Chapter 4 – The Chessboard
Natalie returned to her townhouse after midnight.
Maya insisted on coming with her.
The front door was unlocked.
Natalie knew she had locked it before leaving for the airport.
The living room looked untouched, but Tyler’s bedroom had been torn apart.
Books lay scattered across the floor. Drawers had been emptied. The mattress had been lifted from the frame.
“They were looking for something,” Maya said.
“The card?”
“Maybe. But Harrison already knows Tyler gave it to you. If he thought it was here, he wouldn’t have sent police first.”
Natalie moved through the room slowly.
Tyler’s posters still covered the walls. A model spacecraft hung above his desk. His baseball glove rested on a shelf beside trophies he pretended not to care about.
She remembered helping him paint the room when he was eight.
Harrison had been in Singapore that week.
He had always been somewhere else.
Natalie noticed Tyler’s wooden chessboard on the floor.
One corner had been chipped.
Tyler had loved chess since he was six. Harrison called it a waste of time unless it could help him enter an elite university.
Natalie picked up the board.
Something rattled inside.
She turned it over and discovered that one of the felt pads had been removed. Beneath it was a tiny screw.
Maya found a screwdriver.
The bottom panel opened.
Inside was a flash drive wrapped in a note.
Mom, if you found this, Dad knows about the card.
Watch the video first.
Then find Agent Reed.
Do not call him from your phone.
Natalie inserted the drive into Maya’s secured laptop.
A video began.
Tyler sat at his desk wearing the same gray sweatshirt he had worn three weeks earlier. His face was pale.
“Mom, I’m sorry,” he said.
Natalie’s eyes filled immediately.
“If you’re watching this, I probably went with Dad.”
He looked toward his bedroom door before continuing.
“I heard him talking to Victor Dane. They said the judge would give him custody because they paid someone called Dr. Mercer.”
Dr. Alana Mercer had been the court-appointed family evaluator.
Her report had described Harrison as stable and Natalie as emotionally dependent on Tyler.
Natalie had never understood how Mercer reached that conclusion after meeting her for less than an hour.
Tyler continued.
“Dad has accounts in my name. A lot of them. He said when I turn fourteen, he needs me to sign something at a bank in Switzerland. Victor said if I didn’t cooperate, they would make it look like you stole money.”
Maya paused the video.
“That’s why the $3.8 million account lists you as emergency trustee.”
“He created the evidence before accusing me.”
Maya nodded grimly.
On the screen, Tyler wiped his eyes.
“I chose him in court because he said he would destroy you if I didn’t. He showed me pictures of your house. He said accidents happen to people who don’t know when they’ve lost.”
Natalie pressed both hands over her mouth to stop herself from crying aloud.
“I knew you would try to protect me,” Tyler said. “So I had to make you believe I didn’t want you.”
A sound came from downstairs.
Both women froze.
The front door creaked open.
Footsteps entered the house.
Maya closed the laptop.
Natalie reached for the heavy flashlight beside Tyler’s bed.
A man’s shadow crossed the hallway.
Then a voice called softly from the stairs.
“Natalie, give me the drive, and no one gets hurt.”
She recognized the voice.
May you like
Victor Dane.
Harrison’s chief financial officer.
