Chapter 6 - THE CART NOBODY NOTICED
Elias called Serena before the car reached the highway.
“Do not touch the cart.”
“What cart?”
“Executive floor. Supply alcove near the north elevators.”
“I’ll secure it.”
“No.”
Serena paused.
“Why not?”
“Because if Victor thinks we don’t know, he may lead us to whoever is helping him.”
Maya stared at him.
“You want to use the evidence as bait?”
“I want to know who reaches for it.”
James, bandaged by a paramedic and refusing the hospital, rode in a second car behind them.
By the time Elias returned to Novaris, the building looked normal again.
That bothered him more than the alarm had.
Employees moved through the lobby with coffee cups. Receptionists smiled. Screens displayed the stock price. A giant video wall played a recruitment ad about integrity, curiosity, and courage.
Elias stopped beneath it.
“Turn that off.”
The receptionist stared.
“Sir?”
“Until we earn those words again.”
She looked toward security.
The new security supervisor nodded.
The video wall went black.
Upstairs, Serena had placed two independent investigators in an empty office with a direct camera feed on the supply alcove.
The cart sat untouched.
For eleven minutes.
Then Bryce Nolan appeared.
Victor’s chief of staff glanced both ways, stepped into the alcove, and opened the cart’s lower compartment.
Maya watched on the monitor.
“That’s him. From the fire.”
Bryce removed a blue plastic case.
Elias leaned forward.
“Let him walk.”
Serena looked at him. “We can stop him now.”
“And learn nothing.”
Bryce carried the case toward the east elevators.
Instead of going down, he went up.
Maya frowned.
“There are no offices above forty-two.”
“Mechanical level,” Elias said.
The investigators followed from a distance.
Five minutes later, Serena’s phone vibrated.
She listened.
“He handed it to someone.”
“Who?”
She looked up.
“Naomi Ward.”
The room went silent.
Maya turned to Elias.
He did not move.
Naomi Ward was his only daughter.
Board director.
Head of the Ward Family Foundation.
And, according to business magazines, the person most likely to inherit control of the Ward Voting Trust.
Elias stood slowly.
“Where is she?”
“Mechanical terrace.”
He walked out without another word.
Maya followed until Serena caught her arm.
“Maybe not this one.”
Maya stopped.
Through the glass wall at the end of the corridor, they could see Elias step onto the terrace.
Naomi stood beside a ventilation unit in a cream-colored suit, holding the blue case.
At fifty, she had her father’s eyes and none of his patience.
Elias approached.
She did not look surprised.
“I wondered how long it would take you.”
“Open the case.”
Naomi held it tighter.
“Dad—”
“Open it.”
She did.
Inside was a hard drive.
Elias stared at it.
“You knew.”
“I knew James Reed had data.”
“You knew about Helix?”
“I knew Graham was preparing a government deal.”
“That was not my question.”
Naomi’s jaw tightened.
“You disappear for seven years and now you want to interrogate me like I’m an employee?”
“I want to know whether my daughter helped bury evidence.”
Her eyes flashed.
“Your company stopped being your family a long time ago.”
“This is not about the company.”
“It is always about the company with you.”
Elias flinched.
Maya could see it even through glass.
Naomi lowered her voice.
“When Mom died, you vanished. You left me with the board, the trust, the press, the lawsuits, the employees asking if Novaris still had a future. Graham stayed. Victor stayed.”
“And what did staying buy them?” Elias asked.
“Control?”
Naomi looked down at the case.
“I thought Graham was protecting Novaris from an old scandal.”
“And now?”
“Now I’m not sure what I thought.”
Elias held out his hand.
“Give me the drive.”
Naomi did not.
“Tell me something first.”
“What?”
“Did you come back for the company?”
Elias looked at his daughter for a long moment.
“No.”
Her face changed.
“I came back because somebody wrote to me and said people here were afraid to tell the truth.”
He nodded toward the glass where Maya stood.
“Then I met a twenty-two-year-old intern who risked her job for a janitor she didn’t know.”
His voice cracked just slightly.
“And I realized the people I left behind were braver than the people I left in charge.”
Naomi’s eyes filled.
She handed him the drive.
Then she whispered something that made Elias stop.
“Graham called an emergency board session.”
“When?”
“Twenty minutes.”
“For what?”
Naomi looked ashamed.
“To suspend your voting authority.”
Elias stared at her.
“On what grounds?”
She pulled a document from her bag.
“Cognitive incapacity.”
Maya saw Elias read the first page.
A physician’s evaluation.
Signed.
Stamped.
Dated three days earlier.
It declared Elias Ward mentally unfit to exercise control of the company.
There was only one problem.
May you like
Elias had never met the doctor.
