Chapter 5 - What Elias Knew
Norah read the sentence four times.
IF NORAH EVER COMES TO HAYES HOUSE, GET HER OUT BEFORE THEY KNOW WHO SHE IS.
She looked at Declan.
“You knew this was inside?”
“No.”
“You had the case.”
“For forty minutes before I was shot.”
“Did you never open the lid completely?”
“I had a bleeding man trying to sell it to me.”
Vincent stood behind them.
Norah turned.
“Who is they?”
He did not answer.
“You said people died protecting this.”
“Elias was careful with language.”
“That is another way of saying you do not know.”
“I know some.”
“Then say some.”
Declan interrupted.
“Ryan first.”
Norah wanted to argue.
Then remembered her ex husband was bleeding on a road somewhere.
Vincent’s driver took them in an armored medical vehicle.
Declan refused a hospital again.
Norah rode beside him.
Marcus followed.
Vincent traveled separately.
Vivian remained at the mansion to protect staff and preserve the rooms.
Or so she said.
Norah had reached the point where every ordinary sentence sounded like a potential lie.
Ryan Mercer was found near an old service station twenty miles from the estate.
A patrol officer had called emergency services.
Vincent’s people reached the county hospital after him.
Declan hated it.
Norah insisted.
“You are not kidnapping an injured man from an ER.”
Declan looked offended.
“I was going to transfer him.”
“With men carrying rifles.”
“They are licensed.”
“You make legality sound exhausting.”
The county hospital stabilized Ryan.
One gunshot through the shoulder.
Not life threatening.
He asked for Norah after regaining consciousness.
She entered alone.
A deputy remained outside.
Ryan looked older.
Unshaven.
Bruised.
Still wearing the same cheap leather bracelet Norah gave him during their second year of marriage.
She hated that she noticed.
“Norah.”
“Do not say my name like you missed me.”
He closed his eyes.
“I am sorry.”
“You stole my identity.”
“Yes.”
“My savings.”
“Yes.”
“You opened accounts.”
“Yes.”
“You emptied Dad’s vault.”
His eyes opened.
There.
Fear.
“Who told you?”
“Declan Hayes.”
Ryan looked toward the door.
“You are working for him.”
“I clean his toilets.”
Despite himself, Ryan almost smiled.
Then winced.
“Why did you access the vault?”
“Money.”
“No.”
He stared.
“You were always a terrible liar.”
“I owed people.”
“Who?”
“Not gambling.”
“I know.”
Ryan breathed slowly.
“A man found me.”
“When?”
“About eighteen months ago.”
“Name.”
“Called himself Gray.”
“Real name?”
“I never got one.”
“What did he want?”
“Documents.”
“Whose?”
“Yours.”
“Why?”
“He knew your father had a bank box.”
“How?”
“He knew everything.”
Ryan described meetings in parking garages.
Cash.
Instructions.
A list of Norah’s old addresses.
Elias’s medical license number.
Even the childhood nickname only family used.
“What did he pay you?”
“First twenty thousand.”
“For stealing my documents.”
“Yes.”
“Then?”
“More to open Vale Home Services.”
“Why?”
“I thought money laundering.”
“You thought?”
“He moved funds through it. I signed things.”
“How much?”
“Millions.”
Norah felt sick.
Her identity had not merely been used for debt.
It had been used as a financial corridor.
“Why create debt in my name?”
Ryan looked ashamed.
“To make the company look real.”
“That destroyed me.”
“I know.”
“No. You left before you had to watch.”
He said nothing.
“Why the vault?”
“Gray said there was a silver case.”
“Did he tell you what was inside?”
“No.”
“Then why sell it to Declan instead?”
Ryan’s face hardened.
“Because once I opened it, I saw your picture.”
“My current picture?”
“No.”
Norah stopped.
“What?”
“The old one.”
“What old one?”
“You. Maybe thirteen. Fourteen.”
Norah remembered the photograph in the case beneath Declan’s surveillance image.
She had barely looked at it.
Ryan continued.
“Your father standing behind you.”
“He is not in the photo.”
“The copy I saw had more.”
Norah’s pulse changed.
“More what?”
“Someone was cut out of the photograph inside the case.”
“Who?”
“I do not know.”
“Male?”
“Yes.”
“Did you recognize him?”
Ryan looked toward the door.
Then whispered:
“I think it was Declan’s father.”
Norah laughed from disbelief.
“That makes no sense.”
“I know.”
“Why would I have a photograph with Patrick Hayes?”
“You tell me.”
She could not.
Patrick Hayes died when Norah was sixteen.
She had never met him.
At least she did not remember meeting him.
Ryan continued.
“Gray told me to bring him the case unopened. I opened it because I stopped trusting him.”
“Good instinct. Slightly late.”
“I saw Elias’s files. Celeste Hayes.”
Declan’s mother.
Died twenty years earlier.
Official cause:
Stroke.
“What about her?”
“Toxicology.”
Norah’s throat tightened.
“Poison?”
Ryan nodded.
“I did not understand all of it.”
“Then why sell to Declan?”
“Because Gray threatened you.”
Norah froze.
“What?”
“He said if I did not deliver the case, he would put you inside Hayes House.”
Her skin went cold.
“I applied for that job myself.”
Ryan shook his head.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“The agency called you first.”
Norah remembered.
A recruiter named Melissa called after seeing her application on a general jobs board.
“Coincidence.”
“No.”
“Why would Gray want me inside?”
“I do not know.”
“Ryan.”
“He said Elias left something only you could identify.”
“What?”
“He never said.”
“Then why ruin me financially?”
Ryan looked away.
“To make sure you took cash work.”
The room became very quiet.
Norah had thought Declan allowed her into the mansion because he was suspicious of her.
Now another person had engineered the circumstances that brought her there.
“What happened after you met Declan?”
“Gray’s people grabbed me outside the warehouse.”
“Who?”
“Masks.”
“Marcus?”
“I do not know.”
“Adrian?”
“I do not know.”
“Vincent?”
Ryan shook his head.
“Gray is older.”
“How old?”
“Maybe late fifties. Sixties.”
“Voice?”
“American. East Coast maybe.”
“Scars?”
“He always wore gloves.”
“Ring?”
Ryan hesitated.
“What?”
“Black stone.”
Norah stopped breathing.
Same ring from the gate footage.
Maybe Adrian.
Maybe not.
Then Ryan grabbed her wrist.
“Norah.”
“What?”
“You need to get away from Declan.”
“Why?”
“Gray said the case is not dangerous because of Celeste Hayes.”
“What is it dangerous because of?”
“Your father kept records of someone who was treated in that room after Celeste died.”
“Who?”
Ryan’s eyes moved toward the glass door.
A man had appeared in the hallway.
Dark suit.
Doctor’s bag.
Dr. Adrian Cole.
Ryan went white.
“That ring.”
Norah turned.
Adrian’s right hand held the bag.
His left wore a square black stone set in silver.
Ryan whispered:
May you like
“That is him.”
Continue to the next part: Ryan identifies Declan’s private doctor as the man who recruited him, but Adrian Cole has just arrived at the hospital claiming he came to save Declan’s life.
