Chapter 11 - NO MORE HIDING
Mercer pulled Elena to the floor.
A second bullet tore through the lamp.
Darkness filled the room.
“Bathroom!” Mercer shouted.
Maya dragged Luis behind the bed.
Officers rushed outside.
Tires screamed in the parking lot.
Then silence.
Elena touched her side.
Blood covered her fingers.
“Mamá!”
“Just glass,” she said.
The bullet had missed.
Barely.
Mercer looked through the broken window.
“He knows we found you.”
Elena nodded.
“Yes.”
“Then we move now.”
“No.”
Everyone looked at her.
“I’m done moving.”
Maya stared.
“What are you saying?”
“I have hidden for eleven years. Adrian used my fear. Charles used my silence. Eleanor used my guilt.”
Elena stood despite the cuts on her side.
“No more.”
Mercer said, “You’re a witness in an active murder investigation.”
“I’m also the person who knows where Adrian will go.”
That changed the room.
“Where?” Mercer asked.
Elena looked at Maya.
“The Sterling Foundation gala hall.”
Charles’s anniversary dinner had originally been scheduled there.
A last-minute plumbing emergency moved the event to Bellamy House.
Adrian hadn’t known until that afternoon.
“He built his final plan around the original location,” Elena said.
“What plan?”
“To force Charles to confess on camera.”
Mercer frowned.
“He already leaked the evidence.”
“The evidence destroys the company.”
Elena’s voice hardened.
“But Adrian wants something else.”
“What?”
“He wants Charles to suffer.”
Twenty minutes later, Mercer’s convoy headed downtown.
Charles was transported separately.
Eleanor remained in police custody.
Or she was supposed to.
Halfway there, Mercer’s radio cracked.
“Detective, prisoner transport two has been hit.”
Mercer grabbed the radio.
“Repeat.”
“Sterling female is gone.”
Maya’s stomach dropped.
“Eleanor escaped?”
“Someone ambushed the transport.”
Elena whispered, “Adrian.”
But Mercer shook his head.
“No.”
“What?”
He listened to another transmission.
“The attackers didn’t take Eleanor.”
“Then where is she?”
Mercer’s face darkened.
“She took one officer’s gun and car.”
Luis laughed bitterly.
“That woman really does not quit.”
Maya looked out at the city lights.
“What would she do?”
Elena answered immediately.
“Kill Adrian before he can expose what she did.”
Mercer glanced back.
“What did she do besides tonight?”
Elena’s face went pale.
“There’s one file Charles never saw.”
“What file?”
“Eleanor wasn’t just Charles’s wife.”
Elena swallowed.
“She worked for Sterling Medical before she met him.”
Maya felt another secret opening beneath her feet.
“What did she do?”
“She ran compliance.”
Mercer stared.
“The defective-device reports?”
Elena nodded.
“Eleanor signed the destruction orders.”
Maya whispered, “She helped bury the deaths.”
“Yes.”
“So Adrian can prove she was part of it.”
“Yes.”
Luis looked toward the road ahead.
“And now she has a gun.”
At that exact moment, Mercer’s phone rang.
Private number.
He answered on speaker.
A woman’s voice whispered through heavy breathing.
“Maya?”
Eleanor.
“Where are you?”
Eleanor ignored the question.
“He has Charles.”
Maya froze.
“What?”
“I saw Adrian’s men take him.”
Mercer checked the convoy.
Charles’s transport vehicle was no longer behind them.
“How?”
Eleanor began crying.
For the first time that night, she sounded genuinely terrified.
“He’s going to kill him.”
Then a man’s voice came onto the line.
“Not yet.”
Adrian.
“Maya, bring my mother to the gala hall.”
Maya stared at Elena.
Adrian continued.
“And come alone.”
May you like
The call ended.
Luis whispered, “Did he just call Mom his mother?”
