Chapter 5 - THE THIRD MAN
By noon, Rachel no longer knew who was protecting her and who had been waiting seventeen years to betray her.
She turned toward Mercer.
He had followed them to the townhouse.
“Why are you in that photograph?”
Mercer’s face drained of color.
“I can explain.”
“Start.”
Mercer looked at Nicholas.
Then Rachel.
“Your father, Antonio, Thomas and I worked together.”
Nicholas’s eyes sharpened.
“My father never mentioned you.”
“He couldn’t.”
Mercer removed his glasses.
“In 2009, Antonio suspected someone inside the Valenti organization was stealing from him. Thomas traced the money. I built the audit model.”
Rachel looked at the wrecked kitchen.
“Then why did my father die?”
“Because we trusted the wrong fourth person.”
Nicholas stepped closer.
“What fourth person?”
Before Mercer could answer, glass exploded.
Nicholas hit Rachel hard enough to drive them both behind the kitchen island.
A gunshot cracked through the room.
Daniel drew his weapon.
“Shooter!”
Another shot punched through the wall.
Mercer fell.
Rachel screamed.
Blood spread across his shoulder.
Nicholas covered Rachel with his body until Daniel’s men rushed the alley.
Thirty seconds later, silence returned.
The sniper was gone.
Mercer was alive.
Barely.
As paramedics worked on him, he gripped Rachel’s wrist.
“Lake Geneva.”
“What?”
“The cabin.”
His voice trembled.
“Your father hid the original files there.”
“Who was the fourth person?”
Mercer tried to answer.
The ambulance crew pulled Rachel back.
Mercer’s lips moved.
She couldn’t hear.
Then he was gone.
Nicholas immediately ordered the townhouse sealed.
Rachel stood in the ruined kitchen shaking.
“Someone knew we were here.”
“Yes.”
“Someone knew Mercer was about to talk.”
“Yes.”
She turned toward Nicholas.
“So either your people are compromised or mine are.”
His expression revealed nothing.
“Probably both.”
They left Chicago before sunset.
Nicholas drove himself.
No convoy.
No predictable security pattern.
Rachel sat beside him wrapped in a coat.
For nearly an hour, neither spoke.
Then she asked, “Why are you really helping me?”
His hands tightened on the wheel.
“Because your father saved mine.”
“That’s not all.”
Nicholas glanced at her.
“No.”
“What else?”
He looked back at the road.
“Three years ago, I saw your name in a federal subpoena. Someone was quietly building a case around you.”
Rachel frowned.
“Why didn’t you contact me?”
“Because everyone who got close to the investigation disappeared.”
A chill ran through her.
They reached the Lake Geneva cabin after dark.
The key was gone.
But Rachel remembered something her father used to say when she was little.
Never hide a treasure where a thief would look.
She searched the porch.
Then the old woodpile.
Behind a loose stone, she found a metal box.
Inside were ledgers, photographs, cassette tapes—and one sealed letter.
Her name was written across the front.
Rachel opened it.
The first line made her knees weaken.
Rachel, if you are reading this, I am probably dead.
She kept reading.
May you like
Halfway down the page, her breath stopped.
Your mother knows why.
