Chapter 5 - THE NECKLACE MY HUSBAND STOLE
Christopher had watched me sell my mother’s necklace.
He had stood in our kitchen while I removed it from my neck and placed it in its velvet case.
I remembered the way he held my hands.
He told me I was saving thirty employees from losing their jobs.
He promised he would buy it back someday.
The next morning, he purchased it from the antique dealer himself.
Not for sentimental reasons.
Because someone believed it contained the Horizon key.
Agent Keene ordered the hotel lounge evacuated.
Within minutes, Emily was moved through a service corridor into an armored vehicle.
The targeting image disappeared from the television, but the timer continued counting down.
01:13:52.
“Where is the necklace now?” Keene asked Brenda.
“I’ve seen Christopher wear a small key on a chain beneath his shirt. I assumed it came from the necklace.”
“Christopher was searched after his arrest.”
Keene contacted the agents downstairs.
No necklace.
No key.
Only a phone, wallet, cuff links, and wedding ring.
“Madeline,” Brenda whispered. “He may have given it to Madeline.”
We returned to the ballroom.
Most guests had been moved into adjoining conference rooms for questioning. Broken glass glittered beneath the stage lights.
Madeline sat alone at a table under guard.
Her red gown seemed brighter against her pale skin.
She rested both hands over her pregnant stomach.
When she saw me, she looked exhausted rather than surprised.
“I wondered when you would come.”
“Where is my mother’s necklace?”
She laughed bitterly.
“No introduction?”
“I know your name. You knew mine.”
“Not at first.”
“You stood beside my husband while he called you his wife.”
“I was his wife in every way that mattered to our families.”
“Was he the father of your unborn child?”
Her expression hardened.
“No.”
“Jackson?”
“No.”
The directness startled me.
“Then why maintain the lie?”
“Because my father required it. Because Christopher needed Sinclair money. Because Elias Voss wanted a child positioned to inherit both family empires.”
“Who is Jackson’s father?”
She looked toward the guard.
“I want immunity.”
“You’re in no position to negotiate with me.”
“You’re the only person who can persuade your brother Thomas not to destroy the Sinclair family.”
“Your family helped target my daughter.”
“My father did. I did what I was told.”
“So did Brenda.”
Madeline looked past me.
“Brenda always wanted Christopher for herself.”
Brenda flinched.
“There was never anything between us.”
“Not because you didn’t try.”
I slammed my palm on the table.
“My seven-year-old daughter has been threatened. I don’t care which one of you wanted my husband. Where is the necklace?”
Madeline’s eyes dropped to Christopher’s wedding ring sealed inside an evidence bag on a nearby table.
“It isn’t a necklace anymore.”
Agent Keene retrieved the ring.
Madeline pointed to the inner band.
“Christopher had the key melted into it.”
The evidence technician examined the ring under a portable light.
Tiny symbols were engraved inside.
Not words.
A sequence of numbers and geometric marks.
Keene photographed them and sent the image to federal analysts.
“Is that the Horizon key?” I asked.
“Part of it,” Madeline said.
“What is the other part?”
“You.”
I stared at her.
“Your father divided the encryption sequence. The physical code is in the ring. The password is something only you would know.”
“I didn’t even know Horizon existed.”
“Your father believed memory was safer than paper.”
The timer on Keene’s phone showed fifty-eight minutes.
“Who told you this?”
Madeline’s composure finally cracked.
“Jackson’s father.”
“Name him.”
She looked toward the ballroom entrance.
Daniel Harrington had just arrived.
My eldest brother crossed the room surrounded by attorneys and security officers.
He was fifty, broad-shouldered, and normally impossible to unsettle.
The instant he saw Madeline, he stopped.
Her eyes filled with tears.
“Hello, Daniel.”
My brother’s face became gray.
I looked from him to her.
“No.”
Daniel closed his eyes.
Madeline touched her stomach.
“Jackson is his son.”
The ballroom vanished around me.
Daniel had been married to my sister-in-law, Claire, for twenty-three years.
They had two college-aged daughters.
He had lectured me about loyalty and family every time I defended Christopher.
“You had an affair with her?”
Daniel stepped closer.
“It was one night, ten years ago. A conference in Zurich. She used another name.”
Madeline laughed without humor.
“You make it sound like I tricked you alone.”
“Does Claire know?”
“No.”
“And Jackson?”
“I was told the child died at birth.”
Madeline’s tears spilled.
“My father falsified the records. He knew a Harrington grandson could become useful.”
I felt betrayed from every direction.
“Was Christopher aware?”
“Yes,” she said. “That was why he agreed to act as Jackson’s father. Voss promised to keep Daniel’s affair and Jackson’s identity hidden.”
Daniel gripped the back of a chair.
“They blackmailed him with my mistake.”
“No,” I said. “Christopher had already targeted me before Jackson was born.”
Madeline looked at me.
“Christopher had another reason for staying close to you.”
“What?”
“He believed your father survived the plane crash.”
Daniel looked up sharply.
“That’s impossible.”
“Voss showed Christopher photographs taken after the crash. A man with burns across his face, held in a medical facility overseas.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
Keene’s phone rang.
She listened, then activated speaker mode.
A federal cryptographer spoke quickly.
“The markings inside the ring correspond to coordinates and a time stamp. Coordinates point to Lakewood Cemetery in Minneapolis.”
“My father is buried there,” I said.
“The time stamp is eleven years ago, the night before his crash.”
Daniel’s phone vibrated.
A message appeared from an unknown sender.
It contained a photograph of our father’s grave taken minutes earlier.
A shovel lay across the headstone.
Beneath the image were five words.
THE SECOND KEY IS WITH WILLIAM.
The countdown showed forty-one minutes.
Agent Keene ordered a tactical team to the cemetery.
I grabbed my coat.
“You’re not going,” Daniel said.
“I’m the password.”
“You don’t know the password.”
“Then I’ll remember.”
He blocked my path.
“Abigail, this could be a trap.”
I looked at him.
“You kept a son secret for ten years. Thomas hid the truth about Dad’s flight. Christopher constructed our marriage from stolen information. Everyone in this family has decided what I should not know.”
I stepped around him.
“That ends tonight.”
As we hurried toward the elevators, Madeline called after me.
“Abigail.”
I turned.
She held Christopher’s sealed wedding ring in her hand.
The guard beside her was unconscious on the floor.
May you like
Madeline pressed the ring against her lips.
Then she swallowed it.
