Chapter 6 - A Name Hidden in the Logbook
The staffing agency disappeared by noon.
Not closed.
Gone.
Its office had been emptied overnight.
Computers removed.
Files shredded.
The phone disconnected.
The company website vanished.
“It existed for six months,” Jonah said. “And almost every placement was legitimate.”
“Almost?” Elise asked.
He looked at her.
“You were the exception.”
They sat around Caleb's conference table.
Martha brought coffee nobody drank.
Jonah slid a document forward.
“Elise applied to six agencies in the last month.”
She nodded.
“Desperate people aren't selective.”
“One of them sold applicant data.”
“Which one?”
“Brightstaff.”
Elise remembered.
Cheap website.
Online application.
She had uploaded everything.
Address.
Employment history.
References.
Identification.
“Victor bought my information?”
“Possibly.”
“Why?”
Caleb had been silent for several minutes.
Now he said, “Hotel history.”
Everyone looked at him.
“Elise worked at the Bellgrave Imperial.”
“Yes,” she said.
“Seven years ago?”
“Six.”
Caleb's gaze sharpened.
“Victor used that hotel.”
Her stomach tightened.
“I cleaned hundreds of rooms.”
“Think.”
She hated that word.
But she tried.
The Bellgrave Imperial had been beautiful from the lobby and cruel behind the service doors.
Twelve-hour shifts.
Impossible quotas.
Guests who treated staff like furniture.
Elise had learned to notice everything because mistakes cost wages.
Victor Sloane.
The name meant nothing.
But perhaps another name did.
“Do you have photographs?”
Jonah opened a file.
Old surveillance images appeared.
Victor entering the hotel.
Victor dining.
Victor with associates.
Elise shook her head.
Then Jonah displayed another photograph.
A younger man stood beside Victor.
Elise froze.
“I know him.”
Caleb leaned forward.
“Who?”
“Daniel Vale.”
Jonah stared.
“You're sure?”
“He stayed at the hotel for almost a month.”
“What happened?”
Elise searched her memory.
“He complained constantly. Wanted the same housekeeper every day.”
“You?”
“No. My friend Nina.”
“What happened to her?”
“She quit.”
“When?”
“After his stay.”
“Why?”
“She said she found something.”
Caleb's voice became quiet.
“What?”
Elise closed her eyes.
“She never told me.”
Nina had been twenty-three.
Funny.
Ambitious.
Saving for nursing school.
One afternoon she'd emerged from Room 1704 pale and shaking.
Three days later she quit.
A month afterward she moved away.
Elise had never heard from her again.
“Can you find her?” Caleb asked.
“I tried years ago.”
Jonah was already typing.
“Full name?”
“Nina Alvarez.”
“What did Daniel Vale do?”
Caleb answered before Jonah could.
“He worked for Victor.”
Elise stared at the old photograph.
“Why would that matter now?”
Caleb's expression darkened.
“Because Daniel disappeared shortly after Victor betrayed my father.”
“Dead?”
“Presumed.”
Jonah looked up from the laptop.
“Nina Alvarez isn't listed under that name anymore.”
“What?”
“I have a marriage record.”
Elise leaned forward.
“Where?”
“New Jersey. Five years ago. Nina Alvarez became Nina Cole.”
“Is she alive?”
Jonah paused.
“Yes.”
Elise nearly cried from relief she hadn't expected.
“Call her.”
Jonah shook his head.
“Not from here.”
Caleb nodded.
“Secure line.”
Twenty minutes later they reached Nina.
At first she refused to speak.
Then Elise took the phone.
“Nina?”
Silence.
“Elise?”
Her voice broke.
“Oh my God.”
They spoke for five minutes before Elise mentioned Daniel Vale.
The line went silent.
“Nina.”
“Don't.”
“You found something in his hotel room.”
“Elise, please.”
“Someone is trying to kill us.”
Nina breathed shakily.
“What happened?”
Elise explained only enough.
Nina began crying.
“I should've told you.”
“Told me what?”
“The notebook.”
“What notebook?”
“I found it behind the minibar.”
Caleb and Jonah exchanged looks.
“It had names. Payments. Dates.”
“Did you keep it?”
“No. I photographed two pages because I thought he was involved in fraud.”
“What did you do with the photos?”
“I sent them to someone.”
“Who?”
Nina whispered, “Your manager.”
Elise froze.
“My manager?”
“Thomas Reed.”
Elise remembered him.
Kind man.
Fifty.
He had died in a traffic accident two weeks after Nina quit.
Her skin went cold.
“What was on the pages?”
“I don't remember everything.”
“Try.”
“There were initials.”
“Which?”
Nina hesitated.
