Chapter 5 - RICHARD STERLING
Richard Sterling had supposedly died eleven years earlier.
Cancer.
Private funeral.
Closed casket.
It was all fake.
Federal investigators discovered he had been living under different identities while quietly managing offshore accounts belonging to the Sterling network.
He was alive.
And now he knew Grace had returned.
Michael placed a photograph on the table.
Richard Sterling.
Seventy-one.
Gray hair.
Thin.
Calm eyes.
Grace stared at the man who murdered her father.
“I want him found.”
Nathan looked at her.
“We'll find him.”
“No.”
Grace turned.
“I don't want another promise.”
Nathan absorbed that.
Grace continued.
“Your father promised himself he'd fix things.”
“He didn't.”
“People keep making promises while men like Richard keep hurting people.”
Nathan nodded.
“Then no promises.”
“We act.”
The FBI recovered Evelyn safely.
Then Grace's mother finally told them what Daniel had hidden.
The ledger was inside a safe-deposit box opened under Grace's name when she was a child.
Evelyn had kept the key hidden for seventeen years.
Daniel had told her never to open the box unless Grace was in danger.
Now she was.
They opened it.
The ledger was devastating.
Every bribe.
Every illegal contract.
Every payoff.
Daniel had documented everything.
But one page changed the case.
A payment had been made five years earlier.
Five million dollars.
Recipient:
V.S.
Victoria Sterling.
Purpose:
BENNETT REMOVAL.
Grace stared at it.
“She was paid?”
Michael shook his head.
“Looks like a trust transfer.”
Nathan understood.
“It was her reward.”
If Grace disappeared, Victoria received five million dollars.
Nathan stood.
“This wasn't jealousy.”
“It was business.”
Grace looked at him.
“To her, we were always business.”
Then Lily walked into the room carrying her stuffed rabbit.
“Daddy?”
Nathan turned.
She had started calling him Daddy three days earlier.
He still wasn't used to the way it hit his heart.
“What is it, sweetheart?”
“There's a man outside.”
Everyone froze.
“What man?”
“He said he knows Grandpa Daniel.”
Grace ran to the window.
A gray-haired man stood across the street.
Richard Sterling.
He looked directly at her.
Then smiled.
Grace's blood turned cold.
Nathan rushed outside.
Richard was already gone.
But he had left something on the mailbox.
A photograph.
Daniel Bennett lying beside his wrecked car.
Grace nearly dropped it.
Written on the back:
YOUR FATHER HAD THE SAME COURAGE.
IT DIDN'T SAVE HIM.
Nathan stared down the empty street.
May you like
Richard wasn't hiding anymore.
He was hunting them.
