CHAPTER 3 — THE ROOM ABOVE THE GARAGE
Smoke poured from the mansion’s west wing.
Guests ran across the lawn, knocking over tables and Easter decorations. Children cried as parents dragged them toward the driveway.
Victoria stood perfectly still.
The remote remained in her hand.
Chief Pierce grabbed her wrist.
“What did you do?”
She pulled away from him.
“What you failed to do.”
Richard stared at the burning windows.
“My office was up there.”
“No,” Lily whispered. “The records room was.”
Richard looked at her.
That glance confirmed everything.
Lily had known more than she had told me.
Real federal vehicles flooded through the broken gate. Agents in marked windbreakers spread across the property while firefighters followed behind them.
A woman stepped from the lead SUV.
Special Agent Naomi Grant.
Twenty years earlier, she had been the youngest analyst on my task force.
Now she was the regional director of the Federal Public Corruption Bureau.
She saw me and didn’t waste time with greetings.
“Victim?”
“In the truck.”
“Primary evidence?”
“Cloud upload completed. Original device in my pocket.”
“Local police?”
“Compromised.”
She nodded once.
Her agents surrounded Chief Pierce, Reed, Richard, and Victoria.
Reed held up his badge.
“I’m Special Prosecutor Malcolm Reed.”
Naomi barely looked at it.
“No, you aren’t.”
She took the badge, bent it between two fingers, and revealed a thin plastic shell beneath the metal coating.
“Malcolm Reed resigned fourteen months ago.”
The guests began whispering.
Richard stepped backward.
Naomi pointed at him.
“Do not move.”
Firefighters rushed into the mansion.
I climbed into the truck beside Lily.
“What records room?”
She closed her eyes.
“Richard has been using construction projects to move money. Fake vendors. Inflated contracts. City land purchased through shell companies.”
“How do you know?”
“I found the accounts.”
“When?”
“Six months ago.”
“And you stayed?”
Tears gathered beneath her bruised eye.
“He threatened to destroy you.”
I stared at her.
“Me?”
“He had files about your old work. Names. Missions. Sealed investigations. He said if I left, he’d release everything and people would die.”
My stomach tightened.
Very few people knew those files existed.
Even fewer knew where they had been stored.
“Who gave him those records?”
Lily looked toward Malcolm Reed.
Before she could answer, an agent shouted from the mansion.
“We found someone!”
Two firefighters emerged carrying a woman on a stretcher.
Her wrists were bound.
Gray tape covered her mouth.
She wore a housekeeper’s uniform stained with soot.
Lily tried to stand.
“Elena!”
The woman turned her head toward us.
Her eyes filled with panic.
An agent removed the tape from her mouth.
Elena coughed violently.
“Don’t let them take Mrs. Ashford,” she gasped. “They were going to kill her tonight.”
Richard shouted, “She’s lying!”
Elena pointed a trembling finger toward the garage.
“The real records aren’t inside the house.”
Everyone looked toward the detached stone garage.
Smoke drifted above its roof.
Naomi ordered three agents forward.
Elena grabbed her sleeve.
“No. You can’t open it normally.”
“Why?”
“Because the door is wired.”
Naomi called the bomb unit.
I looked at Lily.
“Why would Richard keep records in a garage?”
“He didn’t,” she said.
Then she looked at Victoria.
“His mother did.”
Victoria’s confident expression finally disappeared.
Naomi’s agents forced her to her knees.
As they secured her hands, Victoria began laughing.
“You think the records are about money?” she asked.
Naomi stared at her.
Victoria turned toward me.
May you like
“No, Arthur. Those records are about you.”
Then the garage door began opening by itself.
