Chapter 9 - WHAT THE INVESTIGATOR FOUND
Daniel’s phone was gone.
Graham had not killed him for money.
He had killed him for information.
Ethan unfolded the bloody note again.
GRAHAM KNOWS EVERYTHING.
Claire leaned against the boiler.
“What did Daniel find besides me?”
“He said he found proof someone visited you before the staged crash.”
“Who?”
“He didn’t say on the phone.”
“Maybe he wrote it down.”
They searched Daniel’s jacket.
Then Sophie’s voice came from the stairs.
“Dad?”
“What are you doing down here?”
“This was ringing.”
Sophie had found it under the office couch.
Timestamped forty minutes earlier.
Daniel’s voice filled the basement.
“Ethan, if you get this, I was wrong about Vanessa being the center of it. Graham answers to someone else.”
“I traced the clinic payment that kept Claire off public records. It came through a trust controlled by—”
Then Daniel’s voice returned.
“—your father.”
Ethan stopped breathing.
His father, William Cole, had died five years earlier.
Or so Ethan had believed.
The voicemail continued.
“William created the original fund. Graham expanded it. I think Claire’s disappearance was tied to something older than the company theft.”
Ethan stared at the phone.
“No.”
Claire whispered, “Ethan…”
“My father is dead.”
“You knew.”
“You knew something.”
“Only that Graham reported to a man he called W.”
A terrible, empty sound.
“My father’s name was William.”
Claire put a hand on his arm.
He pulled away without meaning to.
His father had been a respected developer.
He had taught Ethan to shake hands firmly and never break a promise.
Five years earlier, William had supposedly died in a private plane crash.
Ethan suddenly remembered Graham handling the memorial.
Exactly as he had handled Claire’s death.
A speaker clicked overhead.
Graham’s voice came through the basement intercom.
“You always were slow, Ethan.”
“Where are you?”
“Ask your father.”
Then the boiler-room door opened.
An old man stepped through.
May you like
Same blue eyes Ethan saw every morning in the mirror.
“Grandpa?”
