Chapter 5 - THE HOUSEKEEPER'S KEY
The search of the study continued until late afternoon.
Daniel's team found old contracts, photographs, and a locked drawer containing documents from the year Adrian's father died. But the ledger was missing.
Emma noticed a small brass key tucked inside the lining of an old desk organizer.
She showed it to Adrian.
“Does this belong to anything?”
He recognized it immediately.
“My father's archive room.”
“Where is that?”
“Under the east wing. It was sealed after he died.”
Daniel frowned.
“I thought that room had been cleared.”
“It was supposed to be.”
They followed Adrian down a narrow service corridor to a door hidden behind a bookcase. The key turned with difficulty. Dust shifted as the lock opened.
Inside, shelves lined the walls. Metal cabinets stood beneath a single fluorescent light. The room smelled of paper and damp wood.
Adrian found a safe behind a filing cabinet.
The brass key opened its outer lock, but the digital keypad required a code.
He tried his father's birthday.
Denied.
He tried his mother's.
Denied.
Emma looked at the photographs pinned to the wall.
“Was there something your father always said?”
Adrian frowned.
“He used to say that a promise should be remembered by the person who made it.”
“Did he have a favorite promise?”
Adrian thought.
“When I was twelve, I broke a model airplane he had built. I was afraid to tell him. He said, 'The truth is the only thing that can put a broken thing back together.'”
He entered the first letters of the sentence as a code.
The safe clicked.
Inside lay a thick black ledger, a small flash drive, and several envelopes marked with dates.
Daniel carefully removed the items.
Adrian opened the ledger.
The first pages listed payments to contractors and business associates. Then he found a series of transfers made in the months before the accident.
One payment had been sent to a vehicle maintenance company.
Another to a private medical consultant.
A third to a company registered under the name of Ethan's assistant.
Emma leaned over the page.
“That's the same account that opened the garage.”
Adrian nodded.
The ledger also contained a handwritten note from his father.
If anything happens to Adrian, check the brakes. E.B. has asked too many questions about the succession clause.
Adrian read it twice.
“E.B.?”
“Ethan Blackwood,” Daniel said.
A noise came from the corridor.
The lights went out.
Daniel drew his weapon.
“Stay behind me.”
A door slammed somewhere above them.
Then the archive room's outer lock clicked.
Someone had locked them inside.
Emma felt along the wall for the emergency switch.
Adrian reached for his phone.
No signal.
A metallic scraping sound came from the other side of the door.
Then a voice spoke through the wood.
May you like
“Adrian. Give me the ledger.”
Ethan.
