Chapter 5 - The Night the Hotel Burned
The bullet shattered the bourbon bottle.
Glass exploded across the floor.
Victor dropped behind the sofa.
Emmett struck Trent before Daniel could fire again.
The notebook flew from Trent’s hand.
Pages scattered.
Then the front doors crashed open.
Police shouted.
Daniel ran.
Cormac entered behind the officers.
Within seconds, the mansion became chaos.
Trent was arrested.
Daniel made it through a rear window but was captured two blocks away.
Victor remained on the floor, staring at his hands.
Emmett found the page Trent had tried to burn.
One corner was blackened.
Most of the writing survived.
Patrick had documented a network of fraudulent contractors controlled by Trent.
Money had been diverted from maintenance budgets for years.
But one sentence mattered more.
T.B. knows I found the accounts. Meeting tomorrow. If anything happens, records are with J.M.
J.M.
Josephine Malloy.
Patrick had made her the insurance policy.
When Emmett returned to the Ardmore before sunrise, Josie was waiting.
He handed her the notebook.
She held it against her chest.
“I thought it was gone.”
“So did Trent.”
“Did he confess?”
“Not yet.”
“Victor?”
“Admitted theft.”
“And your father?”
Emmett looked away.
“We know Trent confronted him.”
“That isn’t the same as knowing what happened.”
“No.”
Josie understood.
The mystery remained.
Police reopened the circumstances surrounding Patrick’s death.
Medical records were reviewed.
The missing medication bottle became critical.
Then Warren remembered something.
“Lost property was photographed.”
Josie turned.
“What?”
“Insurance procedure. Anything involving medication had to be photographed before disposal or release.”
They searched archived servers.
Thousands of files.
Cormac found it at 3:17 a.m.
A photograph of an amber prescription bottle.
The label belonged to Patrick.
But the pills visible through the plastic were the wrong shape.
Investigators identified them.
A medication capable of dangerously altering heart rhythm when combined with Patrick’s existing prescription.
Emmett stared at the screen.
“Poison?”
The investigator chose his words carefully.
“Potentially fatal interaction.”
“Who collected the bottle?”
“Trent.”
The case changed immediately.
Trent’s attorney stopped cooperating.
Then another discovery emerged.
Room 2314 had once contained an analog backup camera covering the private elevator corridor.
The main footage was long gone.
The backup system had supposedly failed.
Josie opened her notebook.
“No.”
Everyone looked at her.
“What?”
“The backup camera worked.”
“How do you know?”
“I cleaned it.”
Cormac blinked.
“You cleaned a security camera?”
“The housing. Warren complained the lens was dusty.”
Warren nodded.
“She did.”
“When?”
Josie checked the date.
“The morning after Patrick’s meeting.”
The archived footage had not been deleted.
It had been mislabeled.
A technician eventually recovered fragments.
Patrick entered room 2314.
Victor arrived eleven minutes later.
Trent arrived afterward.
Victor left first.
Patrick remained.
Trent left alone.
Patrick emerged forty minutes later, visibly unsteady.
That was enough to destroy Trent’s story.
But before prosecutors could formally confront him with the evidence, another crisis began.
At 1:42 the following morning, the Ardmore’s fire alarms activated.
This time they did not disappear.
Smoke filled the east wing.
Josie woke to pounding on her hotel-room door.
“Fire!”
She grabbed her prosthetic and dressed.
In the corridor, guests were evacuating.
Warren appeared from the stairwell.
“Mechanical room!”
Josie’s blood went cold.
The steam line had been shut down.
There should be no fire.
Unless someone had started one.
“Records,” she said.
Warren understood.
The basement archive.
Evidence.
Someone was destroying it.
Emmett arrived from the executive floor.
“Get outside.”
Josie ignored him.
“Basement records.”
“Police already copied them.”
“Not all of them.”
“How do you know?”
“Because Patrick hid things.”
Emmett grabbed her arm.
“You are not going into a burning basement.”
She pulled free.
“Then come with me.”
It was the worst possible argument.
Because Emmett did.
They descended through smoke.
Sprinklers activated.
Water poured across the stairs.
Josie’s prosthetic slipped.
Emmett caught her.
“Slow down.”
“We don’t have time.”
They reached the archive corridor.
Flames were spreading from a storage room.
Warren activated suppression equipment.
Josie unlocked a steel cabinet.
Inside were old ledgers.
Patrick had marked several with red tape.
Emmett grabbed them.
Then an explosion shook the corridor.
A ceiling panel collapsed.
Emmett fell.
“Emmett!”
Josie crawled toward him.
His leg was trapped beneath metal framing.
Smoke thickened.
“Go!” he shouted.
She ignored him.
“Josie!”
“I heard you!”
She tried lifting the frame.
Impossible.
Her prosthetic slipped.
She repositioned.
Then something Patrick once told her returned.
Buildings reveal their problems to people willing to look.
Josie looked.
A maintenance jack.
Mounted on the wall.
She dragged it over.
Placed it beneath the frame.
Pumped.
Once.
Twice.
The metal lifted.
Emmett pulled free.
Warren reached them.
“Move!”
They escaped seconds before another section of ceiling collapsed.
Outside, firefighters surrounded the building.
Josie sat on the pavement.
Her prosthetic was scorched.
The socket had cracked.
Emmett sat beside her.
For several minutes neither spoke.
Then he looked at her leg.
“I’m buying you a new one.”
“No.”
“That wasn’t a question.”
“Then my answer is still no.”
“You just walked into a burning basement on a prosthetic held together by stubbornness.”
“And zip ties.”
“That doesn’t improve the situation.”
She laughed.
He did too.
The sound surprised both of them.
Then Cormac approached.
His face was serious.
“The fire was deliberate.”
Emmett stood.
“Trent is in custody.”
“It wasn’t Trent.”
“Daniel?”
“Custody too.”
“Victor?”
“At home under supervision.”
Josie looked toward the burning hotel.
“Then who?”
Cormac handed Emmett a phone.
Security footage showed a figure entering the basement.
Warren leaned closer.
His face went white.
“No.”
Josie stared.
The man was wearing an Ardmore maintenance jacket.
Someone she had known for years.
Someone who had worked beside Warren.
Someone who knew every hidden passage, every alarm, every mechanical room.
His name was Leonard Shaw.
Warren whispered:
“He worked here when Patrick died.”
Cormac nodded.
“And there’s more.”
He showed them a financial record.
For seven years, Leonard had received monthly payments from a company controlled by Trent.
But the final payment was different.
It had been made only twelve hours earlier.
May you like
And attached to the transfer was a message:
Destroy Malloy’s records tonight. No survivors if necessary.
