Chapter 13 - Three Minutes of Light.
Thomas Mercer looked older than the man in Elias's twelve-year-old dash footage, but there was no mistaking the narrow eyes or the rigid way he held his shoulders.
Scott stood frozen beside the open laptop.
"You said you were in Vermont."
Thomas looked at his son.
"I was."
"Then why are you here?"
"Because Rebecca called."
Marcus moved slightly in front of Hannah without turning the moment into a confrontation.
"What did she ask you to do?"
Thomas glanced at the screen.
"Activate my old key."
Scott's voice rose despite himself.
"You knew what it controlled?"
"I knew what it once controlled."
"That's not an answer."
Thomas's face hardened.
"I spent twelve years keeping you away from this."
Scott laughed bitterly.
"You kept me away by lying about everything."
Hannah heard herself in his anger.
Families in this company seemed to mistake silence for protection until the silence became the danger.
Andrew closed the garage door behind Thomas.
"Why did Rebecca need your key today?"
Thomas looked toward Marcus.
"She said Victor's trust was being attacked."
Nolan stepped forward.
"Victor is dead."
Thomas studied him.
Recognition passed across his face.
"You know."
Nolan's mouth tightened.
"Apparently everyone knows now."
Thomas looked genuinely sorry.
That did not help.
Scott turned the laptop so his father could see the queued Harbor authority.
"She used your key to validate this."
Thomas's face changed.
"No."
"Yes."
"She said it would freeze the reserve account."
Hannah pointed at the metadata.
"It would have transferred control."
Thomas reached toward the laptop.
Scott stopped him.
"Don't touch it."
The order from son to father carried ten years of delayed anger.
Thomas lowered his hand.
Marcus looked at him.
"Tell us exactly what Rebecca knows about Echo."
Thomas sat heavily on the edge of a concrete barrier.
"More than anyone except Peter."
"And Peter is gone."
"Which is why she thought she finally had time."
Hannah stepped closer.
"Did she have anything to do with my father's death?"
The question changed the room.
Marcus looked at her sharply.
She had not planned to ask it yet.
Thomas did not answer immediately.
Hannah's stomach tightened.
"Mr. Mercer."
"I don't know."
"That's not enough."
"It is the truth."
He rubbed both hands over his face.
"Peter died in a highway collision. I knew he was frightened in the weeks before it happened. I knew Rebecca had threatened to ruin him publicly if he kept the copied records. I do not know if those things are connected."
Hannah closed her eyes for one second.
Marcus did not touch her.
He stayed near enough that she could choose the distance herself.
That mattered.
Thomas continued.
"Peter gave me one chance to help him expose everything."
Scott stared at his father.
"And?"
"I refused."
"Why?"
Thomas looked at him.
"Because Rebecca had proof that I built the back door. I thought if I confessed, I would lose you, your mother, everything."
Scott's expression turned empty.
"So Peter lost everything instead."
Thomas had no defense.
The garage lights suddenly went out.
The first second of darkness was ordinary.
The second became a security problem.
Marcus told everyone to keep speaking so no one could be silently separated from the group.
Hannah said her own name first.
Andrew answered from beside the trunk.
Nolan answered near the driver's door.
Scott answered from the laptop.
Thomas answered last.
The simple roll call repeated each time the emergency lights failed.
No one moved quickly.
No one reached for anyone else without warning.
Marcus kept his hand near his secured holster but never removed it because he could not identify a physical threat and refused to create one in a dark garage.
Hannah registered that choice even while her pulse hammered.
Control was not the same as force.
Sometimes it was refusing to escalate when fear offered an excuse.
On the third blackout, a service door alarm chirped from the far wall.
Andrew called out the location.
Thomas answered that he was still beside Scott.
When the lights returned two seconds later, he was.
That meant whatever happened next required either a deliberate decision by Thomas or a much more careful deception than any of them had expected.
Only the laptop and emergency exit signs remained illuminated.
Andrew checked his phone.
"Building power failure."
Scott shook his head.
"No. The hotel has generators."
Marcus's hand moved toward the secured holster at his waist, but he kept it concealed.
"Stay together."
Hannah heard an elevator motor above them.
"Someone's moving."
Scott unplugged the laptop and held it against his chest.
The emergency lights flickered back on.
Then off.
For three minutes, the garage became a sequence of brief white flashes and darkness.
In each flash, everyone checked where the others stood.
Hannah counted breaths to keep herself steady.
On the fourth flash, Thomas was no longer beside the barrier.
"Thomas?" Scott called.
No answer.
Marcus raised his voice only enough to carry.
"Nobody moves toward the elevator."
A phone rang in the darkness.
It was Thomas's ringtone.
Scott followed the sound to the floor near a concrete pillar.
The phone had been left behind.
No sign of Thomas.
Andrew checked the emergency stairwell.
The door was open.
"He left."
Scott stared into the stairwell.
"Or someone made him leave."
The main lights returned.
A text appeared on Thomas's abandoned phone.
REBECCA: THANK YOU. YOUR PART IS FINISHED.
Hannah looked at the sender details.
"Don't assume she sent that."
Scott looked at her.
"Why not?"
"Because every useful message today has been designed to make us blame the person named on the screen."
Marcus nodded.
"Good."
Hannah opened the message metadata.
The text had not come through the cellular network.
It had been pushed locally through the hotel's guest system.
Andrew traced the device identifier.
"Conference suite on twelve."
Nolan stared.
"Rebecca's room."
They went upstairs with hotel security and independent counsel present.
The suite was empty.
Rebecca was gone.
On the table sat the unsigned statement she had offered Hannah.
Beside it was a second document.
This one transferred Marcus's voting shares into a temporary trust during his suspension.
The proposed trustee was Nolan Pierce.
Nolan picked it up.
"I've never seen this."
Hannah believed him.
May you like
Then she saw the signature line.
Nolan's signature was already there.
