Chapter 2 - THE LETTER FROM A DEAD MAN
Claire woke beneath bright hospital lights.
For several seconds, she did not remember where she was.
Then pain spread through her ribs.
The staircase returned in broken flashes.
Eleanor’s hand around her wrist.
The strike across her face.
The empty air beneath her feet.
Ethan’s arms catching her before she reached the marble floor.
Claire tried to sit up.
A monitor began beeping faster.
“Don’t.”
Ethan stood from the chair beside her bed.
He had removed his jacket.
The sleeves of his white shirt were rolled to his elbows.
A thin line of dried blood marked his collar.
Claire looked toward the closed door.
“How long was I unconscious?”
“Seven hours.”
“Eleanor?”
“Missing.”
“The officer?”
“He survived.”
“And the letter?”
“Gone.”
Claire closed her eyes.
Ethan moved closer.
“The doctor says you have two fractured ribs and a concussion.”
“I’ve had worse.”
His expression hardened.
“That is not comforting.”
Silence settled between them.
Eight years of unanswered questions stood in the narrow space separating the bed from his chair.
Claire had once known every version of Ethan’s silence.
She knew when he was angry.
She knew when he was frightened.
She knew when he wanted to say something but did not know how.
This silence contained all three.
“You said you never wrote the letter,” he said.
Claire looked at him.
“The one that ended our engagement.”
“I didn’t.”
“It was in your handwriting.”
“Your mother had access to hundreds of pages I wrote while working at the estate.”
“It included things only you knew.”
“She read my journals.”
Ethan stared at her.
Claire continued before her courage disappeared.
“The night I left, Eleanor showed me photographs of you meeting with federal investigators.”
“I never met federal investigators.”
“They were taken outside a government building.”
“I was meeting my father’s accountant.”
“She said the accountant was cooperating with the Justice Department.”
“Why would that make you leave?”
“Because she told me she had evidence connecting you to the stolen research files.”
Ethan’s jaw tightened.
“What files?”
“The Helix trial data.”
Recognition flickered across his face.
Helix had been the Ashford Corporation’s most profitable medical program.
The company claimed the treatment had extended the lives of terminal cancer patients.
Two years after Claire vanished, Helix had made the Ashfords one of the wealthiest families in the country.
“She said if I stayed with you, she would give the evidence to prosecutors.”
“Evidence of something I never did.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“You could have asked me.”
“She had recordings.”
“What recordings?”
“Your voice discussing data transfers.”
“I never transferred anything.”
“I know that now.”
Ethan walked toward the window.
Morning rain covered the city in gray.
“You decided I was guilty.”
“I decided I couldn’t risk sending you to prison.”
“You left me without a word.”
“I left because she promised the evidence would disappear.”
Ethan turned around.
“You could have trusted me.”
Claire swallowed.
“I was twenty-three.”
“So was I.”
“She had already destroyed my father.”
Ethan’s anger faltered.
Claire looked down at her hands.
“My father did not die in a random car accident.”
“Claire.”
“He was investigating your company.”
“My father told me Daniel Bennett was drunk.”
“My father had been sober for eleven years.”
“The police report listed alcohol in his blood.”
“The report was falsified.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I found the original.”
Ethan slowly returned to the bedside.
Claire reached toward a small cabinet.
Her coat had been folded beside it.
One sleeve was torn.
She removed a thin flash drive from the inner lining.
“I came back because of more than the letter.”
Ethan took the drive.
“What is on this?”
“A recording my father made two days before he died.”
“Where did you get it?”
“It was mailed with Graham’s letter.”
Ethan looked at the drive as though it might explode.
“Have you listened to it?”
“Once.”
“What does it say?”
Claire’s voice lowered.
“My father believed someone inside Ashford Corporation had altered clinical results.”
“That isn’t possible.”
“He named three people.”
“Who?”
“Your father.”
Ethan’s face closed.
“Eleanor.”
His hand tightened around the drive.
“And Victor Hale.”
Victor had served as the Ashford family attorney for more than twenty-five years.
He had handled Graham’s estate after the plane crash.
He had also supervised the internal investigation that accused Claire of stealing company files.
“Victor is in London,” Ethan said.
“No.”
“What do you mean?”
“He returned to New York yesterday.”
“How do you know?”
“I saw him outside the manor before the gala.”
Ethan stared at her.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I was pushed down a staircase before we had time to discuss it.”
The door opened.
Detective Reed entered.
He carried a paper cup of coffee and an expression shaped by lack of sleep.
“Good morning.”
Claire watched him lock the door behind him.
“Did you find Eleanor?”
“No.”
“Who fired the shot?”
“We don’t know.”
“You had seventy witnesses.”
“We also had three seconds of complete darkness and a service corridor with six exits.”
Ethan held up the flash drive.
“Can your department analyze this?”
Reed looked at Claire.
“What is it?”
“Possible evidence connected to my father’s death.”
“And Graham Ashford’s disappearance.”
Reed set down his coffee.
“You told the patrol officers nothing about a flash drive.”
“I wasn’t conscious.”
“You were conscious in the ambulance.”
“I had two broken ribs and thought I might vomit on a paramedic.”
Reed accepted the explanation reluctantly.
“Did anyone else know you had it?”
“The person who mailed it.”
“Rosa?”
