They emerged from the drainage channel three blocks from South Meridian Station just before sunrise.
Cold gray light had begun to gather above the rooftops. Victoria stood in an alley behind a closed printing shop while Mercer contacted a federal response team through a channel he claimed Rourke could not monitor.
Claimed.
That word now attached itself to almost everything.
Daniel sat on a concrete loading step, his injured leg extended. Eleanor stood apart from him.
Neither spoke to the other.
Victoria faced Mercer.
“You have photographs of my father’s autopsy?”
“Not yours. Crane’s.”
“You said the same drug was found in Thomas’s blood.”
“It was.”
“How do you know?”
Mercer reached inside his jacket slowly and removed a small encrypted drive.
“My father kept copies of Northstar records off-site. My mother found them after his death.”
“And you’ve had them three years?”
“Some.”
“Why didn’t you give them to investigators?”
“I did.”
“To Rourke.”
Mercer nodded.
Victoria turned away.
The alley smelled of wet cardboard and diesel. A delivery truck passed at the far intersection.
“What did Rourke do?”
“He opened a confidential review.”
“Did you ever see the result?”
“No.”
“You didn’t find that suspicious?”
“Of course I did.”
“Yet you continued working with him.”
Mercer’s voice sharpened.
“I continued investigating him.”
That stopped Victoria.
“You’re investigating Rourke?”
“Quietly.”
“For whom?”
“No one.”
“That is not how federal investigations work.”
“This one does.”
Victoria looked at him.
Mercer lowered his voice.
“Three people who asked questions about Northstar died. Two others vanished. Every formal investigation was compromised.”
“Daniel makes three vanished people.”
“I didn’t know Daniel was connected until tonight.”
Eleanor spoke from behind them.
“He’s telling the truth about that.”
Mercer turned.
“You don’t know what I know.”
“No. But I know what Sarah knew.”
Daniel stood despite the pain in his ankle.
“Then tell us where she is.”
Eleanor looked at him.
“If I knew, I would already be there.”
“You expect me to believe you care now?”
“She is my daughter.”
“You let her think you were dead for twelve years.”
Eleanor’s voice became colder.
“Because being my daughter was dangerous.”
“You made it dangerous.”
“Yes.”
The admission silenced him.
Eleanor looked at Victoria.
“Your father made a similar decision.”
Victoria stiffened.
“What decision?”
“To distance himself from you.”
“No.”
“He resigned Internal Affairs.”
“That isn’t distancing himself from his family.”
“He resigned because Northstar had identified you as leverage.”
Victoria stared.
“I was a child.”
“That was precisely why.”
Something old and uncomfortable shifted in Victoria’s memory.
Her father becoming strict about routes home from school.
Locks changed twice.
A family vacation canceled without explanation.
Her mother complaining that Thomas checked the windows every night.
Victoria had remembered those things as fragments of a tense household.
Now they arranged themselves differently.
“What happened in 2004?”
Eleanor looked toward Mercer.
“Samuel Crane died.”
“When?”
“February.”
“My father resigned in March.”
“Yes.”
“And died two years later.”
Eleanor nodded.
“He never stopped investigating.”
Victoria’s throat tightened.
“You were working with him?”
“For part of that time.”
“Until when?”
“Three weeks before his death.”
“What happened?”
“We argued.”
“About?”
“Evidence.”
“What evidence?”
Eleanor hesitated.
Victoria stepped closer.
“I have listened to people ration information all night while others disappear. Stop doing it.”
Eleanor accepted the rebuke.
“Thomas believed he had identified the person who took control of Northstar after Crane died.”
“Who?”
“He wouldn’t tell me.”
“Why?”
“He thought I might be compromised.”
Daniel gave a humorless laugh.
“Apparently secrecy runs in the family.”
Victoria ignored him.
“What did Thomas do with the evidence?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did he keep files?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“I never found them.”
Victoria thought of her childhood home.
Sold after her mother died.
Boxes stored in an attic.
Her father’s old desk.
Most of his belongings had been packed and moved into a storage unit Victoria rarely visited.
“Some may still exist.”
Eleanor looked at her.
“Where?”
“I’m not telling you.”
For the first time, Eleanor almost smiled.
“Good.”
Mercer’s phone vibrated.
He checked it.
“Federal team is five minutes out.”
Victoria held out her hand.
“The drive.”
Mercer did not give it to her.
“Nathan.”
“It contains protected material.”
“So does my life, apparently.”
He looked at the drive and then handed it over.
Victoria plugged it into a secure tablet Mercer carried.
Folders appeared.
CRANE.
NORTHSTAR.
HALE, THOMAS.
Her father’s name looked strange on the screen.
She opened the folder.
Scanned reports.
Photographs.
Medical documents.
A toxicology page.
Victoria read slowly.
Thomas Hale’s official cause of death had been blunt-force trauma following a vehicle collision.
But toxicology had detected a sedative.
The concentration was marked as therapeutically plausible.
Victoria frowned.
“He wasn’t prescribed this.”
