Chapter 6 - THE SECOND COPY
Maya did not panic.
That saved her.
She smelled smoke before she saw it.
Someone had dropped a burning rag beneath the rear wheel well.
Not enough to create an explosion.
Enough to destroy evidence and make the fire look accidental.
Maya grabbed the laptop and slammed the emergency release beside the rear door.
It did not open.
The mechanism had been jammed.
She smashed the small side window with a metal extinguisher and climbed halfway through just as a man in a hooded jacket ran across the street.
Maya could not identify him.
But she recognized his limp.
One week earlier, the same man had stood beside Thomas Vale's car.
By the time firefighters arrived, the rear half of the truck was damaged.
The memory card survived.
More importantly, Maya had already made a copy.
She had emailed it to herself seconds before the lights went out.
Daniel denied involvement.
Thomas publicly offered to pay for Maya's repairs.
That was clever.
It made him appear generous.
It also made Maya look unreasonable when she refused.
Rebecca gave the eleven-second clip to police.
Daniel's attorney changed strategy immediately.
Daniel now admitted kicking the injector.
He claimed he believed it was an object Evelyn had dropped and did not understand what it was until later.
The lie evolved around the evidence.
Evelyn finally understood why Thomas had remained free for decades.
He never defended one fixed story.
He built a new story around whatever survived.
At the competency hearing, Evelyn passed every cognitive examination easily.
Daniel lost the request for immediate conservatorship.
But Marcus Hale produced another document.
A corporate agreement from sixteen years earlier.
It stated that if Evelyn became unable or unwilling to serve as CEO, voting control temporarily transferred to a designated successor.
Daniel Mercer.
Evelyn stared at the signature.
It looked genuine.
Rebecca whispered, "Did you sign this?"
"I don't remember it."
That was dangerous language in a competency hearing.
Daniel noticed.
His attorney noticed.
The judge noticed.
Thomas smiled from the back row.
Afterward, Evelyn searched her private archives.
She found the original agreement.
Same date.
Same witnesses.
But the successor named in her copy was Rebecca Sloan.
Someone had replaced a page after signature.
Rebecca compared the documents.
The notary seal on Daniel's version belonged to a man named Andrew Pike.
He had notarized hundreds of Mercer documents.
And he was still alive.
They drove to his home.
The front door stood open.
Inside, the house was empty.
On the dining table sat an untouched cup of coffee.
May you like
And beside it was a one-way plane ticket to Panama leaving that morning.
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