Chapter 9 - THE CHILD WHO WAS SUPPOSED TO DIE
The lake house explosion hadn't been an attack on Dominic Vale.
It had been an attempt to murder his thirteen-year-old son.
I looked at Caleb, trying to imagine him as a frightened child trapped inside a burning house.
He stared at the photograph for a long time.
Then he signed one question.
Why would Victor want me dead?
Dominic looked as though he'd been struck.
“Because Isabel intended to make you the beneficiary of a trust that would eventually control the family's legitimate companies.”
Elena frowned.
“Victor needed you gone to gain control?”
Dominic nodded.
“He was supposed to become the trustee if something happened to both Isabel and Caleb. I trusted him completely.”
I felt sick.
Victor had spent fourteen years calling Caleb helpless.
The boy he'd failed to kill had grown into the man who could expose him.
And Victor had been sitting beside the family all along.
We entered Caleb's childhood bedroom shortly afterward.
It was painfully ordinary.
A narrow bed.
A shelf of baseball trophies.
A photograph of Caleb and his mother smiling beside a lake.
Caleb stood in the doorway, unable to move.
I gently touched his arm.
We can come back.
He shook his head.
I've been running from this room for fourteen years.
He walked inside.
Dominic opened an old wooden cabinet.
At the bottom was a dusty chessboard.
Caleb immediately recognized it.
He turned it over and pressed a narrow wooden strip.
A hidden compartment slid open.
Inside lay a small leather-bound ledger wrapped in plastic.
Elena examined the pages.
They contained financial transactions, dates, names, and signatures.
More importantly, they contained Isabel's handwritten observations of Victor's meetings.
One entry described the purchase of explosives.
Another identified the men paid to transport them.
A third connected those men to the police officers who had delayed Evan's ambulance.
The evidence wasn't yet enough by itself to convict Victor, but it gave investigators something they'd never had.
A documented trail connecting the lake house explosion to Evan's death.
Caleb turned to the final page.
His expression changed.
He showed it to me.
There was a handwritten list of potential targets.
Isabel Vale.
Caleb Vale.
Evan Mercer.
And at the bottom, written in newer ink, was another name.
Hannah Mercer.
Beside my name was a date.
Tomorrow.
May you like
Victor wasn't simply preparing to frame me.
He was planning to make sure I never reached a courtroom.
