Chapter 13
“Give me the recorder,” Grant said, “and I’ll tell you what happens next.”
I tightened my grip on the case. My other hand slipped into my coat pocket, where my phone had been recording since Grant started talking. The red light on its screen was hidden against the lining.
“You’ve already told me what happens next,” I said. “You take my shares, and you tell the world I was too unstable to trust.”
“I’m trying to keep Northstar functioning.”
“You forged my name.”
“The board needed a decision before the company was paralyzed.”
“By a dead woman?”
His jaw tightened. Beyond him, the dispatch console pulsed red. Tessa stood near it, one hand braced against the desk, while a security man watched her. Daniel was on the other side of the hangar, blocked from us by another guard.
Grant glanced toward the console. “The route change is a temporary weather adjustment. Nobody is in danger.”
“You’re the one who put it there.”
“I put a command in a system I know better than anyone. Tessa’s credentials were convenient.”
Tessa’s face went still. Grant had taken her access, her name, and her job, then used all three as cover.
I kept my eyes on him. “You did the same thing at Cedar Ridge.”
“That was different.”
“Because the fire was supposed to kill me?”
For a moment, the hangar shrank to the space between us. His eyes flicked toward my pocket, but my hand remained still.
“You weren’t supposed to wake up,” he said. “The fire was supposed to look like an accident. The policy would pay. Your shares would pass through probate. Northstar would have one person capable of keeping it together.”
“You mean you.”
“I mean someone who understood what your mother built.”
The words hurt because Evelyn had trusted him, because I had trusted him—and because he still believed naming the company was enough to make his greed sound like duty.
“You chained both doors,” I said. “Why?”
Grant exhaled through his nose, impatient now. “Because a locked door can be explained afterward. A failed latch. A warped frame. A propane malfunction.” He glanced at the recorder case. “You were supposed to be part of the explanation.”
“And Brooke?”
His composure cracked. Not much. Just enough for me to see how quickly he’d decided her answer didn’t matter.
“Brooke had access to the cabin. She knew how to make herself useful.”
A sharp laugh came from the side entrance.
Brooke stood there with snow melting on the shoulders of her white coat. One hand held up a phone. A security man started toward her, but she lifted her other hand, showing her Northstar badge.
“Don’t,” she said. “You’ve already let him decide which one of us is disposable.”
Grant turned. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“I know. You’ve made that clear in the messages you sent after the fire.”
“What messages?”
“The ones where you told me to stay quiet until the board voted. Then the ones where you said I’d given you the access code and arranged the propane inspection. You were making sure there was a record of me doing it.” Her voice wavered, but she didn’t lower the phone. “Just not a record of you.”
She stepped closer to me and held out the device.
“This is a duplicate of the recording I played for you before,” she said. “The original is still on my phone. This copy has the file history attached.”
I didn’t take it immediately. “Why give it to me now?”
“Because he’s already writing the story where I acted alone.”
Grant’s face had gone pale beneath the hangar lights.
“You’re angry,” he said. “You don’t understand what this does to you.”
“I understand exactly what it does to me.” Brooke looked at the security men, then back at him. “I helped you get into that cabin. I knew enough to be afraid, and I left you there with her. I’m not asking her to forgive me.” Her fingers trembled around the phone. “But I won’t help you bury the truth.”
I took the device. It was warm from her hand.
The turn of the phone in my palm carried me back to the window at Cedar Ridge: Brooke’s white coat beyond the glass, her hand over her mouth, her feet carrying her away. The new recording didn’t erase that image. It gave it a consequence.
“You’re both making a mistake,” Grant said.
“No,” I answered. “You made it when you believed my death would make my life yours.”
The dispatch speaker crackled. A burst of static, then a voice strained by wind.
“Dispatch, we’re receiving conflicting route information. Confirm our assignment.”
Tessa leaned toward the console. The guard stepped in front of her.
“Move,” she snapped.
“Your access is suspended.”
“My voice isn’t.”
She reached for the radio handset. The security man grabbed her wrist, and Daniel moved, only to be blocked by the guard between them.
Grant didn’t look away from me. “The board has already authorized the transition. The memorial made it real. Everyone saw me grieving, saw me take responsibility. They wanted stability.”
“You used my funeral to make people comfortable handing you my company.”
“I used the circumstances that existed.”
“You made those circumstances.”
The words came out steady. My fear was still there, a live wire beneath my ribs, but it no longer owned my mouth.
“I’m Noah’s mother,” I said. “I’m alive. And Northstar’s crews are not pieces you get to move around while you decide who inherits me.”
At the mention of Noah, Grant’s eyes sharpened. His threat had found the place it was meant to find. I let him see that it hurt, but I didn’t let him see me retreat.
Behind him, Daniel’s gaze met mine. He shifted toward the side personnel door as Brooke’s arrival drew the guards’ attention. One of them turned to ask her for the phone. Daniel moved then, slipping through the narrow opening before the man could stop him.
He was going to the van. To Noah.
The relief lasted half a breath. Tessa was still trapped beside the console, and the aircraft’s assignment remained wrong.
“Tell them to hold,” I called to her.
“I did.” She pulled her wrist free. “They didn’t answer.”
Grant reached for the recorder case. I stepped back, and his hand closed on empty air.
“You don’t have enough,” he said. “A recording, a woman who helped me, and a frightened story from a woman everyone believes is dead.”
“I don’t need you to believe me.”
I pressed my thumb against the phone in my pocket, making sure the recording was still running.
Grant noticed the movement. His gaze dropped. The anger that followed was smaller than the satisfaction I felt watching him understand: for once, he hadn’t controlled the only record of what he’d done.
A high electronic chime cut through the hangar. Tessa twisted toward the console. Red blocks filled the route display, and a countdown began beneath the eastern corridor assignment.
“Hold that aircraft!” she shouted.
The radio spat static. No reply came.
May you like
Grant lunged—not toward the console, but toward the phone in my pocket. I twisted away. Brooke caught his sleeve, buying Tessa a second.
The console chimed again. The route display changed, confirming the diverted aircraft was seconds from affecting a rescue crew in the storm.
