Chapter 10: Fire in the Hallway
The facility erupted into chaos.
Nurses pushed patients toward the emergency exits.
Smoke swallowed the corridor.
Marcus wrapped his jacket around Sarah’s shoulders while I held her hand.
Detective Ruiz ran toward the records room.
“Get outside!”
A ceiling panel collapsed behind her.
I screamed her name.
Officer Grant appeared through the smoke and pulled Ruiz back just before flames spread across the hallway.
Outside, firefighters fought the blaze.
Sarah clung to me.
“They found me,” she whispered.
“Who?”
“Your father’s people.”
My father was in custody.
Vanessa and my mother were in separate holding cells.
But someone else was protecting the secret.
Police reviewed security footage.
Twenty minutes before the fire, a man wearing a maintenance uniform entered the building.
Sarah recognized him immediately.
“Uncle Thomas.”
Thomas Whitmore was my father’s younger brother.
My family told me he had died in a motorcycle accident when I was a child.
He hadn’t.
He had been living under another name and working as an accountant for my grandfather’s former company.
Detectives found him at a motel before midnight.
Inside his room were copies of the trust, photographs of Lily, and a list of potential witnesses.
My name was first.
Marcus’s was second.
Sarah’s was third.
Emma’s was fourth.
Beside Lily’s name, he had written:
Already handled.
Thomas was arrested.
But during interrogation, he claimed he had not started the fire.
He said my mother had called him before her arrest.
“She told me to destroy the records,” he admitted. “But someone reached the facility before I did.”
“Who?” Ruiz asked.
Thomas smiled.
“The person who actually owns the trust.”
Ruiz showed us footage from the facility parking lot.
A black sedan had arrived moments before the fire.
A woman stepped out.
She wore a dark coat and used a cane.
The image was grainy, but Sarah recognized her.
“Grandma Evelyn.”
My grandmother had supposedly died twenty-seven years ago.
Yet Sarah swore the woman in the footage was her.
Then Marcus pointed toward the screen.
The woman turned slightly.
Around her neck hung a necklace with the same divided-circle symbol.
Grace’s symbol.
May you like
Lily’s symbol.
And now, apparently, my grandmother’s.