“I don’t know.”
“Naomi Cole says Rosa told you she saw Graham.”
Claire glanced toward Ethan.
His face revealed nothing.
Reed continued.
“Rosa disappeared before we could question her.”
“Was she taken?”
“There were no signs of force.”
“Where would she go?”
Ethan answered.
“She has a sister in Queens.”
“We checked.”
“And?”
“The apartment was empty.”
Reed stepped closer to the bed.
“There is something else.”
Claire waited.
“The emergency lighting system at Ashford Manor did not fail.”
Ethan frowned.
“I saw it fail.”
“The main power was deliberately shut down.”
“From where?”
“A control panel inside the east wing.”
Ethan’s expression changed.
“That wing has been sealed for years.”
“Since when?”
“Since my father died.”
Reed removed a photograph from his coat.
It showed a keypad beside a heavy wooden door.
“There were fresh fingerprints on the panel.”
“Whose?”
Reed looked directly at Ethan.
“Graham Ashford’s.”
Ethan laughed once, but there was no humor in it.
“My father has been dead for ten years.”
“The federal database has prints from his military service.”
“And they matched?”
“Twenty-three points of identification.”
Claire felt the room tilt.
Rosa had not been lying.
Graham Ashford had been inside the manor.
He had shut off the lights.
He might have fired the gun.
Reed returned the photograph to his pocket.
“There is another problem.”
“What?”
“The manor’s exterior cameras captured a black sedan leaving through the north gate four minutes after the shooting.”
“Was Eleanor inside?”
“We cannot see the passengers.”
“License plate?”
“Stolen.”
Ethan walked toward the door.
“Where are you going?”
“To the manor.”
Reed blocked him.
“It is an active crime scene.”
“It is my home.”
“It is also where someone shot a police officer.”
“My father’s fingerprints are inside a locked wing.”
“And that is exactly why you are not walking in alone.”
Claire pushed the blanket aside.
Ethan turned.
“You are not going anywhere.”
“You don’t get to decide that.”
“You can barely stand.”
“I can stand long enough to open a door.”
“What door?”
“The east wing.”
Ethan stared at her.
Claire slowly reached beneath the chain around her neck.
She pulled out a small brass key.
Ethan recognized the shape.
His father had worn an identical key on his watch chain.
“Where did you get that?”
“It was inside the envelope.”
Reed moved closer.
“Does it open the east wing?”
Claire looked at Ethan.
“There is only one way to find out.”
Two hours later, Claire signed herself out against medical advice.
Ethan argued with the doctor.
The doctor argued with Claire.
Detective Reed argued with everyone.
In the end, they traveled to Ashford Manor in an unmarked police vehicle.
Yellow tape crossed the entrance.
Most of the guests had left before sunrise.
Crime scene technicians worked across the ballroom.
The broken railing remained where Claire had fallen.
She did not look at it.
Ethan noticed.
He placed one hand near her back without touching her.
The east wing began beyond the family library.
Ethan had not entered it since the week after Graham disappeared.
Eleanor claimed the rooms held too many memories.
She ordered the entire section closed.
The brass key slid smoothly into the old lock.
Claire turned it.
The door opened.
Cold air moved through the corridor.
Dust covered the portraits and furniture.
Yet a narrow path across the carpet had recently been disturbed.
Someone had walked through repeatedly.
Reed drew his weapon.
“Stay behind me.”
They followed the footprints.
The path ended beside Graham’s former study.
The study appeared untouched.
Books lined the walls.
A globe stood beside the window.
Graham’s desk remained covered in family photographs.
Ethan picked up one showing him at twelve years old beside his father.
“I haven’t seen this in years.”
Claire studied the desk.
One object appeared cleaner than everything around it.
A silver compass.
She lifted it.
A mechanical click sounded beneath the floor.
The bookcase moved inward.
A hidden passage appeared behind it.
Reed raised his weapon.
The passage descended beneath the house.
They followed the narrow stairs.
A faint electrical hum grew louder.
At the bottom stood a steel medical door.
Fresh blood marked the handle.
Ethan opened it.
The room beyond contained a hospital bed, oxygen tanks, medication, and surveillance screens connected to cameras throughout the manor.
One monitor displayed Eleanor’s empty bedroom.
Another showed the ballroom.
A third showed the hospital room Claire had left less than an hour earlier.
Someone had been watching her.
The hospital bed was empty.
The restraints attached to it had been cut.
Blood stained the white sheets.
Claire moved toward a table.
A framed photograph rested beside several pill bottles.
It showed Graham Ashford standing with Daniel Bennett.
Claire’s father.
On the back, someone had written a message in fresh black ink.
Daniel was right.
Eleanor is not the one you should fear.
A sound came from the shadows behind them.
Reed spun around.
A man stood in the doorway.
He was thin, gray-haired, and leaning heavily on a cane.
Ethan stopped breathing.
The man’s face was older and scarred, but impossible to mistake.
“Dad?”
Graham Ashford looked at his son.
Then he raised a pistol.
“Get away from Claire.”
Ethan stared at the weapon.
“Why?”
Graham’s eyes shifted toward the staircase.
“Because Victor followed you here.”
A gun clicked somewhere above them.
May you like
Then Victor Hale’s voice drifted down from the darkness.
“He always was a terrible liar.”
