Chapter 5 - THE SECOND RECIPIENT
The second recipient contacted Emily through an encrypted video call.
The screen showed only a silhouette sitting in a dark room.
"You sent me the photograph," Emily said.
"I sent you the camera."
The voice was electronically altered.
Marcus monitored from the next room while technicians traced the connection through six countries.
"Who are you?" Emily asked.
"Someone your father trusted too late."
The figure explained that Grant had worked with a federal auditor named Nathan Cole. Nathan disappeared three days before Grant died. His car was found near the Canadian border, but no body was recovered.
"Are you Nathan?"
The figure ignored the question.
"Your file proves Brandon and Lara continued the procurement scheme. It does not prove what happened on the balcony. The local memory does."
"Then give it to the police."
"Not yet."
Marcus wrote a question on a notepad and held it up for Emily.
WHAT DO YOU WANT?
Emily repeated it.
The silhouette leaned forward.
"The Hart network includes a senator, two judges, and a deputy director inside the federal contracting office. If I release the evidence carelessly, they will erase the rest and call you unstable before sunrise."
"They already tried."
"And they failed because Brandon underestimated you. Others will not."
The caller instructed Emily to retrieve a blue folder hidden inside Grant's old cabin in Vermont. It contained a list of protected witnesses and coded accounts.
"Why me?"
"Because the cabin was placed in your name. Anyone else who enters triggers an alert."
Marcus ended the call after the trace failed.
"This could be a trap," he said.
Emily looked at the frozen screen. "Everything is a trap now."
The state police arranged a controlled trip to Vermont.
Grant's cabin stood beside a narrow lake, untouched since his death. Dust covered the furniture. A photograph of Emily at age twelve remained on the mantel.
The blue folder was not in the desk or safe.
Emily remembered a game Grant played when she was a child. He hid birthday gifts inside ordinary household objects and gave her clues.
Where does smoke go when the truth gets hot?
She looked up.
Inside the cabin's old smoke detector, investigators found the folder.
It contained names, dates, and a map of shell companies tied to Lara's foundation.
It also contained a sealed letter addressed to Emily.
My darling girl,
If you are reading this, I failed to protect you from the family you married into. Brandon knows more than he admits. But he is not the person I fear most. Lara answers to someone whose name never appears on paper.
At the bottom, Grant had written one set of initials.
R.H.
Marcus searched federal and corporate records.
One prominent figure matched the initials and appeared repeatedly near Hart contracts.
May you like
Richard Hale, Brandon's godfather.
The United States senator who had delivered the eulogy at Grant's funeral.
