A memory surfaced from two years earlier.
Richard and I had gone sailing. Before leaving the harbor, we joked about what we would say if one of us ever sensed danger without being able to speak openly.
You deserve the view.
At the time, it had been silly.
A private code invented over wine.
I had forgotten it.
Richard had not.
My certainty fractured, but it did not disappear.
“You still pushed me without knowing whether the parachute would open.”
“I knew staying aboard was more dangerous.”
“Why?”
“Because the fuel line had been altered. The helicopter caught fire four minutes after I landed.”
Daniel’s fingers moved rapidly across the laptop.
He found a local report.
A private helicopter had burned at an airfield outside Santa Maria. Authorities had not released the cause.
Richard was telling at least part of the truth.
“Where are you now?” I asked.
“I cannot tell you.”
“Why should I trust anything you say?”
“You should not.”
The honesty unsettled me.
“Then what do you want?”
“To keep you away from the estate.”
“Clara already took the case.”
“She took a duplicate.”
I looked toward Daniel.
“What?”
Richard continued.
“Your father never trusted a single hiding place. The real file is somewhere else.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. But Clara believes you do.”
A sound came through the phone, like a door opening.
Richard lowered his voice.
“Amelia, someone inside your company helped alter the helicopter.”
“Who?”
“I have one name.”
The call went silent.
“Richard?”
A woman spoke instead.
“Mrs. Hayes.”
I recognized Clara immediately.
Her calm tone frightened me more than shouting would have.
“Where is my husband?”
“Safe for the moment.”
“What do you want?”
“The file your father left.”
“You already stole it.”
“I took what he intended us to find.”
“Us?”
Clara paused.
“My family helped build Hayes Technologies.”
Daniel leaned closer to the phone.
“State your full name.”
She laughed quietly.
“You know it is not Bennett.”
The line disconnected.
I stared at the screen.
Daniel opened the company’s earliest incorporation records while Lena contacted the security team.
My body felt suddenly heavier than before, as though the fall had only now reached me.
“Amelia,” Daniel said.
He turned the laptop around.
The original partnership agreement listed my father, Samuel Hayes, beside another name.
Dr. Evelyn Bennett.
Clara had not chosen her false surname carelessly.
“She was related to the cofounder,” I said.
“Possibly,” Daniel replied.
Lena’s phone chimed.
She read the message and frowned.
“What is it?”
“Security searched Richard’s study.”
“And?”
“They found a hidden safe.”
I expected financial records, forged documents, or evidence of another life.
Instead, the photograph showed a collection of letters tied with blue ribbon.
Every envelope was addressed to my father.
The handwriting belonged to my mother.
Daniel enlarged the image.
One envelope had never been sealed. A page protruded from it, revealing a single line.
