Chapter 13 - Beneath the Textile Mill.
Detective Ruiz ended the call and headed for the mill himself.
Elena hated being trapped in a hospital bed while the case moved without her.
Nathan hated it too, though for different reasons.
He paced between the window and the door.
Vanessa remained seated under the watch of hospital security.
Margaret had gone downstairs to meet the family's attorney.
For fifteen minutes, the only sound was the fetal monitor.
Then Elena's phone rang again.
Ruiz.
She answered immediately.
"Tell me they're safe."
"They are."
"We forced the exterior grate."
Elena exhaled.
"What did you find?"
Ruiz's footsteps echoed through the phone.
"You were right about the archive."
"There are filing cabinets, hard drives, cameras, printed emails."
"Daniel kept enough blackmail material to ruin half the people he ever met."
Nathan stopped pacing.
"And Caleb?"
Ruiz did not answer immediately.
"Alive."
Vanessa stood.
"Where?"
"Boiler room."
"He has a head wound and a stab injury in his side."
"Paramedics are treating him."
Elena looked toward Vanessa.
Relief crossed her face.
"Did he say who attacked him?"
"Not yet."
Ruiz continued walking.
"But the deed is not here."
Nathan swore quietly.
Elena asked the next question.
"The red folder?"
"Gone too."
"Then Daniel got both."
Vanessa shook her head.
"No."
Nathan turned sharply.
"You keep saying that."
Vanessa faced him.
"Because Daniel doesn't care about the red folder."
"He already knows what's in it."
"The deed matters."
"Something else was in Caleb's bag."
Elena's attention sharpened.
"What?"
Vanessa hesitated.
Ruiz heard it.
"This would be a good time to stop protecting secrets."
Vanessa closed her eyes.
"A DNA report."
Nathan frowned.
"Whose DNA?"
Vanessa looked directly at Margaret's empty chair.
"Daniel's."
Elena waited.
Vanessa continued.
"He had Caleb obtain a sample from Margaret's hairbrush."
"He compared it to his own."
Nathan's expression went blank.
"Why?"
Vanessa's voice dropped.
"Because Daniel believed Robert Howard wasn't his father."
The room became very still.
Elena thought of seven years of resentment.
The stolen money.
The blackmail.
The obsession with inheritance.
A man who believed he had been denied something that was never biologically his might become even more dangerous when proof existed.
"What did the report say?" Nathan asked.
Vanessa shook her head.
"I never saw it."
"Daniel said Caleb had the only printed copy."
Elena spoke slowly.
"Then maybe Daniel wasn't chasing the deed."
"Maybe he was chasing the DNA report."
Ruiz stopped walking.
"That makes sense."
Nathan looked sick.
"Why would Caleb keep it from him?"
Vanessa answered.
"Because Caleb realized Daniel was planning to betray him."
"He told me two days ago that he finally had something Daniel couldn't afford to lose."
Elena pressed a hand to her temple.
"So Caleb took the deed as insurance and the DNA report as leverage."
Ruiz said quietly.
"And somebody almost killed him for the bag."
A muffled voice sounded in the background of Ruiz's call.
Ruiz responded to someone away from the phone.
Then he came back.
"Caleb is conscious."
Elena leaned forward.
"Can he talk?"
"Barely."
Another pause.
"He says Daniel wasn't the person who attacked him."
Vanessa's face tightened.
"Then who was it?"
Ruiz answered with two words.
"Dr. Pierce."
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