“C.R.”
Caleb Rowan.
“And another.”
“What?”
“A.R.”
Adrian Rowan.
Adrian went pale.
“I wasn't involved.”
Nina continued through the speaker.
“And there was a phrase.”
“What phrase?”
“Project Monarch.”
Caleb's expression changed dramatically.
Jonah whispered, “Jesus.”
Elise looked at them.
“What is Monarch?”
Caleb stared at the table.
“The operation that ended with my car exploding.”
Silence.
Elise stopped breathing.
His accident.
His wheelchair.
Victor.
The hotel.
Everything suddenly connected.
“You think Nina photographed evidence of the attack before it happened?”
Caleb nodded slowly.
“Maybe.”
Adrian shook his head.
“No. Monarch wasn't Victor's project.”
Everyone turned.
Caleb's voice became deadly.
“How do you know?”
Adrian realized too late what he'd admitted.
“I heard the name.”
“From who?”
He said nothing.
Caleb rolled closer.
“Adrian.”
His cousin closed his eyes.
“Your father.”
The room went silent.
Caleb looked stunned.
“My father?”
“Yes.”
“My father ordered the attack that put me in this chair?”
“I don't know.”
“Then explain.”
Adrian rubbed his face.
“Your father believed you were going to destroy everything he'd built. You wanted out of certain businesses. You were moving money. Closing routes.”
“I was ending trafficking.”
“I know.”
“He opposed me.”
“Yes.”
“But he wouldn't—”
Adrian looked at him with unbearable pity.
“That was why Victor betrayed him.”
Caleb froze.
The story he had believed for years cracked open.
Victor hadn't betrayed his father and then attacked Caleb.
Victor may have betrayed Caleb's father because Caleb's father planned to attack his own son.
Elise watched Caleb absorb it.
The feared man of Bellgrave suddenly looked like a boy learning his father had never been the person he imagined.
“Where are Nina's photographs?” Jonah asked.
Nina answered.
“I don't know.”
“Did Thomas keep them?”
“He told me he'd put them somewhere safe.”
Elise remembered Thomas.
His office.
His strange habits.
His insistence that staff write everything down because computers could be erased.
Then something surfaced.
“The logbook.”
“What?” Caleb asked.
“Thomas kept a handwritten maintenance log. He called it the truth book.”
“Where?”
“The hotel archive, maybe.”
Jonah stood.
“We go tonight.”
Elise immediately said, “I'm coming.”
Caleb answered, “No.”
She stared.
“Those archives are enormous. I know the hotel.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Nina trusted me.”
“Elise—”
“You need me.”
The words stopped him.
She lowered her voice.
“You don't get to decide I'm useful when it saves your life and fragile when it scares you.”
Caleb stared at her.
Adrian looked between them.
Jonah pretended to study his phone.
Finally Caleb said, “You stay beside me.”
“That works both ways.”
“What?”
“You stay beside me too.”
A small smile touched his face.
“Agreed.”
That night they entered the Bellgrave Imperial through the underground loading area.
Six years had changed little.
Same tiled corridors.
Same industrial laundry smell.
Same buzzing fluorescent lights.
Elise led them toward the basement archive.
Room B17.
Locked.
Jonah opened it.
Inside stood shelves of dusty ledgers.
Elise searched.
2019.
Maintenance.
Housekeeping.
Incidents.
Then she saw Thomas's handwriting.
She pulled a black book from the shelf.
Her hands shook.
Inside were dates.
Room numbers.
Notes.
Near the back, one entry had been underlined three times.
1704 — Vale. Package moved after guest departure. If something happens, Elise knows where I hide what matters.
Elise stared.
“I don't.”
Caleb leaned closer.
“Think.”
She almost laughed.
“Everyone keeps telling me that.”
Then she remembered Thomas's favorite saying.
When a guest loses something, look where nobody wants to clean.
Her eyes moved around the archive.
Above them ran exposed pipes.
Beneath the lowest shelf sat an ancient floor drain.
Nobody wanted to clean.
Elise crouched.
The drain cover wasn't bolted.
She lifted it.
Underneath, wrapped in thick plastic, was an envelope.
Inside were printed photographs.
Victor.
Daniel Vale.
Caleb's father.
And Adrian.
Standing together.
Two days before Caleb's car exploded.
On the back of the final photograph, Thomas had written a single sentence.
One of these men ordered Monarch.
Then the archive lights went out.
A voice came from the darkness.
“Put the photographs down, Elise.”
Caleb's hand moved toward his weapon.
The voice laughed.
“And Caleb?”
A laser sight appeared on his chest.
May you like
“Don't make her watch you die twice.”
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