Chapter 15 - The Fire in the Valle House
Daniel slammed his shoulder against the archive door.
It did not move.
Adrian grabbed a metal shelving bracket.
Sebastian began coughing.
Smoke thickened rapidly.
Charlotte dropped to the floor.
She remembered an old servants’ passage behind the wine cellar.
As a child, she and her cousins had used it during games.
“There’s another exit.”
Daniel looked at her.
“Where?”
Charlotte crawled toward the rear shelves.
Behind stacked boxes she found a narrow wooden panel.
Adrian kicked it open.
Cold air rushed inside.
They moved through the passage.
Daniel supported Sebastian.
Charlotte carried the metal case containing Evelyn’s evidence.
They emerged behind the greenhouse moments before flames broke through the basement windows.
Firefighters were already approaching.
Someone had triggered the estate alarm.
Security searched the grounds.
One guard was missing.
His name was Martin Shaw.
Daniel checked employment records.
Shaw had been hired three months earlier.
His references were fake.
Charlotte stared at the burning house.
Nathaniel was in custody.
Margaret was abroad.
Yet somebody was still protecting them.
Adrian looked toward the tree line.
A vehicle engine started.
Daniel’s security team pursued it.
The car escaped through an old maintenance gate.
Charlotte tightened her grip around Evelyn’s metal case.
The original archive might burn.
The evidence would not.
By sunrise, investigators confirmed the fire was deliberate.
Martin Shaw’s bank records showed payments from an offshore company.
The company belonged to Victor Hale.
Victor had been arrested at the airport.
Charlotte confronted him through investigators.
He denied ordering the fire.
Then he asked for a deal.
In exchange, he revealed Margaret’s actual location.
She had never gone to Zurich.
Her passport had.
Margaret remained in New York.
Charlotte felt a chill.
“Where?”
Victor gave them an address.
A private townhouse on East Seventy-Third Street.
Police entered that afternoon.
Margaret was gone.
But they found computers, cash, fake identification, and a wall covered with photographs.
Charlotte appeared in dozens of them.
At restaurants.
At bus stations.
Outside apartments.
At work.
Margaret had monitored her for eight years.
Daniel removed one photograph from the wall.
Charlotte was asleep beside a window in a small Baltimore apartment.
The photograph had been taken from inside the room.
Charlotte stared at it.
Margaret had not simply watched her.
Someone had entered Charlotte’s homes.
Then investigators found a list.
Twenty-three addresses.
Every place Charlotte had lived since leaving New York.
Beside the final address was a handwritten note.
BRING HER BACK ONLY IF SEBASTIAN FINDS OUT.
Charlotte read it twice.
Margaret had expected this moment.
May you like
And whatever came next had already been planned.
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