Chapter 3 - The Second Camera
The photograph on Ethan's phone disappeared nine minutes after it arrived. He was staring at it when the screen refreshed and displayed a gray square with the words message unavailable. Michael had already taken a screenshot, but the sender's number led to a disconnected internet service.
“Someone wants you frightened,” Michael said.
“Someone has Claire.”
“Those are different conclusions.”
Ethan turned on him. “You think I'm imagining this?”
“I think the person responsible hopes you'll react without thinking. It's what you're famous for.”
Ethan hated that Michael was right. In his father's time the Blackwood name had meant docks, trucking unions, bookmakers, and men who disappeared before court dates. Ethan had taken over at twenty-nine, built legitimate investment companies, and announced publicly that the family's violent history was finished. Yet he'd kept certain profitable relationships alive. If they didn't require him to witness a crime, he preferred not to ask how they made money.
Michael had been the only person in his circle willing to call that hypocrisy by its name.
At nine that morning, Detective Juliette Park interviewed Ethan in a temporary police office two blocks from the hotel. She was in her forties, compact, with dark eyes that missed nothing. She began with a question he hadn't expected.
“Where was your wife planning to go after the gala?”
“Home.”
“Did she tell you that?”
“Where else would she go?”
Park watched him a moment. “You'd be surprised how often people answer a question about someone else by telling me what they assume.”
Ethan described the alarm, Claire helping Ada, the glass barrier trapping Vanessa. He told Park about the threatening photograph. Michael handed over the screenshot before Ethan could decide whether his own people should investigate first.
“You're cooperating,” Park said. It wasn't gratitude. It was a test.
“My wife is missing.”
“And your company sponsored the event. I need all vendor contracts and security arrangements.”
“You'll have them.”
“Not after they've passed through your legal department.”
Michael exhaled through his nose. Ethan understood the warning. Blackwood attorneys were famous for making inconvenient documents inaccessible. For the first time, Ethan wanted them nowhere near the truth.
Park placed a still photograph on the desk. It showed the ballroom's east stairs. Ada Whitcomb was leaving with a hotel employee, her cane under one arm.
“She made it out,” Park said. “Your wife did get her to safety.”
Relief flooded Ethan, followed immediately by a deeper shame. He hadn't thought to ask whether Ada survived. Claire would have asked before saying her own name.
“Where did Claire go?”
“That's what we're investigating. Your hotel's primary camera system went down six minutes before the alarm. A backup camera in the garage kept recording.”
She turned her monitor toward him. On the grainy video, a white medical van entered a service lane at 8:43 p.m. It had no hospital markings, no dispatch number visible, and a temporary license tag.
Ethan leaned closer. “Was she inside?”
“There's no clear image of passengers. But a woman in a blue dress appears briefly by the loading gate.”
Park paused the clip. The figure was only a smear of color between two dark coats. Ethan would have given everything for one reliable pixel of her face.
“Who's that beside her?” he asked.
“Working on it.”
The garage video showed the van leaving four minutes later. One minute after that, the west security camera flickered back on, showing smoke moving through an empty corridor.
Park said, “Our electrical investigator thinks the first outage wasn't caused by the fire. Someone disabled the monitoring equipment.”
Ethan's phone rang. Malcolm Reed.
He ignored it.
“Do you have enemies?” Park asked.
“Enough to keep your department busy.”
“Specific ones who might use your wife?”
He thought of contracts he'd won by intimidating sellers, labor leaders he'd paid to remain quiet, and one disputed port acquisition Michael had begged him to abandon. He'd insisted the company was now legitimate. Claire had asked why his accountants still used the same offshore structures as his father.
“My own company is a place to start,” he said at last.
Park made a note. “That's the first useful thing you've told me.”
After the interview, Michael drove him to their office headquarters. Reporters crowded the sidewalk. Someone shouted Vanessa's name. A camera showed Ethan's face on a giant screen across the street, beneath a headline about a missing socialite and a scandalous affair.
In the elevator, Michael said, “You can still tell the truth before someone tells it for you.”
“I will.”
“About all of it?”
The question followed them upstairs.
Malcolm waited in the conference room with Ethan's lawyer and a public-relations consultant. The consultant had prepared a statement describing Vanessa as an injured business associate. Ethan saw the lie waiting for his signature and remembered Claire's question in their elevator.
He pushed the paper away.
“I won't say that.”
Malcolm folded his hands. “Mr. Blackwood, speculation is already hurting investor confidence.”
“My wife is missing.”
“Which is precisely why we need to preserve our capacity to respond.”
“You sound like you're discussing a shipping delay.”
Malcolm's smile vanished.
An hour later, Ethan demanded the complete gala security contracts. A junior analyst brought him a digital archive marked confidential. Vendor records showed that a company called Westbridge Response had been hired to manage private medical transport. Its fee had been approved two days earlier.
The authorization bore Claire Blackwood's electronic signature.
Ethan checked the date. She had been volunteering at Harbor House that afternoon; he remembered because he'd canceled lunch with her. He called the foundation and learned there had been no grant approval, no medical transport request, and no discussion of Westbridge at all.
Michael stood over his shoulder. “Someone's using her name.”
Ethan scrolled to the person who had countersigned the contract. Malcolm Reed.
A dull understanding began to settle in his chest. He'd given Malcolm control of daily operations because he trusted him to make profitable choices Ethan preferred not to examine. Now Ethan saw what such trust could cost.
He called Park and sent the files directly to her secure address. Then he returned to Malcolm's office. The door stood open; the desk was cleared of its usual stacks.
“Where is he?” Ethan asked the assistant.
“He left for a meeting twenty minutes ago.”
“With whom?”
The woman hesitated. “Vanessa Brooks.”
Ethan felt the room tilt. Vanessa was supposed to be under observation at a clinic. He had called her twice, and she hadn't answered. Now he understood why.
On Malcolm's desk lay an envelope addressed to Ethan in Claire's unmistakable handwriting. He opened it carefully, expecting another anniversary card, another plea he'd failed to hear.
Inside was a single line written in blue ink.
If something happens to me, don't trust the men who tell you this is only about money.
The bottom of the paper had been torn away. On the reverse side, an embossed moon was visible—part of the stationery Claire kept beside her bed.
The envelope smelled faintly of smoke, though Ethan couldn't tell whether that was real or merely a memory he could not escape.
From the corridor, Michael called his name. Detective Park was on the phone again.
“Mr. Blackwood,” she said, “we found the source of the west exit badge. It was issued under an employee who died three years ago.”
“Who requested it?”
“Your company's security division.”
Ethan gripped the desk. “Who signed?”
Park let the silence last long enough for him to understand her answer before she gave it.
May you like
“Malcolm Reed.”
-------------------------------------------------------
