Chapter 10 - The Elevator Confession
Emily stared at the elevator speaker.
Ava grabbed her arm.
Arthur’s voice filled the small metal box.
“Did Richard tell you what happened after your father died?”
Emily said nothing.
Ava whispered, “Don’t answer.”
Arthur chuckled.
“She deserves to know.”
The elevator remained frozen between floors.
Emergency lights painted everything red.
Emily pressed the open button.
Nothing.
Arthur continued.
“Thomas Parker brought Richard a file. Richard brought it to me. But there was another copy.”
Emily’s breath caught.
“Your father hid it,” Arthur said. “Somewhere even I could not find.”
Emily’s mind raced.
Her childhood home.
Her father’s office.
The attic.
The garage.
Her mother’s house.
“Where?” she demanded.
Arthur laughed softly.
“I was hoping you would tell me.”
Emily went cold.
That was why they threatened her mother.
Not just revenge.
They believed Thomas had hidden proof.
Arthur said, “You don’t know, do you?”
Emily swallowed.
“No.”
“A pity. Vanessa thought you did.”
Vanessa.
Emily stepped closer to the panel.
“Was Vanessa involved in my father’s death?”
Arthur paused.
A tiny pause.
Enough.
“She was ambitious,” he said. “Ambitious people do what they are asked before they understand what they have become.”
Emily closed her eyes.
The elevator jolted.
Ava screamed.
Arthur’s voice hardened.
“Give me the drive and walk away. I can still make your life comfortable.”
“The FBI has the drive.”
“The FBI has one drive. I need what your father hid.”
“I don’t have it.”
“Then find it.”
The elevator dropped one floor.
Ava cried out.
Emily grabbed the rail.
Arthur said, “Your mother has ten minutes before my people reach her house.”
Emily’s blood turned to ice.
“You touch her and I swear—”
“You swear what? You have wasted every threat tonight.”
Emily’s phone suddenly buzzed.
One bar of service.
A text from her mother.
Emmy, there are men outside.
Emily’s knees weakened.
Ava saw the message.
“Oh God.”
Emily called immediately.
No connection.
She tried again.
Nothing.
Arthur sighed through the speaker.
“Top floor or garage, Emily. Choose. Evidence or family.”
The elevator began moving again.
Up.
Not down.
Arthur had chosen for her.
Ava grabbed the keycard.
“We can stop it.”
“How?”
“Emergency hatch.”
Emily looked up.
The panel above them.
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
Ava removed one heel and jammed it into the seam.
Emily helped.
The panel popped open.
Cold air rushed in.
A ladder ran up the shaft wall.
The elevator climbed.
Slowly now.
But not slowly enough.
Emily boosted Ava first.
Then Ava pulled Emily up.
They crawled onto the elevator roof, shaking and breathless.
The shaft roared around them.
A floor door slid past.
Then another.
Emily spotted the number.
Forty.
The executive data center was forty-one.
She reached for the ladder.
Ava grabbed her.
“Your mom.”
Emily’s face crumpled.
“I know.”
“Go to her.”
“If Arthur wins the vote, he controls everything.”
“If your mother dies, none of this matters to you.”
Emily looked down through the hatch.
The elevator kept rising.
Then her phone buzzed again.
Unknown number.
A photo.
Her mother standing in her kitchen.
Hands raised.
Two men behind her.
Emily screamed.
Then another text.
Find your father’s file.
Richard’s voice suddenly crackled through the elevator speaker, cutting over Arthur’s line.
“Emily, listen to me.”
“Richard, they have my mom!”
“I know. Brooks dispatched agents.”
“There isn’t time!”
“Your father’s file. Think. Did he leave you anything before he died?”
Emily shook uncontrollably.
“No. I was sixteen. He just—”
She stopped.
A memory struck her.
Her father kneeling in front of her the night before his trip.
Rain against the windows.
His hands on her shoulders.
“If anything ever feels wrong, Emmy, remember the lake.”
She had thought he meant their family vacations.
Remember the lake.
Her mother hated the lake.
Her father loved it.
They had an old cabin near Lake Erie.
Sold after his death.
Or so Emily thought.
“Richard,” she whispered. “Did my father own property?”
“I don’t know.”
“Search county records. Lake Erie. Cabin. Parker.”
Ava stared at her.
“The lake?”
Emily nodded.
The elevator reached forty-one.
The doors below them opened to darkness.
Voices waited outside.
Arthur’s men.
Emily and Ava held their breath on top of the elevator.
Two men stepped inside.
One said, “Where are they?”
Another cursed.
Emily pointed to the shaft ladder.
Ava nodded.
They climbed silently upward as the men searched below.
Emily’s phone buzzed again.
Richard.
Property found. Not sold. Transferred to Susan Parker Trust. Address sent.
Emily looked at Ava.
“My dad hid it at the lake.”
Below, one of Arthur’s men looked up.
“Hey!”
Emily climbed faster.
Ava screamed as a hand grabbed her ankle.
Emily kicked downward.
The man fell back into the elevator.
They scrambled through the forty-second floor doors and burst into a dark hallway.
At the far end stood Richard Harrison.
Breathing hard.
Holding a tablet.
“We have fifteen minutes before the vote,” he said.
Emily looked at him.
“My mother has less.”
Richard handed her car keys.
“Then go.”
“What about the evidence?”
Richard looked toward the data center.
“I’ll handle the board.”
May you like
Emily stared at him.
“For once,” Richard said, “let me do what I should have done twelve years ago.”
