Chapter 10 - The Fire at Greenvale.
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For nine years, Victoria had survived by forcing people to choose between two disasters.
Save the company or expose the theft.
Protect Sophia or protect Clara.
Reach my father or reach my daughter.
Every choice left one person behind and gave my mother another weapon.
I refused to choose.
Adrian called the three federal judges absent from Arthur's list.
Two offices sent him to voicemail.
The third belonged to Judge Miriam Cross, a former public defender who had rejected Sterling campaign donations twice.
She answered from an airport lounge in Chicago.
Adrian sent her one page of the ledger, one frame from the red-room tape, and the forged guardianship order.
She issued a sealed preservation order within eleven minutes.
The order froze Greenvale's records, the Sterling Foundation servers, and every account named in Arthur's files.
It did not authorize arrests.
It gave honest people a reason to stop obeying dishonest ones.
Ortiz called the state fire commander directly.
She warned him that patients were being held under false identities.
Clara called Mara Reed through an emergency number hidden in the microfilm index.
No one answered.
We divided into two teams.
Ortiz, Clara, and Nora drove toward Greenvale with a certified copy of Judge Cross's order.
Adrian and I went to Manhattan to track Sophia's transmitter.
Before Clara entered the car, she touched my arm.
“Do not trade the tape for her.”
“If that is the only way—”
“It will not save her.”
Clara's eyes held mine.
“Victoria never keeps people after they have no value.”
I thought of Marcus Hale on the holding-cell floor.
“I know.”
“Bring Sophia home.”
“Bring my father.”
Clara gave a tired nod.
“Your father told me you would eventually listen.”
“He was overly optimistic.”
“No.”
A faint sadness moved across her face.
“He said pain would teach you what love could not.”
Then she left.
The button signal led Adrian and me to the Sterling Foundation building on East Fifty-Third Street.
The structure was twenty floors of glass wrapped around a preserved stone townhouse.
Tomorrow's gala would occupy the atrium and upper ballroom.
Tonight, caterers, florists, and technicians moved through the loading dock.
We entered wearing uniforms borrowed from a lighting company.
The transmitter pulsed from the ninth floor.
The elevator required biometric access after the sixth.
Adrian located a catering stairwell hidden behind a temporary flower wall.
We climbed.
On the ninth floor, the corridor had been renovated to resemble the east wing of the estate.
Red floor lights glowed beneath soundproof doors.
Victoria had built a second interrogation suite beneath the offices of her charity.
The signal came from Room 9C.
I opened the door with a cloned access card.
The room contained the table, the red glass, and the bowl of soup from the photograph.
Sophia was not there.
Her blue dress lay across the chair.
A small black button rested in the soup.
Adrian scanned it.
“The transmitter was removed.”
A camera above the mirror turned toward us.
My mother's voice filled the room.
“You are becoming predictable, Ethan.”
“Where is she?”
“Somewhere she can see what her father chooses.”
The mirror brightened into a screen.
Live footage showed Greenvale burning.
Fire climbed from the Memory Wing windows.
Patients gathered behind locked glass doors.
Clara and Ortiz ran across the courtyard toward the smoke.
“Turn off the locks,” I said.
“I cannot.”
“You control the clinic.”
“I controlled Dr. Voss.”
Past tense.
On the screen, Voss emerged from a side entrance carrying a metal case.
He ignored patients pounding on windows and hurried toward a waiting helicopter.
Ortiz saw him and changed direction.
Clara continued toward the Memory Wing.
Victoria spoke softly.
“Your wife still mistakes courage for strategy.”
“Your strategy is burning helpless people.”
“Not mine.”
“Then whose?”
“Malcolm's.”
Adrian and I exchanged a look.
Victoria had begun sacrificing her closest ally.
“He authorized the fire,” she said.
“He has become unstable since the bank.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“I expect the public to believe whatever survives.”
The image changed.
Sophia appeared on another screen.
She sat inside a dark vehicle with a seat belt across her chest.
A woman beside her wore a hood.
Sophia's eyes were wide but alert.
“Daddy?”
“I am here.”
“Mommy said you would find me.”
“I will.”
The hooded woman leaned toward the camera.
