Chapter 6 - Unraveling the Crash
Nathan didn't run. He didn't call the police—not yet. He knew that Carl Dempsey had deep connections within the local precinct, connections Nathan had inadvertently funded through years of corporate security donations. If he wanted justice for Emily, he had to trap the snake himself.
He slipped Jonah’s sketchbook inside his jacket and walked into the grand living room, turning off the main lights so the space was illuminated only by the ambient glow of the city skyline outside.
The elevator doors chimed and slid open. Carl Dempsey stepped out onto the marble floor.
"Nathan," Carl said, his voice flat, devoid of the usual deference he showed his boss. "You aren't answering your private line. Miller hasn't checked in either. I figured I should come up and make sure you were safe."
"I’m as safe as a man can be when his own security chief is a murderer," Nathan said, standing by the glass window, his hands in his pockets.
Carl stopped mid-stride. He let out a low, cold laugh. "So the street rat talked, did he? I knew we should have taken care of him years ago, but he was just a ghost under the bridge. Nobody listens to ghosts."
"He didn't just talk, Carl. He drew," Nathan said, pulling the sketchbook from his jacket and tossing it onto the marble table between them. "He saw you tampering with Emily's car in the corporate garage. He heard you talking about the audit."
Carl’s eyes darted to the book, his jaw tightening. "Emily was getting too close to the offshore accounts, Nathan. She wasn't just feeding the homeless down there; she was tracking where the Whitmore Foundation's charity funds were actually going. She found out that the board was using the foundation to wash money for the European mergers. If she had presented her findings to the audit committee, the whole empire would have collapsed."
"So you killed her," Nathan said, his voice shaking with a rage so old and deep it felt like it was tearing his chest apart. "You paid off a drunk driver to take the blame for a ' vehicular accident,' and you ruined my life to protect a balance sheet."
"I did what I was paid to do by the people who really run this city," Carl said, pulling a silenced pistol from his jacket. "And now, I’m going to clean up the final details. You’re going to have a tragic accident, Nathan. A grieving father, broken by the anniversary of his daughter's death, finally takes a step off his own balcony. It’s a clean story. The papers will love it."
"There’s just one problem with your story, Carl," Nathan said, pointing toward the ceiling.
A small red light was blinking on the smoke detector above the desk.
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"I didn't just turn off the lights when you came up," Nathan said, a cold, ruthless smile appearing on his face. "I initiated a full encrypted live-stream of this room to the federal prosecutor's office in Washington. They’ve been tracking your offshore accounts for six months, Carl. They just needed a confession to connect the numbers to the blood."
Carl’s face turned gray. He raised the gun, his finger tightening on the trigger. "Then you’re coming with me!"
