Chapter 6 - The Voice Inside the Moon
Detective Ortiz inserted the memory card into an isolated hospital computer.
The screen remained black for several seconds.
Then a single audio file appeared.
Its date was six years old.
Jace pressed play.
At first, there was only static.
Then Conrad’s voice filled the room.
“She will sign.”
Another man answered.
“What if she goes to Jace?”
“She will not get near him.”
Jace recognized the second voice.
It belonged to Malcolm Reed.
His former attorney.
The dead witness whose name appeared on the forged custody papers.
Conrad continued.
“The child activates Eleanor’s trust.”
Evelyn looked at Jace.
“Who is Eleanor?”
“My mother.”
Jace’s mother had died seven years earlier.
She had left behind charities, foundations, and several private accounts.
Conrad controlled nearly all of them.
Malcolm’s voice returned.
“The trust becomes irrevocable once the first Mercer grandchild is born.”
“How much?”
“Eighty-four million.”
Evelyn covered her mouth.
Conrad laughed quietly on the recording.
“Then we make Jace surrender his rights.”
“And the mother?”
“She disappears.”
Maisie sat on the hospital bed drawing circles on a napkin.
She did not understand the numbers.
She understood the fear in her mother’s face.
The recording continued.
Malcolm sounded nervous.
“Keeping her brother hidden is dangerous.”
“He is more useful alive.”
“And if Jace discovers the girl?”
“He will do what he always does.”
Conrad paused.
“He will believe me.”
Jace stopped the recording.
The room seemed too small.
Evelyn stared at him.
“Your mother left that money for Maisie?”
“For any first grandchild.”
“Your father hunted us for a trust?”
“He did more than hunt you.”
Jace replayed the file.
A faint sound appeared beneath the voices.
A train horn.
Then church bells.
Ortiz listened carefully.
“That could identify the location.”
Jace knew the city.
“There is only one Mercer property close enough to hear both.”
He opened a map.
An abandoned printing plant sat beside the north railway line.
A church stood across the river.
The property did not appear in the company’s public portfolio.
Conrad had purchased it through a shell corporation.
Ortiz contacted a tactical unit.
Jace reached for his coat.
“You are staying here.”
Ortiz blocked him.
“That man is my daughter’s uncle.”
“You are not law enforcement.”
“I own the property.”
“That does not make bullets avoid you.”
Evelyn rose.
“I am going.”
Maisie grabbed her hand.
“Mommy, don’t leave.”
Evelyn’s face crumpled.
Jace crouched beside the bed.
He removed the silver star pendant from beneath his shirt.
He placed it in Maisie’s hand.
“This belongs with your moon.”
Maisie pressed the two pendants together.
The star fit perfectly into the curve of the crescent.
A hidden compartment clicked open inside Jace’s pendant.
He had never known it existed.
A small brass key dropped onto the blanket.
Jace stared at it.
His mother had given him the pendant one week before her death.
She had told him never to remove it.
Evelyn picked up the key.
A number had been engraved along its side.
B-117.
Ortiz searched the number.
It matched a private storage vault beneath the printing plant.
Jace looked at the computer.
The recording had not been hidden to expose Conrad.
It had been hidden to lead them somewhere.
His mother had known what Conrad was doing before she died.
And she had left the key with Jace.
Maisie suddenly pointed toward the window.
A red light blinked on the roof across the street.
Then the glass shattered.
Jace threw himself over the bed.
A small metal object struck the wall behind them.
May you like
It was not a bullet.
It was another syringe.
