Chapter 12 - Nine Minutes of Darkness.
Emergency lights came on in the corridor.
Rachel opened the conference-room door and found the hall empty.
"Stairs," she said.
David looked at Natalie.
"Is this Hale?"
"I don't know."
"That's getting old."
"So is being blamed for things I didn't do."
David ignored the remark and followed Rachel toward the stairwell.
The electronic lock refused to release.
Rachel tried her security badge.
Nothing happened.
Natalie pulled a metal hairpin from her bun.
"Move."
David stared at her.
"What are you doing?"
"Opening the emergency latch, not robbing a bank."
She slid the pin beneath the plastic cover beside the door and pressed the recessed manual release.
The lock clicked.
Rachel gave her a suspicious look.
"How did you know that?"
"Hale made sure I knew how to leave his offices without being seen."
They took the stairs down six floors.
Halfway to the lobby, David's phone regained service and exploded with notifications.
Three were from Owen.
Two were from Evelyn.
One was from an unknown number.
David opened Owen's first message.
Lucy is safe at Walker House.
His shoulders loosened.
The second message read, Grant called an emergency board meeting for 2:00 p.m.
The third was worse.
He is asking the board to suspend your trustee voting authority pending the family-services investigation.
David stopped on the landing.
Rachel read the message over his shoulder.
"There it is."
"Grant's move."
Natalie leaned against the wall.
"He told me he would wait until after the wedding announcement."
"Apparently he changed the schedule."
"Because the plan is falling apart."
David looked at her.
"Or because he has what he needed."
Natalie understood.
"The capsule."
They reached the lobby.
The building's main power was already back on.
A security guard claimed the outage had lasted only nine minutes.
Nine minutes.
The same length of time the garage camera had frozen before the rabbit appeared under David's car seat.
Rachel called her firm's information-security director from the sidewalk.
He said there had been no city outage and no building-wide electrical failure.
Only Hale's office suite had gone dark.
"Someone wanted us moving," Rachel said.
Natalie checked her purse.
Her face changed.
"What?" David asked.
"My phone."
"You're holding it."
"My other phone."
David stared at her.
Natalie opened an inner pocket.
It was empty.
"Hale gave me a second phone for private instructions."
Rachel's expression hardened.
"And you brought it into a meeting where you were confessing?"
"It was off."
"That does not mean it was safe."
Natalie looked toward the building entrance.
"It was in my purse when the lights went out."
David understood.
Someone had been close enough to enter the conference room during the confusion or while they were testing the stairwell.
"What was on it?"
"Messages from Hale."
"How many?"
"Months of them."
Rachel closed her eyes.
"That phone was evidence."
"I know."
David received another message from the unknown number.
A photograph loaded slowly.
It showed the missing brass capsule resting on a black tabletop.
The blue ring was clearly visible.
So was the number Natalie had written.
4E-19-A7.
Below the photograph were two words.
Board room.
David looked at Rachel.
"They're inviting me."
"No."
"Grant has the capsule."
"Or someone wants you to believe he does."
"Either way, I'm going to the meeting."
The Walker Holdings boardroom occupied the top floor of a glass tower in Midtown.
By one fifty-five, eleven directors were seated around the long walnut table.
Grant stood at the far end speaking quietly with two outside counsel attorneys.
He looked surprised when David walked in with Rachel.
He looked shocked when Natalie followed them.
"She is not authorized to attend," Grant said.
David took his usual chair.
"Neither is betrayal, but we've made room for that too."
Several directors shifted uncomfortably.
Grant ignored the comment.
"This meeting concerns your temporary fitness to exercise trustee voting rights."
"No, this meeting concerns your attempt to take them."
Grant's expression remained calm.
"David, there is an active family-services case, a police report from Natalie, and credible concern about your judgment."
Natalie spoke from the wall behind David.
"I withdrew the police report an hour ago."
Grant finally lost his composure.
"You did what?"
"I corrected the record."
The room became silent.
David watched Grant's face and knew Natalie had just damaged something important.
Rachel distributed copies of the hidden-camera stills showing Grant and Hale inside Emily's office.
One director swore under his breath.
Grant stared at the photograph.
"This is illegally obtained surveillance."
"It was recorded in my home," David said.
"And it shows you taking documents from my wife's desk."
Grant looked around the table.
"Emily asked me to review those documents."
"At midnight?"
"She was worried about irregularities."
"So worried she installed a hidden camera to watch you?"
Grant's mouth tightened.
A director named Susan Bell leaned forward.
"Grant, did you know about the alternate trust language?"
Grant did not answer immediately.
That pause mattered.
"I knew there were revisions," he said.
"Did you authorize the filing that challenged David's voting rights?"
"I acted on counsel's advice."
"Hale's advice?"
"Yes."
Rachel placed a final document on the table.
"Jonathan Hale has disappeared."
Grant looked toward her.
"He has not disappeared."
David's pulse jumped.
"Then where is he?"
Grant realized his mistake.
The room went still again.
David's phone buzzed under the table.
Another anonymous message appeared.
This time there was no photograph.
There was an address.
And beneath it, one sentence.
May you like
If you want to know what Emily found, come without Natalie.
Page
