Chapter 16 - Nine A.M.
At 8:52 the Halcyon board meeting began.
Madeline entered with Daniel and two attorneys.
Every head turned.
Preston's proxy, Martin Keene, sat at the far end of the table with the transfer agreement in front of him.
"Mrs. Voss," the chairman said carefully, "we weren't expecting you."
"That's been a theme lately."
Keene stood. "Your authority has been transferred. You don't have standing to participate."
Madeline placed Poppy's memory card on the table.
"Play the video."
Her attorney connected a laptop to the wall screen.
The room watched drugged Madeline sign while Preston and Evelyn discussed keeping her awake for the notary.
When the clip ended, Keene had gone pale.
"This recording may have chain-of-custody issues," he said.
"So does your conscience," Daniel snapped.
The chairman suspended the vote pending an independent investigation.
Madeline should have felt relief.
Instead, she watched Keene quietly slip his phone into his pocket.
Ten minutes later Ruiz called.
"Martin Keene just tried to transfer twelve million dollars from a Voss holding company overseas."
"Can you stop it?"
"Bank froze the wire. But that's not why I'm calling."
Ruiz had found messages between Keene and someone saved under the name DOCTOR.
The private neurologist who had written fake reports about Madeline was Dr. Adrian Mercer.
He had disappeared that morning.
So had a box of medical records from his clinic.
"There's more," Ruiz said. "One of those records belongs to Lindsay Hart, the missing woman from the photographs."
Madeline looked through the boardroom window at the city below.
"You think she's alive?"
"I think Mercer knows."
Then Daniel's phone buzzed.
An email had arrived from an unknown account.
No message.
May you like
Just an address in Vermont and a recent photograph of a woman standing beside a mailbox.
Lindsay Hart.
