CHAPTER 26 : THE RED BOX
The red box contained objects investigators had once considered meaningless.
Claire’s hospital bracelet.
A broken watch.
Three photographs.
A child’s wooden puzzle.
A cassette tape without a label.
Ethan had seen the items years earlier.
He had been too consumed by grief to examine them.
The wooden puzzle showed a map of the California coast.
One piece was missing.
The cassette contained only the sound of waves.
Reyes played it through forensic equipment.
Beneath the waves was a sequence of tones.
The tones encoded a message.
OPEN THE WATCH.
The back of Claire’s broken watch concealed a thin strip of film.
Under magnification, the film revealed hundreds of names and account numbers.
Not Harbor participants.
Harbor investors.
Senator Vale was one of them.
So were two governors, five judges and several major corporate leaders.
One name caused Ethan to stop breathing.
Thomas Bennett.
His father.
Ethan had inherited the fortune that built his luxury properties.
He had believed the money came from real estate and shipping.
According to Claire’s evidence, Thomas Bennett had been one of Harbor’s original financial backers.
Ethan sat alone in the evidence room.
Every building he had sold to fund the center had been built with money connected to children’s suffering.
Reyes stood nearby.
“You didn’t know.”
“That doesn’t change where it came from.”
“No.”
“Claire knew.”
“Yes.”
“She married me anyway.”
“She may have believed you were not your father.”
Ethan looked at the list.
“What if the center was built with the same money?”
“Then use it to repair what the money helped destroy.”
Ethan wanted that answer to be enough.
It was not.
A second message was hidden inside the watch.
It included coordinates leading to a small church in the coastal town where Thomas Bennett had been buried.
Ethan and Reyes arrived after dark.
Behind the church altar, they discovered the missing piece of Claire’s wooden map.
It contained a microchip.
Before Reyes could remove it, the church doors closed.
Helena Ward stepped from the shadows.
She held a weapon in one hand.
Blood stained the sleeve of her coat.
“Anna has lost control,” Helena said.
“Where is Sophie?”
“Still alive.”
“And Ava?”
“For now.”
Helena demanded the chip.
Reyes raised her weapon.
Helena smiled.
“If I do not leave this church in five minutes, Anna will send Sophie into the ocean.”
Ethan removed the microchip.
He placed it on the altar.
Helena reached for it.
Then the church bells began ringing.
No one had touched the ropes.
May you like
From somewhere above them, Sophie’s voice came through the old speaker system.
“Daddy, she’s lying.”