Mara Reed lowered the fabric.
She was the woman from the photograph with Arthur.
Her face was bruised.
“Ethan,” she said quickly, “do not come to the gala.”
Someone outside the camera struck the vehicle door.
Mara flinched.
“The building is wired.”
“What do you mean?”
“Victoria has charges beneath the atrium supports.”
My mother's voice cut across hers.
“Mara has always enjoyed drama.”
“You brought everyone on Arthur's list into one building,” I said.
“I brought friends to a fundraiser.”
“You are going to bury them with the evidence.”
Victoria did not answer.
That silence confirmed more than words.
The feed from Greenvale showed Clara reaching a locked ward door.
Smoke surrounded her.
She wrapped her sweater around her hand and struck the glass with a fire axe.
Inside, Arthur stood among a group of patients.
He recognized her.
He pointed toward another room.
Clara followed his gesture.
A man was chained to a bed behind a second glass wall.
Elias Reed.
The missing accountant was alive.
The helicopter lifted from the Greenvale lawn with Dr. Voss aboard.
Ortiz fired at the landing strut, but the aircraft climbed above the trees.
“Voss is escaping,” Adrian said.
“No,” I replied.
The helicopter turned south toward Manhattan.
“He is coming to the gala.”
The screen went black.
A steel shutter dropped behind us.
Gas hissed into Room 9C.
Adrian covered his mouth.
“She really likes this trick.”
I smashed the soup bowl against the camera.
The transmitter button contained a small wire coil and battery.
Mara had placed it in the liquid for a reason.
I pulled the battery free and touched the wires to the electronic lock.
The first contact sparked.
The second released the door.
We escaped into the corridor as the room filled with gas.
A foundation security officer waited outside.
He raised his weapon.
Adrian threw the metal lighting case into his knees.
I drove him into the wall and took the gun.
He wore an earpiece connected to the building command channel.
A voice ordered all personnel to report to sublevel two.
“What's on sublevel two?” Adrian asked.
“The building plans show parking.”
The service elevator opened at the end of the corridor.
Malcolm Price stepped out with four armed men.
He wore a charcoal overcoat over formal clothes.
He looked tired, not surprised.
“Ethan,” he said.
“Your mother said you would come early.”
“She says you started the Greenvale fire.”
Malcolm laughed.
“And she says you are unstable.”
“Where is Sophia?”
“Not with me.”
“Where are the explosives?”
His expression changed.
Only slightly.
It was enough.
“You did not know,” I said.
Malcolm looked toward the camera above us.
“She told me the sublevel work was for server cooling.”
“She plans to kill everyone tomorrow, including you.”
“That would be inconvenient.”
“Help us stop her.”
One of his men raised his pistol toward my chest.
Malcolm pushed the barrel down.
“Not here.”
He studied me for several seconds.
Then he removed a white access card from his pocket and tossed it across the floor.
“Sublevel two.”
“Why help me?”
“Because your mother transferred the foundation reserves to an account I cannot access.”
Adrian almost laughed.
“Your conscience arrived with an overdraft notice.”
Malcolm's face remained flat.
“Use whatever motive keeps you alive.”
The fire feed returned on a wall monitor.
Clara had broken through the glass.
She pulled Arthur into the smoke while Ortiz and firefighters carried Elias.
Then part of the roof collapsed.
The camera vanished beneath flame.
My phone rang.
No caller identification.
I answered.
Sophia was crying.
“Daddy, the car stopped.”
“Where are you?”
“I don't know.”
I heard the helicopter above her.
Then Dr. Voss spoke near the phone.
“Tomorrow night, Mr. Sterling.”
“If you arrive before the first toast, your daughter may attend.”
The line ended.
Malcolm looked toward the ceiling as the helicopter passed over the building.
“Voss was not supposed to have the child,” he said.
“Who was?”
“My team.”
“You lost her?”
Malcolm's mouth tightened.
“Your mother has stopped following her own plan.”
I picked up the access card.
“No.”
I looked at the dark monitor where Greenvale had burned.
May you like
“She has reached the part of the plan where no one else survives.”
THE BREAD AGAINST MY SUIT
