Chapter 7 - The Well Behind the Greenhouse
Police searched the Hale estate before sunrise.
Victoria had not returned to the property in eight years.
The mansion stood above the Pacific on twenty acres of neglected land.
Dead vines crawled across the greenhouse.
Windows rattled in the ocean wind.
Sophie remained under protective supervision at the hotel while Victoria accompanied Detective Ortiz.
Ethan came because his father’s old files had now become relevant to the investigation.
Daniel remained in custody for questioning.
Charles refused to cooperate.
The well stood behind the greenhouse exactly where Claire described it.
It had been sealed with concrete.
Ortiz looked at Victoria.
“When?”
Victoria shook her head.
“I don’t know.”
Ethan crouched beside the foundation.
“This wasn’t professionally done.”
Construction workers arrived with police authorization.
It took nearly two hours to break through.
Victoria stood beneath the gray morning sky listening to every strike of the drill.
She wanted nothing to be underneath.
She also needed something to be there.
Finally, an officer called Ortiz forward.
A metal box had been discovered approximately six feet below the concrete.
It was not a body.
Victoria nearly collapsed from relief.
The box contained documents sealed inside waterproof plastic.
There were hotel ledgers.
Photographs.
Bank records.
And a handwritten notebook belonging to Michael Torres.
Ortiz turned several pages.
“These records could prove financial crimes stretching back decades.”
Ethan pointed toward another item.
A cassette tape.
Written across it were the words:
FOR SAMUEL COLE.
Ethan stared.
“My father.”
Ortiz arranged for the tape to be digitized.
They listened inside the estate library.
Michael Torres’s voice filled the room.
“If Detective Samuel Cole ever hears this, it means I was right to be afraid.”
Ethan sat motionless.
Michael described payments made through the Hale Grand to politicians, police officials, and criminal intermediaries.
He named people.
Some were dead.
Others remained powerful.
Then Michael mentioned Charles.
“Charles Hale ordered me to destroy the ledgers.”
“I refused.”
“He told me I had forty-eight hours to reconsider.”
Michael paused.
“If I disappear, start with the hotel basement.”
Victoria looked at Ortiz.
“The basement?”
Michael continued.
“There’s a service tunnel connecting the hotel to an old parking structure beneath Grand Avenue.”
Ethan suddenly stood.
“My father wrote about a tunnel.”
Ortiz turned.
“You have his files?”
“At my apartment.”
Michael’s recording ended.
Victoria walked toward the window.
She could see the cliffs beyond the lawn.
“Claire knew all of this.”
Ortiz joined her.
“Apparently.”
“And I ignored her.”
Ortiz did not reassure her.
Victoria appreciated that.
She did not deserve reassurance yet.
Ethan’s phone rang.
He answered.
His expression changed.
“What?”
Victoria turned.
Ethan listened.
Then he looked directly at her.
“Sophie is gone.”
Victoria’s stomach dropped.
Ortiz immediately called the hotel.
Sophie had disappeared from the suite fifteen minutes earlier.
The officer outside her room had been found unconscious in a service stairwell.
No major injuries.
No sign of Sophie.
Victoria grabbed her coat.
“Charles.”
Ortiz shook her head.
“He’s still with investigators.”
“Then who?”
Ethan stared at Michael Torres’s notebook.
“Someone else is afraid of what Sophie knows.”
Victoria remembered the recording.
The corruption went far beyond Charles.
Then her phone vibrated.
A text message appeared from Sophie’s number.
May you like
One sentence.
COME TO THE HOTEL BASEMENT ALONE IF YOU WANT THE GIRL BACK.
