Chapter 17 - Under the House
Police wanted to evacuate the property and send in a tactical team.
Daniel wanted Martin out alive.
Torres did both.
Officers entered through the west wing while Daniel used the old servants' tunnel his father had shown him as a boy.
The tunnel smelled like dirt and wet stone.
Rachel stayed in the command vehicle with Lily and hated every second of it.
At the basement wall, Daniel found a steel door he had never seen before.
The key from William's mausoleum fit the lock.
Inside was not a bomb room.
It was an archive.
Shelves held decades of financial documents, recordings, photographs, and labeled boxes.
Martin sat tied to a chair in the center.
The timer was attached to a speaker, not an explosive.
"Daniel," Martin said weakly. "Don't touch anything."
Celeste's voice came through the speaker.
"Welcome home."
Daniel looked for a camera.
"Where are you?"
"Close enough."
"Let Martin go."
"Martin made his choices. We all did."
Daniel cut the ropes.
Martin pointed toward a metal cabinet. "Your father recorded her. Years of it."
Daniel opened the cabinet.
Dozens of tapes were labeled with dates.
One read: THE NIGHT WILLIAM DIED.
His hands went cold.
He pressed play.
William's voice crackled through the old recorder.
"If anything happens to me, Celeste is responsible."
Then Celeste's voice: "Stop being theatrical."
"You moved the heart medication."
"I protected the family."
"You let me collapse."
A pause.
Then Celeste said, "You were going to expose everything."
Daniel shut his eyes.
His father's heart attack had not been natural.
A soft click came from behind him.
Celeste stepped from a second doorway.
She held a lighter in one hand and a can of gasoline in the other.
"Your father always loved evidence," she said.
She splashed fuel across the floor.
May you like
"So let's give him a proper funeral."
And she dropped the lighter.
