Chapter 11 - Charles Voss Comes Home
Charles Voss surrendered at 10:00 the next morning.
He walked into the FBI field office carrying the master ledger.
He was seventy-one years old, thin, silver-haired, and exhausted.
Vanessa saw him through the glass.
She broke.
For the first time, the woman who had attacked me looked less like my enemy than someone’s abandoned daughter.
Charles asked to see me.
I agreed.
“I’m sorry about your father,” he said.
“Did Margaret kill him?”
“No.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
“Then who did?”
“Nobody.”
I stared.
Charles explained that Richard’s death had been natural.
Margaret had been present because Richard had summoned her to confront her about Meridian.
His heart failed during the argument.
Margaret panicked and concealed the meeting because she feared becoming a suspect and feared what Richard’s files might reveal.
“So Vanessa was wrong.”
“Vanessa knew only what I suspected years ago.”
I felt something unexpected.
Relief.
Dad had made mistakes.
But he hadn’t been murdered.
“What do you want from me?”
Charles placed the ledger on the table.
“To finish what Richard started.”
The ledger tied Meridian North to dozens of illegal transactions.
More importantly, it identified the person currently controlling the organization.
I read the name.
Then read it again.
Senator William Grant.
A nationally respected politician.
A man who had attended my wedding.
A man who had spoken at my father’s memorial.
“He knew my father?”
“He knew all of us.”
Grant had inherited Thomas Carter’s network and expanded it.
Riverside contained evidence capable of destroying him.
That was why Meridian wanted it demolished.
That was why Michael Trent died.
Why Robert Keller died.
Why Margaret ran.
And why I had been threatened.
Charles looked at me.
“Your injunction saved those records.”
“No.”
I thought about Dad.
“He saved them eleven years ago.”
Charles nodded.
“Then finish it.”
That afternoon, federal prosecutors obtained warrants.
Grant’s offices were searched.
Meridian accounts were frozen.
The story exploded nationally.
And Daniel’s name exploded with it.
Reporters camped outside our house.
Carter Development’s board suspended him.
The share price collapsed.
Employees panicked.
Daniel called me.
“I’m resigning.”
I said nothing.
“The company can survive if I leave.”
“Maybe.”
“I’m also cooperating fully.”
“That doesn’t erase what you did.”
“I know.”
For once, he wasn’t asking me to forgive him.
Before hanging up, he said, “Emily?”
“Yes?”
“I’m sorry I looked at her first.”
Of everything Daniel had done, he knew exactly which moment I remembered most.
I closed my eyes.
“So am I.”
Then I ended the call.
But the investigation wasn’t over.
Because Senator Grant had disappeared.
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And the last signal from his phone came from a private airfield thirty miles away.
The same airfield where Daniel was driving at that very moment.
