Chapter 14 - The missing locket
The front doors of the Weston manor were flung wide open when Maya’s taxi pulled past the wrought-iron gates, the gravel driveway illuminated by the flashing red lights of private patrol vehicles. Rain had begun to fall, slicking the marble steps as Maya raced inside, ignoring the security guard who tried to hold her back at the entryway.
"Let her through!" Garrett’s voice boomed down the grand staircase.
Garrett was standing outside his mother’s bedroom, his soaked coat discarded on the balustrade, his sleeves rolled up, revealing the corded tension in his arms. Inside the suite, two estate doctors were attending to Margaret, who sat huddled in the corner of her four-poster bed wrapped in a cashmere blanket. She was breathing rapidly, her chest hitching with silent sobs, but she was alive.
Maya rushed into the room, dropping down on her knees beside the bed. "Mrs. Weston... did they hurt you?"
Margaret grabbed Maya’s wrist with surprising strength, her knuckles turning white. She shook her head violently, tears spilling over her wrinkled cheeks. "Not... not the medicine," Margaret stammered, her voice cracked with sheer terror. "He didn't bring the needle. He took it, Maya... he took it from the safe."
Garrett walked to the wall behind Margaret’s antique armoire, where a biometric wall safe hung wide open, its steel locking bolts retracted smoothly without a single scratch on the keypad.
"There was over two hundred thousand dollars in bearer bonds and rare jewelry in that safe," Garrett said, his jaw working as he surveyed the empty compartment. "None of it was touched. Only one item was removed."
Maya looked up, her brow furrowed. "What was inside?"
Margaret’s breathing turned ragged as she pointed a trembling finger at the velvet-lined drawer inside the vault. "The silver locket. The one with the rose crest... and the sealed birth registry from St. Jude’s Hospital."
Garrett frowned, kneeling beside his mother. "Mother, that was an old family piece. Why would an intruder risk a twenty-year prison sentence to steal a vintage piece of jewelry and a twenty-four-year-old hospital document?"
Margaret looked at Garrett, her eyes filled with an agonizing, ancient sorrow that Maya had never seen before. Margaret’s lips parted, but before she could speak, Marcus stepped into the doorway holding a digital tablet.
"Mr. Weston, we pulled the perimeter gate logs," Marcus reported grimly. "The keycard used to disable the camera loop and open the biometric safe was an executive master pass. It wasn't stolen from the house."
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Garrett stood upright, his voice dangerously low. "Whose name was assigned to that master pass?"
Marcus hesitated, casting an uneasy glance at Maya before answering. "The pass was issued this afternoon under the executive onboarding protocols for the patient advocacy board. The digital signature on the authorization... was Maya’s."
