Chapter 6 - What Happened Before 11:47
“Adrian!”
I dropped beside him.
Again.
For one terrible second, the last forty-eight hours disappeared.
There was only marble.
His body.
My hands.
Then Adrian grabbed my wrist.
“I’m fine.”
“What?”
“I’m fine.”
No blood.
No wound.
The shot had struck the conference-room window.
Martin was already moving.
“Lock the building!”
Security alarms sounded.
Ortiz checked the stairwell.
Richard had vanished.
Crane sat against the wall, handcuffed and shaking.
“He’ll kill me.”
“Where would he go?” Ortiz demanded.
Crane shook his head.
“You don’t know him.”
“Tell me.”
“He planned everything.”
“What everything?”
Crane looked at Adrian.
“Your father.”
The room went silent.
Adrian stood slowly.
“What about my father?”
Crane began crying.
It wasn’t dramatic.
That made it worse.
“Robert found the accounts six years ago.”
“My father died of a heart attack.”
“No.”
One word.
Six years of certainty collapsed.
Crane continued.
“Richard arranged it.”
Adrian’s face turned gray.
I stepped closer.
“Why?”
“Robert was going to expose Northstar. Richard had been moving money since before Adrian took over.”
“How did he kill him?” Ortiz asked.
Crane looked down.
“Medication.”
The same method.
Adrian turned away.
His hand gripped the table.
Richard hadn’t simply betrayed him.
He had murdered the man who trusted him most.
Crane kept talking.
Vanessa and Daniel had been coerced later when unexplained discrepancies appeared.
Crane himself had received money.
He had participated willingly.
Then fear took over.
Richard had organized Adrian’s poisoning after learning that I had found the Northstar payments.
The fake badge had been created using Daniel’s compromised credentials.
Crane had worn the maintenance jacket.
Vanessa had seen him near the café.
The plan was supposed to look like Adrian suffered a natural cardiac event.
Then I arrived.
Wrong elevator.
Wrong time.
Exactly the wrong person for Richard.
Or perhaps the right one.
“Why threaten Claire?” Adrian asked.
“To make her disappear.”
“Disappear how?”
“Quit. Run. Look guilty. Anything.”
Adrian’s jaw clenched.
“And if she didn’t?”
Crane said nothing.
He didn’t need to.
Martin’s radio crackled.
“We found Maddox’s car in the underground garage.”
“Is he in it?”
“No.”
“He’s still inside,” I said.
Martin looked at me.
“Maybe.”
I remembered Adrian’s email.
Bring the original spreadsheets.
Something else clicked.
“My office.”
Adrian turned.
“What?”
“The original paper records.”
I had printed the first Northstar reconciliation because our financial system had been unstable that week.
I’d locked them inside my desk.
If Richard knew digital evidence was compromised but paper records remained—
“He’s going to destroy them.”
We headed downstairs with Ortiz.
My department occupied the thirty-second floor.
Smoke reached us before the elevator opened.
“Fire!”
Sprinklers activated.
Employees shouted.
Security pushed people toward stairwells.
My office door stood open.
Inside, the contents of my filing cabinet burned in a metal trash bin.
Richard wasn’t there.
Martin extinguished it.
Most pages were ruined.
I stared at wet ash.
“Gone.”
“No,” Daniel said.
He appeared behind us.
His shirt was soaked.
“I moved them.”
“What?”
“After your report was flagged, I made copies.”
He opened a locked storage cabinet.
Inside sat three banker’s boxes.
Adrian stared at him.
Daniel gave a weak smile.
“I figured I owed you.”
Police seized everything.
By late afternoon, investigators had enough.
Fraud.
Conspiracy.
Attempted murder.
Evidence connecting Richard to Robert Blackwood’s death.
But Richard was still missing.
At six thirty, Adrian and I stood alone in his office.
Chicago glowed beneath us.
For once, he wasn’t the CEO.
He was a son who had just learned his father had been murdered by someone he loved.
“I should have known,” he said.
“You couldn’t.”
“He was there after my mother died. He taught me how to negotiate. He gave the toast at my wedding.”
I looked at him.
“You were married?”
“Divorced.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be. She isn’t.”
Despite everything, I laughed.
He looked at me.
Then he smiled.
A real one.
It faded.
“You keep doing that.”
“What?”
“Showing up when my life is collapsing.”
“I have terrible timing.”
“You have excellent timing.”
We stood closer than before.
Neither of us moved away.
He looked at my hands.
The bruises were fading.
“I owe you my life.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“You owe me nothing.”
“I remember more now.”
“From the elevator?”
He nodded.
“I remember you crying.”
“I wasn’t crying.”
“You absolutely were.”
“I was sweating.”
“From your eyes?”
“Medical phenomenon.”
He smiled again.
Then his face turned serious.
“I heard you tell me not to die.”
My throat tightened.
“I say that to all my CEOs.”
“Good policy.”
His hand moved toward mine.
Stopped.
Then gently covered it.
No dramatic kiss.
No declaration.
Just warmth.
After two days of fear, it felt enormous.
My phone vibrated.
Unknown number.
We both froze.
I opened the message.
A photograph appeared.
My apartment.
Taken from across the street.
Below it:
COME ALONE OR YOUR ROOMMATE DIES.
My blood turned cold.
Then another photograph arrived.
Tessa sat tied to a chair.
May you like
Behind her stood Richard Maddox.
And beneath the image was an address.
