Chapter 16 - ELISE’S SECOND FILE
Marcus survived.
The bullet missed his lung by less than an inch.
Adrian spent twenty minutes beside his hospital bed before Elise called.
“I remember the second file.”
They met in a conference room with Ortiz.
Elise explained that her first audit tracked stolen money.
The second tracked people.
Judges. Doctors. clerks. Contractors. Anyone Charles had paid or pressured to create the legal machinery around the fraud.
“I didn’t keep it on paper,” Elise said.
“Where?”
“With someone Charles couldn’t buy.”
Adrian waited.
Elise looked embarrassed.
“Your mother.”
“My mother died when I was sixteen.”
“I know.”
She had hidden the encrypted drive inside a music box that had belonged to Adrian’s mother, stored in a bank vault under Evelyn’s name.
Evelyn laughed when told.
“I wondered why Elise suddenly cared so much about that ugly thing.”
The bank opened the vault under police supervision.
The drive contained everything.
Payments to Ravenwood.
Bribes to Bradley.
Transfers to Dane.
Draft custody petitions.
And a video recording Elise had made two days before her crash.
“If you are watching this,” she said on screen, “Charles Mercer knows I found the missing trust money. Victoria knows too.”
Then Elise named a third person.
Judge Alan Wexler.
The same judge who had granted Charles emergency custody of Clara and Mia.
Ortiz immediately called state investigators.
But Wexler had already left the courthouse.
His car was found abandoned near Logan Airport.
Security footage showed him boarding a private helicopter.
Beside him was Charles Mercer.
Their flight plan listed a destination in Maine.
Adrian studied the map.
The coordinates were familiar.
A Vale family hunting lodge.
And Clara had gone there once as a toddler.
Elise suddenly grabbed the table.
“There’s another vault at that lodge.”
“What’s in it?”
“Bearer bonds.”
May you like
“How much?”
“Almost two hundred million dollars.”
