Chapter 10 - WHAT ELISE KNEW
The bullet hit Damon in the shoulder.
Calvin was arrested alive.
That mattered.
Because he started talking.
Victor paid him.
Victor arranged the fire.
Victor paid Bryce.
Victor wanted Mara discredited.
But Calvin denied killing Elise.
He said someone else had been in the car garage the night before her crash.
Someone Damon trusted.
Grant Keller.
Damon listened from his hospital bed.
His face went blank.
Keller had been released two days earlier because police lacked evidence.
Now he had vanished.
Mara sat beside Damon.
“Do you think Keller killed her?”
“I don’t know what I think anymore.”
“You loved her.”
“Yes.”
“Then find the truth.”
Damon looked at Mara.
“I’m putting you in danger.”
“You think I haven’t noticed?”
He almost laughed.
Then his face softened.
“You could leave.”
Mara looked through the hospital window.
“Micah was right.”
“What?”
“Everyone leaves.”
Damon said nothing.
“I’m tired of proving children right about that.”
When Damon returned home, Ruth gave him something she had hidden for four years.
Elise’s voice recorder.
She had recorded notes in the weeks before her death.
They listened together.
Victor has been moving money again.
Grant says Damon knows more than he admits.
I don’t know who to trust.
Another recording.
Damon thinks keeping the ledger protects us.
It doesn’t.
It makes us a target.
Then the final recording.
If anything happens to me, it wasn’t Damon.
Mara looked at him.
Damon closed his eyes.
Elise continued.
There is someone else.
Someone close.
Someone who knows the boys.
Someone who knows every security rotation.
Then the recording ended.
Mara frowned.
“Who knew everything?”
Ruth.
Keller.
Damon’s chief financial officer.
And Damon’s younger brother.
Lucas Cross.
Damon went still.
Lucas had not been mentioned once.
Mara noticed.
“Where is your brother?”
Damon looked toward the window.
“New Orleans.”
“Why isn’t he here?”
“Because we haven’t spoken in three years.”
“Why?”
May you like
Damon answered quietly.
“Because Elise slept with him.”
