Chapter 4 - The House Went Dark
The darkness lasted three seconds.
That was enough.
Declan grabbed Cersa and pulled her behind the heavy dining table.
Remy appeared from the hallway.
Emergency lights flickered on.
Patrick was gone.
The front doors remained locked.
“He's still inside,” Remy said.
Declan's attention went immediately to Cersa.
“You stay here.”
“No.”
He stared at her.
“Cersa.”
“If Patrick wants that drive, I'm the only person who knows exactly what's on it.”
Declan hated that she was right.
They searched the house.
Nothing.
Then Cersa noticed something.
The library door.
Open.
She had seen it closed earlier.
Inside, one window stood slightly ajar.
Patrick had escaped.
But he had left something behind.
An envelope sat on Declan's desk.
Inside was an old photograph.
Declan froze.
Cersa looked over his shoulder.
The photograph showed three men standing outside a construction site nearly twenty years earlier.
One was Patrick.
The second was Declan's father.
The third was someone Cersa recognized.
Her own father.
She stopped breathing.
“No.”
Declan turned toward her.
“You know him?”
“That's my father.”
Everything changed.
Cersa's father had supposedly died when she was sixteen.
A workplace accident.
At least that was what she'd been told.
But written on the back of the photograph were six words:
ASK HER WHY HER FATHER DIED.
Cersa sat down.
Memories returned.
Her father's late-night phone calls.
The arguments with strangers.
The documents he kept locked in his desk.
His warning that some buildings collapsed long before anyone saw the cracks.
Declan sat opposite her.
“What did your father do?”
“He was an engineer.”
Declan looked toward the photograph.
Suddenly the current investigation made sense.
The same type of fraud.
The same family.
The same industry.
Cersa hadn't stumbled into this conspiracy.
She had inherited it.
Remy entered carrying another discovery.
“There's something you need to see.”
Security footage.
Captured shortly before the power failed.
Patrick hadn't entered alone.
Another man followed several minutes later through a service entrance.
The image was blurry.
But Declan recognized him.
His face changed.
Cersa noticed immediately.
“Who is he?”
Declan said nothing.
“Declan.”
He finally answered.
“My brother.”
Cersa stared at the screen.
Declan's younger brother, Liam Maher, had supposedly been living in Europe for three years.
Apparently he wasn't.
Then Cersa noticed the timestamp.
“No.”
“What?”
She enlarged the image.
The man wasn't entering the house.
He was leaving.
And tucked beneath his arm was something small and black.
The thumb drive.
Cersa instinctively checked the table.
Empty.
Her evidence was gone.
But she didn't panic.
Instead, she looked at Declan.
“What?”
Cersa gave him the first real smile he had seen from her.
“That wasn't the real drive.”
Declan stared.
“Where's the real one?”
Her smile disappeared.
“I mailed it yesterday.”
“To whom?”
Cersa hesitated.
May you like
Then answered.
“To Petra.”
