Chapter 7 - The Woman Wearing Her Name
Isa Voss woke to the sound of rain against a hospital window. Her left arm was immobilized, her ribs were taped, and a man in a black coat sat in the chair beside her bed.
"You came," she whispered.
Rhett Valin looked up. "You didn't come to work."
"I didn't think you'd notice."
"I noticed."
His voice was steady, but the coffee in his hand had gone cold. He had found her on the floor of her apartment, barely conscious, after someone had entered with a copied key. She had begged him not to call the police. Now, with the hospital security team outside her room, she understood how close she had come to dying because she was afraid to ask for help.
"The man who hurt you," Rhett said. "Was it someone you knew?"
She nodded.
"You can tell me when you're ready. But the doctors have to document what happened, and you deserve to be safe."
Isa closed her eyes. "He said I had to sign a statement. He wanted me to say I'd worked at the Voss estate and stolen records for Adrien Voss."
Rhett's expression sharpened. "Who sent him?"
"A woman. He called her Ms. Celeste."
Rhett stood. He had left his father's transport business years earlier, taking with him the kind of knowledge that could ruin dangerous people. He had believed distance would protect the few people who worked for him. He had been wrong.
When Adrien arrived with Nora and Isabella, Rhett met them in a private consultation room. He and Adrien regarded each other across the table like men who remembered a shared disaster from opposite sides.
"Your sister is using my employee," Rhett said.
"I know," Adrien answered. "We're here to stop it."
"You could have stopped her years ago."
Adrien accepted the accusation. "I should have looked harder."
Rhett turned to Isabella. "And you're Thomas Bell's daughter."
"Yes. My father wrote that someone refused the last shipment. Was it you?"
Rhett looked down. "I refused to move a sealed container after I found out what was inside. Celeste rerouted it through another company. Thomas had already reported the manifests. I warned him, but I didn't warn him soon enough."
"Did you know he was alive?"
"No. I spent years believing he'd been killed."
"Why didn't you come forward?"
"I had records, but not enough to prove who ordered the blast. I gave what I had to a lawyer. Then I left. I should have done more."
Isabella was tired of men explaining what they should have done. Yet she also recognized the difference between an excuse and an admission. Rhett offered his remaining records without asking for anything in return.
Nora arranged for Isa to speak with a victim advocate and federal investigators. Isa had not known Isabella before the attack. She had used the surname Voss since childhood; Celeste had chosen her precisely because the coincidence could be turned into confusion.
"They wanted two stories with the same name," Nora explained. "One woman accused of stealing. Another made to look like a frightened employee who recanted. If the records conflicted, they could challenge Isabella's credibility."
"And if I didn't sign?" Isa asked.
Nobody answered. They didn't need to.
Later, Isabella sat beside Isa's bed. They were close in age, both exhausted, both accustomed to measuring the moods of powerful people before speaking.
"I'm sorry they hurt you because of my name," Isabella said.
Isa shook her head. "They hurt me because they thought I had no one who'd come looking."
Rhett, standing at the doorway, heard her. His face changed.
"You do now," he said.
Isa looked at him for a long moment. "I need more than someone who shows up after."
"Then tell me what would help."
"Help me move somewhere safe. Help me testify. Don't decide things for me."
"All right."
Outside the room, Adrien told Isabella that the federal agents had located Celeste's private aircraft. It was scheduled to depart from a small airport before dawn.
"Will they stop her?" Isabella asked.
"They have a warrant for the records and are seeking an arrest warrant. They won't let her leave without answering questions."
"She'll have a backup plan."
"I know."
Isabella remembered the hard drive in the bank box. "Have they opened Dad's files?"
"The forensic team is working on them."
As if summoned, Nora's phone rang. She listened and became very still.
"They found a video," she said. "Thomas recorded a meeting at the terminal. Celeste is there. So is Daniel. And someone else."
"Who?" Adrien asked.
Nora looked at him with an expression he had never seen before.
"Your father."
Adrien swallowed. His father had been dead for a decade. The recording had to be older than the explosion, or the family history was wrong in ways none of them had imagined.
"The file date?" he asked.
"Seven years ago."
For a moment nobody spoke.
May you like
Then Adrien said, "I want the recording authenticated before anyone tells me what it means."
He had learned, at last, that the most dangerous lie was often the one a person desperately wanted to believe.
