned."
His eyes sharpened.
"Go to the meeting you plan."
That night, Rebecca, Maya, Ruiz, and I built ours.
Maya sent us the board packet and every access log she could preserve before Daniel locked her out too.
Rebecca filed an emergency objection to any permanent stock action.
Ruiz obtained a warrant for Rourke's phones.
Henry's remote archive produced the original refinancing packet from seven months earlier.
The stock-transfer page was not in it.
Neither were the initials Daniel claimed I had placed on the transfer schedule.
The forgery was not my signature.
It was the document around my signature.
Daniel had taken a legitimate signed page and attached it to a different transaction.
At 11:37 p.m., the state lab called Ruiz with a preliminary result from the food sample I had hidden in my waistband.
The dinner contained the same sedating compound found in Noah and me.
The concentration was far above what could reasonably appear through accidental contamination.
I sat in Rebecca's office and listened to Ruiz explain it.
For a moment, nobody spoke.
Then I asked the only question that mattered.
"Is that enough?"
"It is enough to establish intentional contamination of the food."
"Is it enough to arrest Daniel?"
Ruiz paused.
"Not by itself."
My fist hit the conference table before I could stop it.
"He cooked it."
"And his attorney will say other people had access to the kitchen."
"Brooke gave him a packet."
"And we still have not recovered Brooke."
"Rourke set Henry's office on fire."
"Which helps prove someone is trying to destroy evidence."
"What else do you need?"
Ruiz leaned forward.
"I need the link."
"Between what?"
"Daniel and the substance."
Her phone vibrated.
She looked at the screen.
Then she stood.
"Maybe we just got it."
Rourke's seized phone had synced several messages before it was placed into airplane mode.
One arrived after he was already in custody.
It came from a prepaid number.
The message contained six words.
DID YOU GET PARK'S BACKUP TOO?
A second message followed thirty seconds later.
WHY AREN'T YOU ANSWERING, DANIEL?
The sender had not realized police were holding the phone.
But the sender had made one mistake.
May you like
The prepaid number had been activated that morning using an online account paid from Judith Lawson's personal credit card.
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