Chapter 9 - THE BACKUP PLAN
The backup plan had a name.
Continuity Protocol.
Howard loved professional language for criminal things.
Grant found the phrase on a recovered laptop from the farmhouse.
The laptop had been damaged, but digital forensics recovered fragments.
The Continuity Protocol was simple.
If the marriage scheme failed, they would manufacture an emergency.
Something that would force access to my property and financial records while I was distracted.
A medical crisis.
An arrest.
A threat to Sophie.
Anything that made me stop looking at the money.
“They planned this like a corporation,” Matt said.
We were in Grant’s office.
She nodded.
“Because, in a way, it was.”
Police had identified seven previous targets connected to Marcus.
Three had lost homes.
Two had lost large portions of retirement accounts.
One had died.
That victim, sixty-two-year-old Thomas Weller, had suffered what police originally called an accidental medication overdose.
His fiancée disappeared three days after the funeral.
The description matched a woman whose phone records connected to Marcus.
I felt sick.
“What about Howard?”
“He’s still in the hospital after the farmhouse blast.”
“And Marcus?”
“Not talking.”
“What about Amanda?”
Grant folded her arms.
“She’s talking plenty.”
Amanda had handed over usernames, addresses, storage units, and account numbers.
But she insisted Daniel Mercer sat above all of them.
The problem?
Nobody could find Daniel.
No current driver’s license.
No recent tax filings.
No confirmed photograph younger than fifteen years.
It was like he had vanished.
Then Claire arrived.
She carried a copy of my mother’s old corporate audit.
“I found something.”
A transfer.
Six years ago, $740,000 had been moved from one subsidiary into a shell company.
The authorization appeared to come from my mother.
But she had denied approving it.
Daniel Mercer had supervised the transaction.
Howard Pell had reviewed it.
Together.
“So my mother fired Daniel,” I said.
“Yes.”
“And Howard covered for him.”
“Possibly.”
“Then she died.”
Nobody spoke.
Grant finally said, “We cannot conclude her accident was connected.”
“I know.”
But now I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
My mother had been scared that last week.
I remembered her calling me twice in one night.
I had been busy.
Emily was pregnant with Sophie.
Work was crazy.
I told Mom I’d call her the next day.
I never did.
She died that morning.
Claire opened another file.
“There’s more.”
Inside was my mother’s old life-insurance paperwork.
A beneficiary amendment had been prepared ten days before her death.
It would have redirected part of her insurance proceeds into an investment fund.
She never signed it.
The adviser listed on the amendment:
Daniel Mercer.
Then Grant’s phone rang.
She listened.
Her face changed.
“Where?”
She ended the call.
“Howard Pell regained consciousness.”
I stood.
“Good.”
“No.”
Grant looked directly at me.
May you like
“He escaped from the hospital twelve minutes ago.”
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