Chapter 8 - Someone Was Watching Madison
The fire was contained within eleven minutes.
The paper records were not.
Thousands of manifests burned.
Hard drives melted.
Gabriel stood outside the records room watching smoke roll toward the ceiling.
Madison stood beside him.
“Dock Twelve,” she said.
Gabriel looked at her.
“You're going home.”
“Stop saying that.”
“Madison.”
“You need someone who knows inventory.”
“I have people.”
“People Voss hired?”
That silenced him.
Madison continued.
“I noticed the discrepancies before anyone else.”
“Which is why someone tried to kill you.”
“Which is why I know what to look for.”
Gabriel hated that she was right.
They went to Dock Twelve.
Madison accessed the shipping system.
“Normal manifest.”
She opened another database.
“Weight verification.”
Numbers appeared.
Gabriel watched.
Madison compared them.
“There.”
“What?”
“This pallet left seventeen pounds lighter than it arrived.”
“What was inside?”
“Cardiac medication.”
“Value?”
“About three hundred thousand.”
She opened another.
“Twenty-two pounds.”
Another.
“Eleven.”
The theft had been happening for months.
Small amounts.
Distributed across shipments.
Almost invisible.
Except to someone like Madison.
“You reported this?”
“Yes.”
“To whom?”
“Mercer.”
Gabriel's jaw tightened.
Madison shook her head.
“He might not be involved.”
“He hid what you told him.”
“Maybe because Voss threatened him.”
Gabriel looked at her.
“You still defend people after all this?”
“No.”
She looked toward the dark platform.
“I just know what fear can make people do.”
That answer stayed with him.
A technician recovered fragments from the burned server.
One file survived.
A surveillance archive.
The night Madison fell.
Only seventeen seconds.
Gabriel and Madison watched.
Trevor Cole entered Platform Seven.
He looked around.
Then knelt beside the railing.
Wrench in hand.
Madison stopped breathing.
Trevor loosened the anchor.
The footage ended.
Proof.
Gabriel's hand tightened into a fist.
Madison stared at the frozen image.
“He did it.”
“Yes.”
“But somebody paid him.”
“Yes.”
“Voss.”
“Probably.”
Madison shook her head.
“Something doesn't fit.”
“What?”
“If Voss wanted the evidence gone, why keep seventeen seconds?”
Gabriel looked at the screen.
She was right.
Then the technician enlarged the image.
Trevor wasn't alone.
A reflection appeared in the platform window.
Another man.
Older.
Gray hair.
Gabriel recognized him immediately.
Daniel Mercer.
Madison whispered, “No.”
May you like
The image showed Mercer watching Trevor sabotage the railing.
And suddenly the injured floor manager's confession looked very different.
