Chapter 8 — What Grace Really Saw
Chapter 8 — What Grace Really Saw
Grace saw Nathan holding the key.
Nicholas held the gasoline can.
“You said you were helping me scare him,” Nathan shouted.
Nicholas smiled through the smoke.
“I changed the plan.”
Alexander pounded against the locked door.
“Nathan! Open this door!”
Nathan tried to unlock it.
The key would not turn.
Nicholas had jammed the lock.
Grace remembered herself running forward.
She grabbed Nicholas’s arm.
He shoved her into the wall.
Nathan struck him.
The brothers fought while the flames spread.
Then Dr. Shaw appeared through the rear entrance with Margaret.
Grace’s mother was crying.
“You promised no one would die!”
Shaw replied calmly, “Some memories require powerful events.”
Grace felt the truth tearing through her.
The fire had been an experiment.
Alexander Cole had discovered Mnemosyne was being used illegally and planned to expose it.
Dr. Shaw and Margaret had arranged to frighten him into silence.
Nicholas had turned their threat into murder.
Nathan had tried to save his father.
And Grace had witnessed everything.
Her eyes opened.
She was lying on the archive floor.
Nicholas crouched beside her.
“Where is the master archive?”
Grace began crying.
Not from fear.
From rage.
“My mother helped you.”
Nicholas smiled.
“She helped Shaw. There’s a difference.”
Nathan was tied to the chair across the room.
His face was bruised.
“Grace, don’t tell him anything.”
Nicholas struck him.
Grace flinched.
“Stop.”
“Then answer me.”
She looked toward the portrait of Alexander Cole on the security monitor.
In the recovered memory, Alexander had shouted something before the smoke consumed him.
The truth belongs to Grace.
She remembered a necklace he had given her weeks before the fire.
A silver locket shaped like a compass.
Margaret had taken it after the funeral.
The master archive was not in the estate.
It was inside the locket.
“My mother has it,” Grace said.
Nicholas studied her.
“Where?”
“She wore it tonight.”
Nicholas stood.
“Bring Margaret here.”
One of his men left.
Nathan met Grace’s eyes.
He understood she was buying time.
Nicholas turned toward the servers and began deleting files.
“You can’t erase what I remember,” Grace said.
He glanced back.
“Memories are useless without evidence.”
A warning alarm suddenly sounded.
REMOTE DATA TRANSFER COMPLETE.
Nicholas spun toward the monitor.
Grace smiled.
“When your guard took my phone, he didn’t notice the automatic upload.”
Nicholas struck her across the face.
Nathan surged against the restraints.
“I’ll kill you!”
Nicholas grabbed Grace by the throat.
“You uploaded fragments. I still control the story.”
Grace looked directly into his eyes.
“No. You controlled the woman who forgot.”
The archive door opened.
Margaret was dragged inside.
Around her neck hung the silver compass locket.
But Margaret was smiling.
Then every server in the room shut down.
She whispered, “The master archive was never inside the necklace.”
May you like
Nicholas stared at her.
Margaret added, “It was inside Grace.”
