For a moment, I couldn’t see Agent Warren. Then another figure ran past me. A second shot struck the wall. Glass shattered. Someone grabbed my shoulder. I twisted and raised my hands. “Natalie, it’s me.” Detective Alvarez crouched beside me. “Are you hurt?” “No.” “Stay down.” He moved toward Warren. The fake federal agent lay on the floor with blood spreading across his shoulder. His gun was several feet away. The second supposed agent had disappeared into the stairwell. “Who shot him?” I asked. Alvarez didn’t answer. He hadn’t fired. Neither had Harrison. The elevator doors opened. Several uniformed officers rushed into the hallway. The lights returned seconds later. Mom stood near the hospital-room entrance. Khloe was inside, pressed against the wall with the baby protected beneath her body. Harrison had a cut across his forehead. But everyone was alive. “Seal every exit,” Alvarez ordered. As officers secured the floor, Warren began laughing.
“You’re too late.” Alvarez searched his pockets. There was no federal identification. No badge. Only a hospital access card registered to a maintenance worker who had died two years earlier. “Who are you?” Alvarez asked. Warren continued smiling. “You already know.” “Who fired the shot?” His smile faded. For the first time, he looked frightened. A phone rang beneath one of the hallway chairs. It wasn’t mine. Alvarez picked it up and answered on speaker. A woman spoke. “Check the security camera outside Room 417.” The voice belonged to Lena Ortiz. My former assistant. The woman the authorities claimed was dead. Alvarez looked toward the ceiling. The security camera had been turned slightly toward the wall. Taped beneath it was a small black device. An officer removed it. It was a remote-controlled firing mechanism. A compact handgun had been hidden above the ceiling panel and aimed toward the place where Warren had been standing. Lena had fired the weapon remotely. “You’re inside the hospital,” I said.
“No.” “Then how did you know where he was?” “I installed the device before you arrived.” “How did you know they would bring me here?” “I knew Daniel’s plan.” Warren tried to move. Alvarez pressed him back against the floor. “Tell us where you are,” he said. “I’ll speak only to Natalie.” “You’re not controlling this conversation.” “If you want Daniel Cross, you’ll let me.” The call disconnected. A message immediately arrived on my phone. COME TO THE HOSPITAL PARKING GARAGE. LEVEL FIVE. ALONE. “No,” Alvarez said after reading it. “She saved my life.” “That doesn’t mean you can trust her.” “I don’t trust anyone anymore.” “Good. Then don’t walk into another trap.” “I need to know what is inside the package.” “We’ll retrieve it from the house.” “Daniel may already have people there.” “So we’ll send officers.” I looked at Warren. Despite the blood soaking through his jacket, he was still smiling.
“He expects us to return to the house,” I said.
Alvarez understood.
The attack had not been intended only to capture me.
It was meant to force the police to move toward the property.
Daniel’s men were waiting for them.
I went to the parking garage wearing another hidden microphone.
Alvarez’s officers followed at a distance.
Level Five was almost empty.
A single white van was parked near the far wall.
Lena stepped from behind it.
She looked thinner than she had in Dubai.
Her dark hair had been cut short.
A bruise covered the left side of her face.
I stopped several feet away.
“You’re alive.”
“Barely.”
“They found a body in your apartment.”
“A woman Daniel paid to impersonate me.”
“Who was she?”
“I don’t know. That’s one of the reasons I ran.”
“Why didn’t you go to the police?”
“Because Daniel owns police officers, federal agents, bankers, judges, and people inside the American embassy.”
She glanced around the garage.
“We don’t have much time.”
“You gave me a package.”
“Do you still have it?”
“It’s inside my suitcase at the house.”
Lena looked relieved.
“Did you open it?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“What’s inside?”
“Evidence that can destroy Daniel’s entire network.”
“What kind of evidence?”
“The original ledger.”
I thought of the files beneath the rose garden.
“My father created the original ledger.”
“No. Samuel created a copy.”
“Then who created the original?”
Lena hesitated.
“You did.”
I stared at her.
“I didn’t know Daniel was committing fraud.”
“You built his financial system.”
“He told me it was for international property investments.”
“And that system recorded everything. Every transfer. Every hidden account. Every name.”
“Daniel controlled the data.”
“But you created a private backup.”
“I would remember doing that.”
“You don’t remember because it happened during your first year in Dubai.”
Something in her voice made me uncomfortable.
“What happened during my first year?”
Lena opened the van’s rear door.
Inside were several boxes of documents and two computers.
A photograph rested on top.
It showed Daniel and me walking into a medical clinic.
The date was printed in the corner.
Five years earlier.
I had no memory of the clinic.
“What is this?”
“After you discovered unusual transactions, you confronted Daniel.”
“No.”
“He admitted using your system to hide stolen money.”
“That never happened.”
“You threatened to report him.”
“I would remember.”
“He drugged you.”
My mouth went dry.
“Daniel kept you unconscious for almost two days. When you woke up, he told you that you had collapsed from exhaustion.”
I remembered waking in my apartment with a headache so severe that I couldn’t look at the light.
Daniel sat beside my bed.
He told me the doctors had diagnosed dehydration.
“You believed him,” Lena said. “But you had already sent the backup to me.”
“Why you?”
“We were friends before I became your assistant.”
“You didn’t start working for me until three years ago.”
“I started using the name Lena Ortiz three years ago.”
The parking garage suddenly felt colder.
“What was your name before that?”
She removed a passport from her coat.
The photograph was hers.
The name was Elaine Brooks.
I stepped backward.
“No.”
“I’m not your aunt.”
“Then why are you using her name?”
“I inherited it.”
“What does that mean?”
“The real Elaine died twenty years ago.”
Mom believed Aunt Elaine had moved to Europe.
Daniel told her Elaine later died in an accident.
