Chapter 19 - BEHIND THE GLASS
Naomi and Ethan reached the thirty-first floor.
The elevator above them had stopped.
Adrian stood on the other side of a glass fire door.
He was holding a security card.
Ortiz raised his weapon.
“Put it down.”
Adrian looked through the glass at Celeste’s photograph on his phone.
“My father never planned to let me leave.”
“Open the door.”
“If I do, he will know.”
“He already knows.”
Adrian pressed the card against the reader.
The glass door opened.
“I heard the recovered audio,” Naomi said. “You knew about the crash.”
“I knew my father planned to stop Ethan’s car.”
“Stop it how?”
“He said the vehicle would be disabled. He promised no one would be hurt.”
“You believed him?”
Adrian looked at Ethan.
“No. I chose not to ask.”
Ethan’s voice remained damaged.
“That is what everyone says after choosing themselves.”
Adrian gave Ortiz the master card.
He also revealed a second security camera hidden inside the boardroom.
Gideon believed it was disabled.
Adrian had secretly kept it active.
“Why?”
“Insurance.”
The camera’s red light was invisible from the boardroom.
But its live feed could be routed through the hotel monitor.
Evelyn connected to it.
Lila watched Arthur sitting before Gideon.
Two hundred wedding guests had witnessed Warren’s crime.
Now millions could potentially witness Gideon’s.
Naomi told Evelyn to record everything.
Adrian opened the final stairwell.
Before police moved, he grabbed Naomi’s arm.
“My father has Miriam.”
The real doctor was being held inside a medical room behind the boardroom.
Gideon needed her fingerprints to maintain Arthur’s false diagnosis.
“Which door?”
Adrian pointed toward a white panel.
Ethan recognized it.
The same type of chamber had held him beneath Saint Alden.
Naomi opened it.
Miriam lay restrained inside.
She was alive.
Naomi freed her.
“Can you reverse Arthur’s diagnosis?”
Miriam nodded.
“With access to the boardroom computer.”
A gunshot struck the corridor wall.
Gideon’s voice came through the door.
“I know you are there, Naomi.”
The boardroom camera remained live.
Lila watched Gideon raise the weapon.
May you like
Then she saw something the adults missed.
A second person was standing behind the curtains.
