Chapter 11 - The Warehouse
The FBI arrested Briggs.
Not for my case.
They had already been investigating him for unrelated corruption.
Daniel had contacted a federal prosecutor his company worked with and sent them the mansion footage, my bank records, and Vanessa’s statement.
It was enough to trigger immediate action.
But Briggs’s final words terrified me.
We called Michael repeatedly.
Nothing.
Vanessa finally gave us an address.
“My father owns an abandoned records warehouse in Queens.”
Daniel stared at her.
“You waited until now?”
“I wasn’t sure.”
I exploded.
“My father could be dying!”
“I know!”
“No, you don’t know anything about losing him!”
Vanessa flinched.
For once, she didn’t fight back.
The FBI went to the warehouse.
We followed against their advice.
Smoke was already rising when we arrived.
Robert was burning it.
Firefighters rushed inside.
Agents surrounded the property.
I saw an ambulance.
Then two agents emerged carrying a stretcher.
“Dad!”
I ran.
Michael’s face was bruised.
His hands were tied.
But his eyes opened.
He looked at me.
Really looked at me.
After twenty-nine years.
“Emily.”
I grabbed his hand.
“You’re alive.”
“I promised your mother I’d stay alive long enough to see you again.”
I cried so hard I could barely speak.
“Why didn’t you come back?”
His face broke.
“Because every time I tried, someone threatened you.”
“Who?”
“Charles first.”
“And after Charles died?”
Michael looked toward Vanessa.
“Robert.”
Vanessa lowered her eyes.
Michael continued.
“He showed me photographs of you.”
My stomach turned.
“At school. At work. Outside your apartment.”
Robert had watched me for years.
“He said if I contacted you, you’d have the same kind of accident as Laura.”
I squeezed his hand.
“So you stayed away.”
“I thought being hated by a daughter who believed I abandoned her was better than burying her.”
That sentence destroyed me.
I leaned down and hugged him.
For a few seconds, everything else disappeared.
Then Michael whispered:
“The ledger.”
“We know where it is.”
“No.”
I pulled back.
“Laura hid it at Caldwell & Pierce.”
“That was the first location.”
My heart sank.
“What do you mean?”
“She moved it.”
“When?”
“The week before she died.”
“Where?”
He coughed hard.
Paramedics intervened.
“Sir, we need to move.”
I gripped his hand.
“Dad.”
He looked at me.
“Laura sent me a message before the crash.”
“What message?”
“Three words.”
He closed his eyes.
“Under the angel.”
Then the paramedics moved him into the ambulance.
I stood frozen.
Daniel touched my shoulder.
“Does that mean anything?”
It did.
My mother was buried at Green-Wood Cemetery.
Her headstone had a carved stone angel above it.
The ledger had been with her for eighteen years.
We reached the cemetery just before sunset.
The groundskeeper guided us to Laura’s grave.
I hadn’t visited in two years.
Seeing her name nearly broke me again.
We searched around the monument.
Nothing.
Daniel found a small seam beneath the angel’s base.
He pressed it.
A compartment opened.
Empty.
My stomach dropped.
Then I saw fresh scratches in the stone.
Someone had already been there.
Daniel looked toward the road.
Tire tracks.
Vanessa whispered, “My father beat us here.”
May you like
Then a black SUV started at the far end of the cemetery.
And accelerated toward the gate.
