Chapter 3 - The Man Who Died There
Caleb was released that afternoon.
Not cleared.
Released.
His employer suspended him before he reached the parking lot.
Blackridge Hydroelectric Services cited “unauthorized archive access and conduct inconsistent with security procedures.”
Caleb read the email twice.
Then deleted it.
Victoria Kane was waiting outside.
Two security vehicles idled behind her.
Caleb stopped.
“I assume you’re not here to thank me.”
Victoria’s jaw tightened.
“I owe you an apology.”
“That would be new.”
“I was wrong about what happened at the water.”
“Partially wrong.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“Meaning?”
“You still think I had something to do with your daughter being there.”
“I think you broke into an archive forty minutes before she nearly died.”
“That’s true.”
“Then explain it.”
Caleb looked around the police station parking lot.
“You really want to discuss your family secrets here?”
Victoria did not like his tone.
“Get in.”
“No.”
“Mr. Ross—”
“Caleb.”
“Caleb, someone tried to murder my daughter.”
“And somebody may have murdered my father.”
The words stopped her.
Victoria stared.
“Thomas Ross died in an accident.”
“That’s what your company paid people to say.”
“My company?”
“Kane Infrastructure.”
Victoria crossed her arms.
“I was twenty-nine. I wasn’t running the company.”
“You were corporate counsel.”
Her face changed.
Caleb saw recognition.
“You knew his name.”
Victoria looked away.
Eleven years earlier.
Thomas Ross.
Senior structural engineer.
Fall from a maintenance platform.
Internal investigation.
Settlement with the family.
She remembered the file because Lydia had screamed at her about it two days before disappearing.
Victoria’s voice lowered.
“What did my sister tell your father?”
“I don’t know.”
Caleb removed a photocopy of the notebook page from his pocket.
He showed her.
WOLF KNOWS. 417.
Victoria stared at the handwriting.
“Sophie had the key.”
“Yes.”
“And the wolf belongs to Lydia.”
“Apparently.”
Victoria’s breath shortened.
“You think Lydia contacted your father.”
“I think my father believed she knew something.”
“She disappeared three days after his death.”
Caleb’s eyes sharpened.
“You never thought that was connected?”
Victoria’s expression hardened.
“You know nothing about what happened to Lydia.”
“Then tell me.”
She looked at him.
“My sister was brilliant, impulsive, suspicious of everyone, and furious at our father.”
“Why?”
“She believed Kane Infrastructure was hiding safety failures.”
Caleb gave a humorless laugh.
“There we are.”
“That does not mean she was right.”
“You still believe that?”
Victoria did not answer.
Caleb stepped closer.
“What happened before she disappeared?”
Victoria saw an image she had spent eleven years trying not to remember.
Lydia standing in the family library.
Hair wet from rain.
Hands shaking.
“She told me Thomas Ross was dead because of us.”
Caleb went perfectly still.
“What?”
Victoria’s voice nearly disappeared.
“She said Uncle Marcus had buried an engineering report and somebody had threatened Thomas.”
“What did you do?”
“I told her to stop making accusations.”
Caleb stared.
Victoria continued because stopping would be worse.
“Lydia had been fighting with our father for months. She had accused executives of fraud. She’d broken into company files. Marcus told me she was unstable.”
“Your uncle.”
“Yes.”
Marcus Kane.
Conrad Kane’s younger brother.
Current chairman of Kane Industrial Holdings.
Caleb said, “So your sister tells you my father may have been killed, and you believe the company instead.”
Victoria flinched.
“I believed evidence.”
“Whose evidence?”
She did not answer.
Caleb laughed bitterly.
“Right.”
Victoria’s temper rose.
“You think guilt gives you permission to judge eleven years of my life after one conversation?”
“No. I think my dead father gives me permission to ask what happened.”
Silence.
Victoria looked at the notebook again.
“Where did he get that number?”
“I don’t know.”
“My daughter found the key inside a book Lydia gave me.”
Both looked at each other.
Something changed between them.
The key had not been planted yesterday.
The book had sat untouched for years.
Meaning Lydia could have hidden it before she disappeared.
Victoria said, “We need to find what 417 opens.”
Caleb shook his head.
“You need to stay away from me.”
“Why?”
“Because your people already got me suspended.”
“I didn’t order that.”
“Somebody did.”
Victoria looked toward Grant, waiting near the SUV.
Caleb followed her gaze.
“Who has access to your daughter’s messages?”
“Me. Her nanny. School administration. My security team.”
“And Helena?”
Victoria turned sharply.
“How do you know Helena?”
“Detective Bennett mentioned her.”
Victoria relaxed slightly.
“Helena has been with me for thirteen years.”
“Which means she knew Lydia.”
“They were best friends.”
“Does she have access?”
“To almost everything.”
Caleb nodded.
“Then almost everyone close to you is a suspect.”
Victoria’s face hardened.
“That includes you.”
“At least we agree on something.”
That evening Victoria returned to Blackridge Lodge.
Sophie was asleep under medical supervision.
Grant stood near the staircase.
“Marcus is coming.”
Victoria frowned.
“Why?”
“He heard what happened.”
“From who?”
Grant hesitated.
“Helena informed him.”
Victoria looked toward the driveway.
A sedan approached.
Minutes later Marcus Kane entered.
Sixty-one.
Silver-haired.
Measured.
The man who had effectively run the Kane empire after Conrad’s death.
He embraced Victoria.
“Thank God Sophie is alive.”
Victoria did not hug him back.
Marcus noticed.
“What happened?”
“Someone pushed her.”
His face changed convincingly.
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
Victoria removed the wolf emblem from an evidence photograph on her phone and showed him.
Marcus stared.
Then sat down.
“Where did you get that?”
“It was caught on the railing.”
Marcus whispered, “Lydia.”
“Maybe.”
Marcus looked genuinely afraid.
“Victoria, if Lydia is back, you need to protect Sophie.”
“From my sister?”
“You don’t remember how unstable she became.”
Victoria stared.
The phrasing.
Exactly what Marcus had said eleven years earlier.
Lydia is unstable.
Victoria suddenly felt twenty-nine again.
Marcus continued.
“She blamed us for everything. Your father. The dam. That engineer—”
“Thomas Ross.”
Marcus stopped.
Victoria noticed.
“You remembered his name quickly.”
Marcus smiled faintly.
“An employee died. Of course I remember.”
Victoria looked at him.
“Lydia said Thomas died because of us.”
Marcus sighed.
“We settled this eleven years ago.”
“Did we?”
“Yes.”
“Then why did someone send Thomas Ross’s son a threat today?”
Marcus’s face remained composed.
But only after a pause.
“What threat?”
Victoria watched him.
“Interesting.”
“What?”
“I never told you Caleb was Thomas’s son.”
Marcus’s eyes hardened.
The room became very quiet.
Then footsteps sounded upstairs.
Sophie appeared on the landing.
Barefoot.
Pale.
Victoria rushed toward her.
“You should be resting.”
Sophie looked past her.
At Marcus.
Then something happened.
Her face filled with fear.
Not recognition exactly.
Something weaker.
A fragment.
She whispered, “That smell.”
Victoria turned toward Marcus.
He wore no visible cologne.
But on the table beside him sat a leather glove.
And clinging to it was the faint scent of cedar and rose.
Sophie began trembling.
“The woman at the dam smelled like that.”
Marcus slowly looked toward the glove.
Then toward Victoria.
“That proves nothing.”
May you like
Victoria agreed.
But for the first time in eleven years, she no longer believed him simply because he was family.
