Chapter 2 - Six Seconds of Darkness
Claire locked the vault from the inside.
“Mom?”
Leo stood beside her, trembling.
She crouched.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“Did Victor hurt your shoulder?”
Leo shook his head.
Claire checked anyway.
No bruising.
Then she hugged him.
“I should’ve believed you immediately.”
“About the helmet?”
“About anything that made you afraid of him.”
Leo looked toward the damaged helmet.
“Is Uncle Victor bad?”
Claire did not answer.
Fourteen months of memories were rearranging themselves inside her head.
Victor sitting beside her at Adrian’s funeral.
Victor handling the insurance company.
Victor recommending she stop attending Mercer Velocity board meetings “until grief settled.”
Victor presenting documents while she was sedated on sleeping medication.
Victor telling Leo not to ask questions about Adrian’s cars.
She stood.
“Stay beside me.”
Claire photographed everything.
The silver wreck.
The Raven.
The rotating platform.
The Saint Christopher medal.
The cracked helmet.
Then she called the estate’s head of security.
No answer.
She called again.
Nothing.
That frightened her more than the blackout.
Mercer House had twenty-four-hour security.
She called 911 instead.
Victor returned before police arrived.
He entered using the mechanical override.
His composure had returned.
So had his expensive charcoal jacket.
“Claire, we need to discuss this privately.”
“No.”
He looked at Leo.
“You’re terrifying him.”
“You threw his father’s helmet across the floor.”
“I lost my temper.”
“You put your hands on him.”
“And I regret that.”
His apology was smooth.
Too smooth.
Claire lifted the medal.
“Explain this.”
Victor glanced at it.
“I already told you. I lost that years ago.”
“In Miami.”
“Yes.”
“This car never went to Miami.”
“Adrian could have borrowed it.”
“You testified to an insurance investigator that you hadn’t seen Adrian for four days before he died.”
Victor smiled without warmth.
“You were a lawyer once, Claire. You know a medal proves nothing.”
She had been a commercial litigator before Leo’s birth.
The reminder was intentional.
Victor had spent fourteen months treating her former career as another piece of her old life.
Tonight he had accidentally reminded her that she knew how liars behaved under pressure.
“No,” Claire said. “It proves nothing by itself.”
Victor’s smile faded.
“But you running when the recording played proves something to me.”
“I didn’t run.”
“You stole the module.”
“I picked up dangerous broken equipment.”
“Give it back.”
“I don’t have it.”
Claire stared at him.
Victor held her gaze.
Then police officers appeared at the entrance.
Everything changed again.
Victor became concerned Uncle Victor.
“Thank God,” he said. “My nephew accidentally activated old machinery during the blackout. My sister-in-law is understandably shaken.”
Claire almost laughed.
One officer approached her.
“Ma’am?”
“I want to report an assault on my son and possible evidence connected to my husband’s death.”
Victor’s jaw tightened.
The officer looked toward the wreck.
“Your husband?”
“Adrian Mercer.”
Recognition came immediately.
The Mercer crash had been major business news.
Officer Daniels called a supervisor.
Victor stepped away and made his own call.
Twenty minutes later, Detective Lena Ortiz arrived.
Claire knew the name.
Ortiz had been one of the detectives attached to Adrian’s death investigation.
“You were told the wreck was destroyed?” Ortiz asked.
“Yes.”
Victor interrupted.
“It was retained privately after the insurance examination. There was nothing illegal about that.”
Ortiz looked at him.
“Mr. Mercer, I didn’t ask you.”
Victor’s expression hardened.
Claire saw the first crack.
Ortiz photographed the wreck and medal but warned Claire not to touch anything else.
“Where’s the device that triggered the recording?”
“Victor took it.”
“I did not.”
Leo spoke.
“Yes, you did.”
Victor turned.
Leo recoiled behind Claire.
Ortiz noticed.
“So,” the detective said quietly, “we have a missing device.”
Victor’s attorney arrived thirty minutes later.
Claire recognized him too.
Marcus Bell.
Mercer Velocity’s general counsel.
Not Victor’s personal lawyer.
Claire looked from Bell to Victor.
“You called company counsel?”
“This vault belongs to Mercer Performance Holdings.”
“My husband owned sixty-two percent of that company.”
“Owned,” Victor emphasized.
Bell stepped between them.
“Claire, this is not the place.”
“What happened to Adrian’s shares?”
Bell hesitated.
Victor answered.
“They were subject to the redemption agreement.”
Claire stared.
“What redemption agreement?”
Victor and Bell exchanged a glance.
That was the moment her fear returned.
Not because she thought Victor might have killed Adrian.
Because she suddenly realized there were entire legal arrangements involving her husband’s fortune that she had never seen.
Ortiz noticed too.
“What agreement?”
Victor said nothing.
Claire’s phone vibrated.
A message from an unknown number.
She opened it.
One sentence.
The blackout wasn’t citywide when the vault failed. Someone killed your backup circuit first.
Claire looked up sharply.
Victor was watching her.
She lowered the phone.
Another message arrived.
Check who changed Adrian’s emergency contact forty-eight hours before the crash.
Claire felt cold.
She typed:
Who is this?
The reply came instantly.
Someone who should have spoken fourteen months ago.
Then:
Don’t tell Victor.
Claire looked at her brother-in-law.
May you like
He smiled.
And she understood that whatever Adrian had hidden beneath the estate, someone else was still hiding above it.