Eleanor crouched beside her.
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“He hated medication.”
“That isn’t evidence.”
“No. His medical records are.”
Mercer opened another document.
Thomas had no prescription.
Victoria stared at the date.
“Why wasn’t this investigated?”
“It was,” Mercer said.
“By whom?”
He enlarged the signature at the bottom of the review.
Victoria recognized the name.
James Rourke.
Her director had been a junior internal-affairs supervisor then.
Victoria read the conclusion.
No evidence of criminal involvement.
Possible non-prescribed sleep aid.
Case closed.
She felt something settle inside her.
Not grief.
Grief had already had twenty years.
This was anger acquiring structure.
“Rourke reviewed my father’s death.”
“Yes.”
“And never told me.”
Mercer nodded.
Victoria looked at Eleanor.
“Did you know?”
“No.”
She believed her.
That surprised her.
Daniel moved closer.
“What does the drug have to do with Crane?”
Mercer opened the autopsy folder.
Samuel Crane had the same compound in his bloodstream.
Higher concentration.
Officially attributed to emergency medical treatment.
“But he died at home,” Victoria said.
“Yes.”
“Before paramedics arrived?”
“Yes.”
“Then the drug was already present.”
“Yes.”
Eleanor stared at the report.
“I never saw this.”
“My mother did.”
“What happened to her?”
Mercer’s face tightened.
“She died six months later.”
Victoria looked up.
“How?”
“Cancer.”
“Natural?”
“Yes.”
He sounded almost defensive.
Victoria understood why.
Once a conspiracy became large enough, ordinary death itself began to look suspicious.
“Did she tell anyone about the records?”
“Only me.”
“How old were you?”
“Seventeen.”
Eleanor sat on the loading step.
For the first time, she looked older than the woman in the photograph.
“Samuel knew.”
Mercer turned.
“Knew what?”
“That someone inside Northstar had turned it.”
“You were close to him?”
“We all were.”
“You more than the others?”
Eleanor looked at Mercer.
“Your father saved my life.”
Mercer said nothing.
“He recruited me after I found irregular municipal payments. When people started following me, he moved Sarah and me into protection.”
Daniel’s expression shifted.
“Sarah was part of this as a child?”
“She didn’t know.”
“She was fifteen when you disappeared.”
“Yes.”
“Why stage your death?”
“Because someone tried to kill us.”
Daniel’s anger faltered.
Eleanor continued.
“The boating accident was arranged by Crane’s remaining contacts. Sarah was sent to my sister. I disappeared.”
“Why not take Sarah with you?”
“Because the people hunting me expected me to protect my daughter.”
“So you abandoned her.”
“Yes.”
Eleanor’s voice cracked for the first time.
“That is exactly what I did.”
No one answered.
A black federal vehicle turned into the alley.
Mercer raised one hand.
Victoria stopped him.
“Wait.”
The vehicle slowed.
Two men were visible inside.
Mercer frowned.
“That isn’t my team.”
The passenger door opened.
Victoria reached for her weapon.
The man who stepped out raised both hands.
James Rourke.
Mercer swore.
Rourke looked exhausted. His tie was gone, shirt collar open.
“Victoria.”
“Don’t come closer.”
He stopped.
His eyes moved to Eleanor.
Shock appeared.
“Eleanor?”
She stared back.
“James.”
Rourke looked as though he had seen a ghost.
“You’re alive.”
Eleanor’s expression changed.
Victoria noticed immediately.
“You didn’t know?”
Rourke ignored the question.
“Victoria, Marianne Vale is moving Sarah.”
“Where?”
“I traced the authorization.”
“To what location?”
“Old county courthouse.”
Eleanor stood.
“No.”
Everyone looked at her.
Her face had gone white.
“What?” Victoria asked.
Eleanor stepped toward Rourke.
“Which part of the courthouse?”
“Sublevel records annex.”
Eleanor closed her eyes.
Daniel grabbed her arm.
“Why?”
She looked at him.
“Because that was Northstar’s original operations room.”
Victoria understood.
Someone was gathering them.
Not hiding Sarah.
Drawing the surviving pieces of Northstar back to where it had begun.
Rourke looked at the encrypted drive in Victoria’s hand.
“What is that?”
“Something you buried twenty years ago.”
His face changed.
Victoria held up the toxicology report.
“You reviewed my father’s death.”
Rourke said nothing.
“You knew he had the same drug in his blood as Samuel Crane.”
“Victoria—”
“Did you know?”
His eyes dropped.
“Yes.”
Mercer drew his weapon.
Rourke raised his hands again.
Victoria’s voice became quiet.
“Why did you close the case?”
Rourke looked at Eleanor.
Then at Victoria.
“Because Thomas Hale asked me to.”
Click here to continue reading: PART 11: Rourke’s Confession Reversed Everything Victoria Believed About Her Father’s Death and Revealed the Trap Thomas Had Prepared Before the Crash
The Officers Chose a Woman Driving Alone, Never Realizing She Had Spent Months Studying Their Unit
Part 10 of 28
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