Agent Mercer kept his pistol leveled at Eleanor Kessler.
The flashlight in his other hand cut a narrow white path through the storage corridor, catching the silver strands in Eleanor’s hair and the edge of her gray coat. She stood perhaps twenty feet away with both hands visible. Nothing in her posture suggested she had walked into the aim of an armed federal agent. She looked almost relaxed.
“Put the gun down,” Eleanor repeated.
Mercer did not move. “Show me your hands.”
“I am.”
“Turn around.”
“No.”
Mercer’s voice hardened. “Then stay exactly where you are.”
Eleanor smiled faintly. “You were always cautious, Nathan.”
The use of his first name changed the air.
Victoria looked at Mercer.
His weapon remained steady, but his shoulders had tightened.
“You know her?”
“No.”
Eleanor gave a quiet laugh.
“That answer depends on how narrowly you define knowing someone.”
Mercer ignored her. “Victoria, take Daniel and get behind me.”
Victoria did not move.
She was holding the photograph of Thomas Hale and Eleanor Kessler. Twenty-two years separated the image in her hand from the woman standing in front of her, but the face was unmistakable.
“You knew my father.”
Eleanor’s expression softened by a degree.
“Yes.”
“How?”
“We worked the same investigation.”
“My father was Internal Affairs.”
“And I was useful to Internal Affairs.”
“As what?”
Eleanor glanced toward Mercer’s pistol.
“Do you really want to have this conversation while your friend decides whether to shoot me?”
“He isn’t my friend.”
Mercer gave Victoria a brief sideways look.
Eleanor seemed amused.
“Your father would have appreciated that answer.”
Victoria stepped forward.
Mercer shifted to block her.
“Don’t.”
“She wants to talk.”
“She locked us inside a storage corridor.”
Eleanor raised one eyebrow. “I did not lock you in.”
The statement was so immediate that Victoria believed at least part of it.
“Then who did?”
Eleanor looked toward the security camera.
The red indicator still blinked.
“Someone who knows I’m here.”
Daniel moved beside Victoria.
“Where is Sarah?”
Eleanor’s attention went to him.
For the first time, her composure fractured.
Not much.
A slight tightening around the mouth. A breath held half a second too long.
“My daughter is alive.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
“I know.”
Daniel stepped forward despite his injured ankle.
“You took her from the safe house.”
“No.”
“You used Marianne Vale’s credentials.”
“No.”
“You’ve been following her.”
“Yes.”
Daniel stared.
Eleanor continued before he could speak.
“I followed Sarah because she refused to understand the danger she was in.”
“Danger from you?”
“Sometimes.”
The answer stopped him.
Victoria watched Eleanor carefully.
“You admit threatening her?”
“I admit making decisions she hated.”
“Did you order Daniel’s abduction?”
“No.”
“Did you tell Voss where he was?”
“No.”
“Are you Northstar?”
Eleanor’s eyes moved to Victoria.
There was the reaction.
Not surprise.
Recognition.
“Where did you hear that name?”
“Answer me.”
Eleanor looked toward the camera again.
“We don’t have time.”
“That answer stopped working several bodies ago.”
A metallic vibration traveled through the locked security door behind them.
Mercer turned his flashlight toward it.
Someone was testing the handle from the other side.
Once.
Twice.
Then silence.
Eleanor’s face changed.
“We need to leave.”
Mercer kept his weapon trained on her. “Open the door.”
“I can’t.”
“You got in.”
“Through the maintenance tunnel.”
“Where?”
Eleanor pointed behind herself.
“End of the corridor.”
Mercer looked at Victoria.
She could see the calculation in his face. Trusting Eleanor was dangerous. Remaining in a sealed corridor while an unknown person controlled the doors and cameras was worse.
Victoria slipped the photographs back into the cardboard box.
“We move.”
Daniel stared at her.
“You believe her?”
“No.”
“Good.”
They followed Eleanor.
Mercer remained behind the group, walking backward for several yards before turning. His pistol never went back into its holster.
At the end of the storage corridor, Eleanor stopped beside a ventilation panel and pressed two fingers into a recessed latch.
The panel swung outward.
Behind it was not ventilation ducting but a narrow concrete service passage.
Daniel looked at her.
“You knew this was here?”
“I know this station better than you do.”
“Why?”
Eleanor stepped inside.
“Because we used it before the station opened to the public.”
Victoria followed.
“For what?”
Eleanor did not answer.
The passage smelled of damp concrete and electrical dust. Pipes ran along the ceiling. Mercer closed the panel behind them, and the corridor became nearly black except for his flashlight.
They had gone perhaps forty yards when a sharp crack echoed behind them.
A gunshot.
Daniel flinched.
Another shot followed.
Metal rang.
“They’re opening the locker door,” Mercer said.
Eleanor increased her pace.
Victoria caught her arm.
“Who?”
Eleanor stopped.
“You want the entire history right now?”
“I want enough to decide whether following you deeper underground is suicidal.”
Eleanor stared at Victoria’s hand on her sleeve.
Victoria released her.
“Northstar is not a person,” Eleanor said.
Daniel looked at her.
“You told Sarah—”
“I told Sarah almost nothing.”
“That’s the problem.”
Eleanor absorbed the accusation without defending herself.
“Northstar began as an operation.”
“What operation?” Victoria asked.
“An anti-corruption task group.”
Victoria almost thought she had misheard.
Eleanor continued.
“Twenty-three years ago, your father was part of it.”
The tunnel seemed to narrow around Victoria.
“Thomas?”
“Yes.”
“Voss?”
“Later.”
“Rourke?”
“Yes.”
“Vale?”
“Junior prosecutor attached to the group.”
