“Tomorrow morning.”
“Why tomorrow?”
“Because Reynolds believes your father is dead. He scheduled an emergency board meeting. He expects you to sign the final transfer before noon.”
“I won’t.”
“I know.”
His eyes held mine.
“That is why I sent you away this morning.”
I frowned.
“You told me to stay home.”
“No. I asked you to collect the blue folder from your father’s office.”
I remembered.
Jasper had called just after breakfast. He said my father needed documents from the lower cabinet, even though my father had never mentioned them.
The errand had taken me out of the house.
“You knew about the accident before Reynolds called you,” I said.
Jasper’s face went still.
“I knew something was planned.”
“How?”
He looked down at the folder.
“Because I was supposed to disable the brakes.”
A soft crackle sounded in my earpiece.
Elena had heard him.
My hand tightened around my handbag.
“Did you?”
“No.”
“My father’s brake line was cut.”
“I cut a line on a different car.”
I stared at him.
“What?”
“Your father keeps two identical sedans in the company garage. Reynolds gave me the registration number. I switched the plates and damaged the car that was scheduled for maintenance.”
“But my father’s brakes still failed.”
Jasper slowly lifted his gaze.
“Then someone else knew about the switch.”
The implication passed between us.
Someone inside my father’s investigation.
Someone who knew the cars, the route and the revised plan.
Jasper looked toward the darkened study.
“Camille, your father’s team has been compromised.”
I thought of Elena’s warnings. Jackson’s staged departure. The unmailed letters stored on a drive nobody admitted sending.
Then the landline rang.
Neither of us moved.
It rang again.
Jasper’s eyes shifted toward the kitchen extension.
“Don’t answer it,” he said.
The third ring echoed through the house.
I crossed the room.
“Camille.”
I lifted the receiver.
For a moment, there was only static.
Then a woman spoke.
Her voice was low and hurried.
“Camille, listen carefully. Do not let Jasper open the black folder.”
I looked at the table.
Jasper stood beside it, motionless.
“Who is this?”
“You know me as Lydia Chen.”
The line crackled.
“But Lydia Chen was never my real name.”
Behind Jasper, the leather folder lay open. Beneath the bank statements, half concealed by a flap, was an old photograph.
A photograph of my father standing outside the Westbridge facility twenty-seven years earlier.
Beside him was a young woman with my eyes.
The same woman whose funeral I had attended when I was nine years old.
My mother.
On the telephone, Lydia whispered, “Camille, your mother is alive.”