Chapter 6 - THE DEAD MAN WHO DROVE AWAY
The first sheriff's deputy to reach the nursery balcony ordered everyone to keep their hands visible.
David almost laughed at the absurdity.
His wife had been held beneath his floor.
His dead stepmother had appeared on the mansion screens.
His half-brother had confessed to helping imprison Jane.
A bodyguard reported dead was driving an SUV away from the estate.
And somehow David was the man being told not to move.
Sheriff Daniel Price entered the room ten minutes later.
He was fifty-three, broad-shouldered, and had known David since David was a teenager.
Price listened without interrupting.
Then he looked at Harry.
"You are coming with me."
Harry nodded.
David stepped between them.
"Not until he tells me where that SUV is going."
Price's eyes hardened.
"David, this is a crime scene now."
"It was my home before it became your crime scene."
"And that thinking is exactly how evidence gets ruined."
Jane touched David's arm.
"Let him do his job."
David looked at her bruised cheek and forced himself to step back.
Harry was handcuffed.
He did not resist.
As deputies led him away, he looked at Sophie.
"The rhyme ends with the moon."
David frowned.
"What does that mean?"
Harry was pulled into the hallway before he could answer.
Price ordered Jane taken to the hospital.
Sophie refused to leave her.
David went with them.
On the way out, he passed the security room.
Cole sat on the floor while paramedics treated a deep cut on his scalp.
Beside him lay a black body bag.
"Mason?"
David asked.
Cole nodded.
"Wallet, badge, fingerprints on file."
David looked toward the front drive where the black SUV had vanished.
"Then who was driving?"
Price answered from behind him.
"We will find out."
At the hospital, Jane underwent scans, blood tests, and treatment for dehydration.
The doctor said she was exhausted but stable.
Sophie fell asleep curled against her mother's side.
David sat in a chair near the window, unable to close his eyes.
At 3:18 a.m., Sheriff Price arrived carrying a tablet.
"We found the SUV."
David stood.
"Where?"
"Abandoned twelve miles north near an old quarry road."
"Evelyn?"
"Gone."
Price placed the tablet on the table.
"But traffic cameras caught the driver at an intersection."
The image showed Mason's face clearly.
David felt his stomach tighten.
Price swiped to another photograph.
The corpse from the mansion lay on a stainless-steel table at the county morgue.
Same face.
Same hair.
Same scar near the eyebrow.
"We checked dental records."
Price said.
"The dead man is not Mason Reed."
David stared at him.
"You just said his prints matched."
"They did."
"That is impossible."
"Unless the prints in your employment file were never Mason's to begin with."
Price explained that Mercer Security used private biometric onboarding managed internally.
Harry had personally approved Mason's file.
The fingerprints attached to the employee identity could have belonged to anyone.
The dead man had been living under Mason Reed's identity.
The driver might have been the real Mason.
Or another imposter.
David thought of the bodyguard's tiny hesitation when ordered to stay behind.
"Find out who hired him."
Price's expression became guarded.
"That is another problem."
He turned the tablet around.
The employment authorization showed a digital signature.
DAVID MERCER.
David stared at it.
"I never signed this."
"Your biometric token says you did."
Jane had awakened.
Sophie woke with her and stared at the tablet image of the two identical faces.
"That man gave me juice once."
David looked at her.
"Mason?"
Sophie pointed to the living man's traffic-camera image.
"That one."
Price leaned closer.
"When?"
"At Dad's office party."
David remembered a foundation reception three months earlier.
Children had been allowed in the executive lounge before dinner.
"What did he say to you?"
Sophie rubbed her eyes.
"He asked what game Grandpa taught me."
David's pulse jumped.
"What game?"
"The rhyme game."
Jane sat up despite the pain.
"Did you tell him?"
"Only the first part."
Sophie looked guilty.
"He gave me chocolate after."
David felt sick.
The infiltration had not begun when Jane received the package.
Someone had been questioning Sophie months earlier, gently enough that nobody noticed.
Price wrote down every detail.
"Did he ever touch your hair or take anything from you?"
Sophie thought.
"He fixed my ribbon."
Jane and David exchanged a look.
A strand of hair would have been easy to collect.
DNA.
Voice recordings.
Behavioral patterns.
Samuel's people had been building a profile of Sophie while the family smiled for photographs downstairs.
David's shame deepened.
He had hosted the threat himself.
Price closed the image.
"This means the impostor had a reason to get near her before the kidnapping."
Jane whispered.
"He was profiling her."
They did not yet know exactly why, but the shape of the plan was already visible.
Sophie had never been incidental.
She was part of the target.
"Harry had access to David's old office token."
Price looked at her.
"How do you know?"
"Because Harry once told me David was careless with things that could destroy him."
David remembered dismissing that comment as brotherly criticism.
Now it sounded like confession.
Price received a call and stepped into the hallway.
Jane looked at David.
"You need to listen to me."
"I am listening."
"Harry is guilty of something."
"I know."
"No."
Jane shook her head.
"I mean more than what he admitted."
She told David that on the second night in the chamber, Harry came alone.
He brought water and food.
He apologized without freeing her.
Then he said something strange.
"He said, 'If David signs tomorrow, this ends.'"
David sat beside her.
"The restructuring."
"That is what I thought."
Jane said.
"But then he said, 'Once the trust transfers, she cannot touch Sophie.'"
David frowned.
"What trust?"
Jane reached beneath the hospital blanket and removed something taped under her wedding ring.
A tiny folded piece of waxed paper.
"I pulled this out of Harry's pocket when he leaned over me."
David unfolded it.
Inside was a photocopied clause from a trust document.
Upon confirmation of the death, incapacity, or disqualification of David Arthur Mercer, controlling voting interest shall pass to his lawful issue.
David looked at Sophie sleeping beside Jane.
"Lawful issue means Sophie."
Jane nodded.
"If something happened to you, she gets control through a guardian."
David's eyes narrowed.
"And who is named guardian?"
Jane's expression was grim.
"That part was cut off."
Sheriff The hospital corridor filled with uniformed officers before dawn.
David watched them question nurses, inspect stairwells, and seal doors that had already been open for hours.
He had never felt less protected by the sight of authority.
Jane noticed him watching.
"You keep looking for the person in charge."
"Someone has to be."
"That is what Harry counted on."
David frowned.
Jane continued.
"He always made himself the answer to every problem."
"Security issue? Call Harry."
"Staff conflict? Call Harry."
"Business leak? Call Harry."
"You didn't lose control in one night, David."
"You handed pieces of it away for years because it was convenient."
David wanted to defend himself.
Instead, he remembered every time Harry had said, Leave it with me.
He remembered how grateful he had been.
Convenience had become access.
Access had become power.
Power had become a trapdoor beneath his own home.
Sophie shifted in her sleep and reached for Jane's hand without waking.
David watched Jane lace their fingers together.
"When this is over, I am changing everything."
Jane looked at him.
"Start by changing what you notice."
The door opened.
Price returned.
His face had changed.
"Harry is gone."
David stood so quickly the chair fell backward.
"What?"
"Transport vehicle was hit at an intersection."
"Is he hurt?"
"We do not know."
Price hesitated.
"The deputy driving says a woman stepped into the road."
David waited.
"What woman?"
May you like
Price looked directly at Jane.
"She looked exactly like you."