“Martin Shaw?”
“Confidential source.”
Daniel laughed bitterly.
“That’s your explanation? They were the good guys?”
“At the beginning.”
Eleanor’s voice held no sentiment.
“That is what makes this difficult to understand. Northstar was created because several municipal agencies had been infiltrated by contractors buying public officials. Your father discovered pieces of it through Internal Affairs. I found the financial side.”
“What were you?”
“A forensic accountant.”
Daniel stared at her.
“Sarah said you worked in consulting.”
“I did afterward.”
Victoria looked at the photograph in her mind.
Thomas Hale beside Eleanor.
“Who created Northstar?”
“A deputy attorney general named Samuel Crane.”
“Never heard of him.”
“You weren’t supposed to.”
“What happened?”
Eleanor resumed walking.
“Northstar worked.”
“For how long?”
“About eighteen months.”
“Then?”
“We seized records. Built cases. Identified judges, police commanders, contractors. The network was larger than expected.”
Victoria understood before Eleanor finished.
“And someone decided it was more valuable to control than destroy.”
Eleanor looked back.
“Your father said almost exactly that.”
Daniel’s breathing had become heavier from the pace.
“Who corrupted it?”
Eleanor stopped at a junction.
“That depends on what you mean by corrupted.”
“People are being kidnapped,” Daniel said. “I think we’ve passed the philosophical portion.”
Eleanor’s face tightened.
“Crane died.”
“How?”
“Heart attack.”
Victoria heard the qualification in her tone.
“You don’t believe that.”
“No.”
“Then who replaced him?”
“No one officially. Northstar was dissolved.”
“But unofficially?”
“Certain members kept the intelligence.”
“Names, weaknesses, payments,” Victoria said.
Eleanor nodded.
“Enough information to destroy careers, companies, families.”
“And Voss used it.”
“Eventually.”
“Rourke?”
Eleanor did not answer.
Victoria stepped closer.
“James Rourke?”
“I don’t know what James is anymore.”
That was more troubling than a yes.
Another sound echoed through the tunnel.
Footsteps.
Behind them.
Mercer extinguished the flashlight.
Darkness became complete.
“Wall,” he whispered.
Victoria reached sideways until her palm touched concrete. Daniel crouched beside her.
The footsteps approached.
One person.
Maybe two.
A flashlight beam appeared around the distant corner.
Eleanor leaned close to Victoria.
“There’s a door six feet ahead on your left.”
“How do you know?”
“I helped design the escape route.”
Mercer whispered, “Move.”
They felt their way forward.
Victoria found the door.
Locked.
Eleanor reached past her and pressed something beneath the frame.
A latch released.
They slipped through one at a time.
Mercer entered last and pulled the door shut without letting it click.
The room beyond smelled of rust and standing water.
The footsteps passed outside.
Victoria waited.
Ten seconds.
Twenty.
Thirty.
Mercer turned the flashlight back on, shielding most of the beam with his hand.
They were in an old pump room.
Daniel leaned against the wall.
“Where does this go?”
Eleanor pointed toward a ladder.
“Street access.”
Mercer shook his head.
“Too obvious.”
“There’s another exit through the drainage channel.”
Victoria looked at Eleanor.
“You said someone knows you’re here.”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then why come?”
Eleanor’s face finally showed something close to exhaustion.
“Because I received a message telling me Victoria Hale would open locker 318 tonight.”
Victoria stared.
“From whom?”
“No sender.”
“What did it say?”
“That Thomas Hale’s daughter was about to repeat his final mistake.”
Victoria felt anger rise, clean and controlled.
“What final mistake?”
“Trusting the wrong member of Northstar.”
“Who?”
Eleanor looked at Mercer.
Mercer’s pistol came up instantly.
Daniel stepped away from him.
Victoria did not.
“Why are you looking at Nathan?”
Eleanor’s gaze remained fixed on Mercer.
“Because Agent Mercer’s father was Samuel Crane.”
Silence.
Victoria turned.
Mercer’s face told her it was true.
“You knew?”
He lowered the gun slightly.
“I knew who my father was.”
“Did you know about Northstar?”
“Not until three years ago.”
“You never mentioned it.”
“You never asked about my father.”
Victoria stared at him.
“That is not an answer.”
Mercer’s jaw tightened.
“I was ordered not to discuss the connection.”
“Ordered by whom?”
He hesitated.
Victoria already knew.
“Rourke.”
Mercer nodded.
Eleanor gave a quiet, bitter laugh.
“And there it is.”
Mercer pointed the weapon at her again.
“You don’t get to judge anyone.”
“I’m not.”
Eleanor stepped toward the ladder.
“I’m telling Victoria that every person she has trusted in this investigation was connected to Northstar before she ever knew the name.”
Daniel looked at Victoria.
“Including your father.”
Victoria held Mercer’s gaze.
“Is there anything else?”
He did not answer quickly enough.
“Nathan.”
“My father didn’t die of a heart attack.”
Eleanor went still.
Mercer continued.
“I have the autopsy photographs.”
Eleanor turned toward him.
“How?”
“My mother kept them.”
“What do they show?”
“An injection mark.”
Eleanor’s face emptied.
Victoria felt the next question before she asked it.
“What was Samuel Crane injected with?”
Mercer looked directly at Eleanor.
“The same drug found in Thomas Hale’s blood after his car crash.”
Click here to continue reading: PART 10: Two Deaths Separated by Years Carried the Same Hidden Signature, Forcing Victoria to Reopen the One Case She Had Never Questioned
The Officers Chose a Woman Driving Alone, Never Realizing She Had Spent Months Studying Their Unit
Part 9 of 28
