Chapter 10 - OUR MOTHER’S GRAVE
Dad had disappeared from the ambulance before reaching the hospital.
Juliette had planned every move.
Lena wanted to surround the cemetery, but I refused to wait.
“She’ll kill him if she sees agents.”
“She might kill both of you anyway.”
“That’s why I need you close, not visible.”
The Mercer family mausoleum stood at the top of a hill beneath old oak trees. Rain had started by the time I reached it.
The iron gate hung open.
Inside, Mom’s stone memorial had been pulled away from the wall.
Dad knelt on the wet floor.
Juliette held a gun against his neck.
“You always come when he’s in danger,” she said.
“He’s our father.”
“He stopped being mine the day you came home.”
Dad looked at her. “You stopped being mine when you murdered your mother.”
Juliette struck him with the gun.
“Don’t,” I said.
She pointed the weapon at me.
“Get the necklace.”
Behind Mom’s memorial was a small brass box. I opened it and found the emerald necklace wrapped in blue velvet.
For a moment, I remembered Mom fastening it around my neck.
“One day,” she had said, “you’ll understand that valuable things aren’t always the things people can see.”
I ran my fingers beneath the center stone and found a tiny metal strip engraved with twelve numbers.
Juliette saw it.
“Give it to me.”
“What does the ledger contain?”
“Names.”
“Whose?”
“People who would rather kill us than go to prison.”
“Then why protect them?”
She laughed without humor.
“You still think this is about protecting people? It’s about having power over them.”
I finally understood.
Juliette wasn’t running.
She planned to use the ledger to blackmail judges, police commanders, politicians, and business leaders.
She wanted to become untouchable.
I held out the necklace.
She pushed Dad away and reached for it.
I let the chain fall.
As Juliette bent to grab it, Dad seized her gun hand.
They crashed against Mom’s memorial.
The gun fired.
Dad stumbled backward.
Blood spread across his shirt.
I attacked Juliette.
We fell onto the floor, clawing and striking like we had when we were children—except now one of us was fighting to kill.
She wrapped the necklace around my throat and pulled.
My scar tissue burned.
“You should have died in that house,” she hissed.
“Maybe.”
I drove my thumb into her wounded wrist.
She screamed and released me.
Lena and federal agents rushed inside.
Juliette grabbed the gun and fired toward the door.
An agent returned fire.
Juliette dropped.
For one terrible second, I thought she was dead.
Then she rolled behind the stone memorial and disappeared through an opening in the floor.
A hidden staircase led into a tunnel beneath the cemetery.
Lena examined the blood Juliette left behind.
“She’s hit.”
Dad was still breathing. Paramedics carried him away.
I picked up the emerald necklace.
The engraved metal strip was gone.
Juliette had taken it.
Then Marcus called.
“We found the server connected to that password,” he said. “If Juliette enters the code, she won’t just access the ledger.”
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“What else happens?”
“She can erase every record proving Caroline Mercer ever existed.”
