Chapter 6 - The Boathouse
The camera had not been decommissioned.
Someone had merely removed it from the estate network.
Victor discovered the difference at dawn.
A retired Hale Meridian technician named Samuel Price had installed the system, and unlike the current security team, Samuel remembered Simone personally.
“She didn’t trust cloud storage,” he told Victor over the phone. “Said if people could reach something remotely, they could erase it remotely.”
Victor looked at Maya.
They were still in her kitchen.
“Where does the camera save?”
“Local memory. Weatherproof unit mounted under the roof.”
“Would the card still be there?”
“If nobody removed it.”
Victor ended the call.
Maya folded her arms.
“You’re thinking about going there.”
“I own the boathouse.”
“At six in the morning.”
“Yes.”
“Without security.”
“Yes.”
“That sounds like the first five minutes of a bad thriller.”
Victor picked up the envelope.
“You don’t have to come.”
“My brother may be on that footage.”
He studied her.
“Then stay close.”
“Was that concern?”
“It was an instruction.”
“I liked you better when you doubled my salary.”
Victor looked at her.
“How do you know that?”
“Payroll emailed me.”
For the first time that night, Victor laughed.
It lasted less than a second.
Maya heard it.
She smiled.
They drove separately to the estate.
Ethan was awake when they arrived.
He waited in the entrance hall beside the old family photograph that had once hung in the main living room.
Victor stopped.
“What are you doing?”
“Apparently nobody in this house sleeps anymore.”
His eyes found Maya.
“You’re back.”
Maya smiled.
“For the moment.”
Ethan looked at Victor.
“You unfired her?”
Victor removed his coat.
“We are reassessing.”
“That means yes.”
Maya said, “Your father is excellent at using six words when one would work.”
Victor gave her a look.
Ethan grinned.
Then his gaze fell on the envelope.
“What’s happening?”
Victor considered lying.
Instead he said, “We found evidence that your mother may have been followed before the crash.”
Ethan’s humor vanished.
“You believe me now.”
Victor hated the sentence.
“Yes.”
Ethan nodded once.
No triumph.
Only sadness.
Victor crouched beside him.
“We’re going to check an old camera at the boathouse.”
“I’m coming.”
“No.”
Ethan’s face shut down.
Victor caught himself.
“You’re coming if you want.”
Ethan blinked.
Maya looked away to hide a smile.
Twenty minutes later, all three entered the boathouse.
Dust covered the floor.
The lake beyond the closed doors sounded heavy and gray.
Victor climbed a small ladder beneath the rafters and found the camera.
The memory card remained inside.
Maya held up a sealed evidence bag Samuel had instructed them to use.
“No laptops until we make a forensic copy.”
Victor raised an eyebrow.
“You’ve been researching.”
“For two years.”
Ethan examined an old storage shelf.
“There’s something here.”
Victor turned.
Ethan had found a small wooden box wedged behind boating supplies.
He could not reach it from the wheelchair.
Before Victor could move, Maya asked, “Want me to get it?”
Ethan nodded.
She retrieved the box and placed it on his lap.
That tiny question—want me to—hit Victor harder than it should have.
Ethan opened the lid.
Inside lay three objects.
A spare key.
A folded Hale Meridian invoice.
And a black chess rook.
Ethan frowned.
“Why would Mom hide a chess piece?”
Victor picked it up.
It came from Victor’s father’s antique chess set.
The same set now sitting in his office.
Maya unfolded the invoice.
“Route 17 Maintenance Partners.”
Victor took it.
The amount was $4.8 million.
For emergency road stabilization.
The invoice date was six weeks before Simone’s crash.
Victor knew Route 17.
No $4.8 million stabilization project had occurred there.
At the bottom was an authorization code.
VH-EXEC-01.
Victor’s executive authority.
Again.
“I didn’t approve this.”
Ethan looked at him.
“Someone keeps pretending to be you.”
Victor’s mouth tightened.
“Yes.”
Maya examined the black rook.
“Could Simone have been leaving you a message?”
Victor looked at the chess piece.
“My father taught us business through chess.”
“Us?”
“Adrian and me.”
“What did the rook mean?”
Victor remembered long afternoons at the old dining table.
His father tapping the rook.
Power lives in straight lines, boys. Money. Roads. Supply chains. Follow the line.
Victor stared at the invoice.
Route 17.
A road.
A transport company.
A rook.
“Follow the line,” he whispered.
Maya heard.
“What?”
Victor turned the invoice over.
Numbers had been written on the back.
Five corporate entity names.
Five payments.
Each connected through subsidiaries.
Every line ended at the same investment firm.
Blackwell Capital Management.
Victor knew Blackwell.
Everyone in Chicago finance did.
Its chairman, Theodore Blackwell, had served on Hale Meridian’s board for eleven years.
He had also been Victor and Adrian’s godfather.
Ethan said, “You know that name.”
Victor’s face had gone still.
“Yes.”
Maya asked, “Who is he?”
Victor looked at his son.
Then at the family photograph Ethan had insisted on bringing from upstairs for reasons Victor had not questioned.
“The man standing beside my father in half the photographs from my childhood.”
His phone rang.
Adrian.
Victor answered.
“What?”
His brother sounded breathless.
“You need to get Ethan out of the estate.”
Victor straightened.
“Why?”
“I remembered something.”
“About Blackwell?”
Silence.
Victor knew.
“Adrian.”
His brother’s voice dropped.
“The night Simone died, she called me.”
Victor felt the world narrow.
“She said she had proof Theodore had been stealing from Hale Meridian for years.”
Maya went still.
Adrian continued.
“And she said she was coming to tell you.”
Victor stared at the false invoice in his hand.
“What else?”
“She told me if anything happened to her, I should protect Ethan.”
Victor’s voice cracked.
“Why Ethan?”
Adrian whispered the answer.
“Because Ethan saw Theodore at the house that afternoon.”
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Across the boathouse, Ethan’s face went white.
And suddenly, he remembered.