“What happened to her?”
Lena lowered her eyes.
“She was the person Arthur Cross murdered.”
“Arthur died the same night Dad disappeared.”
“He killed Elaine first.”
“Why?”
“Because she discovered who was stealing from Hale-Cross.”
I thought of the damaged security footage.
The third person.
The bracelet.
“Was Elaine at the refinery?”
“Yes.”
“She wore Mom’s bracelet.”
“Arthur forced her to wear it. He planned to kill her and make Martha appear responsible.”
“Then Elaine was the figure reflected in the cabinet.”
Lena nodded.
“The security recording you saw had been edited. Elaine entered the room wearing Martha’s bracelet. Arthur shot her. Then Samuel arrived.”
“Did Dad kill Arthur?”
“No.”
“Who did?”
“Daniel.”
My heart pounded.
“He was nineteen.”
“And Arthur was his father.”
“Why would he kill him?”
“Arthur raised the gun toward Samuel. Daniel fired first.”
Dad had spent twenty years hiding a murder committed by the man now trying to destroy us.
“He protected Daniel,” I whispered.
“Because Daniel saved his life.”
“And Daniel repaid him by targeting his family.”
“Daniel didn’t begin that way.”
Lena reached into the van and removed a small metal box.
“After killing Arthur, he believed he could rebuild the company honestly. But then he discovered the stolen accounts.”
“He kept the money.”
“At first, he said it was temporary. Then temporary became twenty years.”
“Who are you really?”
Lena handed me a birth certificate.
My father’s name was not listed.
The mother’s name was Elaine Brooks.
“You’re Aunt Elaine’s daughter.”
“Yes.”
“My cousin.”
“Yes.”
“Why did Mom never mention you?”
“She didn’t know Elaine had a child.”
“Who raised you?”
“Edmund Hale.”
I stared at her.
“Marcus and Rebecca’s grandfather?”
“He took me after my mother died. He raised me under another name and taught me that Samuel had murdered her.”
“You grew up believing my father killed your mother.”
“Until I found the unedited refinery footage.”
“Where is it?”
“In the package.”
Everything led back to the suitcase inside my house.
“Daniel knows you gave it to me.”
“Yes.”
“Then he’ll already be there.”
Lena checked her watch.
“We have eleven minutes.”
“Until what?”
“Daniel’s men destroy the property.”
My stomach tightened.
“Mom’s inside this hospital.”
“He doesn’t care about Martha now. He wants the evidence beneath the house and the package in your suitcase.”
“The police removed everything beneath the garage.”
“Not everything.”
“What else is there?”
“The refinery ledger is only one part. Your father hid a list identifying every judge, politician, officer, and banker who helped protect the network.”
“Where?”
“Inside the walls of the original house.”
“The original house was demolished when I built the new one.”
“No.”
Lena looked directly at me.
“Your mother ordered the construction crew to preserve one wall.”
I thought of the unusual stone section between the kitchen and dining room.
Mom had insisted that it remain.
She said Dad built it with his own hands.
“What happens in eleven minutes?”
“A gas line beneath the property will open.”
“The explosion will destroy the entire house.”
“And the neighboring houses.”
Lena handed me the keys to the van.
“We need to reach the control system beneath the garage.”
I called Alvarez.
He ordered the bomb squad to the property and began evacuating the neighborhood.
Lena and I drove toward the house.
Police vehicles followed.
Eight minutes remained.
Then six.
Then four.
When we reached the street, smoke was already rising from the backyard.
The front door stood open.
Someone had entered before us.
We ran through the kitchen.
The stone wall between the rooms had been broken apart.
The hidden compartment was empty.
Daniel had taken the list.
But the gas continued flowing.
“Where is the shutoff?” I asked.
“Beneath the garage.”
We reached the steel storage room with less than two minutes remaining.
The control panel had been destroyed.
Wires hung from the wall.
A timer glowed above them.
01:42.
Lena knelt beside the damaged panel.
“I can’t stop it from here.”
“What do we do?”
“There’s a manual valve inside the underground pipe.”
“Where?”
She pointed toward a narrow maintenance shaft.
It was barely wide enough for one person.
I lowered myself inside.
The timer continued counting.
01:03.
The shaft descended beneath the property.
Gas burned my throat.
I crawled toward a red valve.
The metal refused to move.
“Fifty seconds!” Lena shouted.
I gripped it with both hands and pulled.
Nothing.
Thirty seconds.
I wrapped my jacket around the handle and tried again.
The valve moved slightly.
Twenty seconds.
Then a hand reached past mine.
Someone else was inside the shaft.
Together, we turned the valve.
The gas stopped.
The timer reached three seconds.
Then froze.
I turned toward the person who had helped me.
It was Julian.
His hospital clothing was stained with blood.
“How did you get here?”
“I escaped before Daniel’s men could finish the job.”
“You knew about the gas line.”
“I helped install it.”
Before I could respond, he pressed something cold against my neck.
A syringe.
My body weakened instantly.
Julian caught me before my head struck the pipe.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
The last thing I saw was Lena looking into the shaft.
She didn’t call for help.
She didn’t try to stop him.
She simply watched as Julian dragged me through another opening beneath the property.
Then she closed the metal hatch above us.
As darkness surrounded me, I heard her speak to someone on the phone.
“We have Natalie.”
A familiar man answered.
Victor.
“Good. Bring her to Daniel before Samuel tells the police who she really is.”
One Comment on “PART 13: THE PACKAGE FROM DUBAI The gunshot exploded through the darkened hallway. Agent Warren’s grip disappeared from my arm. Something heavy struck the floor beside me. Khloe screamed from inside the hospital room. “Get down!” Harrison shouted. I dropped behind a row of chairs. Emergency lights began flashing red along the walls………..”