I remembered Audrey mentioning a cottage near the New York border.
She claimed a friend owned it, though I had never met the friend.
“Are you taking them to the cottage?” I asked.
The line went quiet.
That silence confirmed it.
Attorney General Shaw signaled to the state trooper, who stepped into the hallway and began issuing instructions over his radio.
Audrey heard enough to understand what was happening.
“You should not have done that,” she said.
Then my daughter screamed.
The call disconnected.
My legs gave way.
Mr.
Vance caught my arm before I hit the floor.
Shaw knelt in front of me.
“Clara, listen to me.
We have the vehicle description and an active location trace.
State police are moving now.”
“She has my babies.”
“And we are going to get them back.”
Across the room, Mercer smiled.
It was a small, ugly smile meant only for me.
“You have no idea what Audrey does when she feels trapped,” he said.
Shaw rose slowly.
“That sounded like knowledge of an active threat.”
Mercer’s smile vanished.
One of the investigators searched him and removed two phones.
The second phone had no case, no personal contacts, and no carrier branding.
A prepaid device.
A message glowed on its locked screen.
A: SHE FOUND THE FILE.
Mercer had received it nine minutes earlier.
Another investigator photographed the screen.
Mercer stopped protesting after that.
While state police pursued Audrey, the evidence team secured Logan’s office.
They copied every drive, photographed every document, and sealed the brown envelope in a clear evidence bag.
Mr.
Vance explained why he had waited a month to call me.
Logan had approached him two weeks before the crash, but he had not trusted him immediately.
He believed the fraud might extend into the company’s executive offices.
Rather than reveal everything, Logan gave Mr.
Vance a test: one falsified invoice, one suspicious vendor name, and a request to quietly preserve security footage.
Mr.
Vance passed the test.
He did not confront anyone.
He copied the footage to an off-site server and contacted Attorney General Shaw through a private attorney.
Logan then prepared two evidence packages.
One remained in the office safe.
The other went directly to Shaw.
That second package explained her arrival.
“Why today?” I asked.
Shaw looked toward Mercer, who was now seated in handcuffs.
“Because Logan gave us a deadline.
He believed the people involved would try to recover the office file within thirty days of his death.
We monitored the building.
When Mercer requested a warrant this morning using information that had never been made public, he exposed himself.”
