Chapter 15 - THE MAN WHO OPENED THE DOOR
Paul Niven’s daughter, Rebecca, met us at a diner. She was a nurse with her father's serious face and a voice that shook only when she spoke his name.
“He told me he was scared for fourteen years,” she said. “Last week he finally decided to tell the truth. Then he had a stroke.”
She gave Rios a signed statement and a small memory card. Paul had recorded a video before his death.
On the screen, an older man sat beside a window and unfolded his shaking hands.
“I saw Mercer’s people carry fuel into the warehouse. I heard Frank Reed argue that the place was supposed to be empty. Ethan Reed pulled two workers out the loading entrance after the fire started. I opened the east door. Luis Ortega wasn't anywhere near the building.”
Paul wiped his face.
“I'm sorry I kept my mouth shut. I had kids to feed. That doesn't make it right.”
The memory card also held photographs of a contractor van and a license plate. Rios said it could help establish who was at the scene, but she still needed the original documents proving where the money went.
“R-seventeen,” Ethan murmured when I mentioned the metal tag. “Dad numbered the storage bays at the Blue House construction site. Bay seventeen was under the poured floor. I saw him take a waterproof tube there after the fire.”
“Why didn't you tell Emily?”
“I did. We went back. The entrance was sealed. She was trying to find a way in without alerting Mercer.”
For the first time, the scattered clues lined up. The second ledger wasn't some mysterious digital file. It was a physical record hidden beneath a foundation, and someone was desperate enough to hurt Lily to get it first.
Rios called for a warrant and a construction crew.
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Before she could explain the plan, Ethan’s phone rang. He listened, his face turning gray.
A man on the line said, “Come to the old ferry warehouse alone, or your mother dies tonight.”
