Chapter 15 - The Fire Inside Safe Harbor
The Fire Inside Safe Harbor
Safe Harbor Village was supposed to be the safest place they had ever built.
Then the fire started.
It began in the records office after midnight.
Grace woke to alarms.
Nathan ran outside and saw flames rising above the legal clinic.
Families were evacuated.
Lily was missing.
Panic returned instantly.
Nathan searched every building.
Grace searched the playground.
Anna ran toward the cottages.
Then Lily's voice came from the smoke.
“Daddy!”
Nathan followed it.
A child was trapped beneath a fallen beam.
It wasn't Lily.
It was Teresa's son.
Nathan pulled him free.
Grace found Lily hiding under a staircase with three younger children.
She had refused to leave them.
“I told them we stay together,” Lily said.
Nathan hugged her so tightly she complained she couldn't breathe.
Outside, firefighters contained the fire.
The damage was enormous.
But the records office had burned selectively.
Only one cabinet was destroyed.
The cabinet containing the financial documents from the Cole trust.
Someone wanted evidence erased.
On the blackened floor, investigators found a metal box.
Inside was a single photograph.
It showed the unknown man Caroline had mentioned.
Nathan recognized him from an old newspaper.
He was the founder of the investment group that had offered to buy Cole Meridian.
He had also been Richard Cole's closest university friend.
His name was Adrian Vale.
Margaret's son.
And according to the records, Adrian had died twenty years ago.
Nathan looked at the photograph.
“He's alive.”
May you like
Grace answered quietly.
“And he knows where the money went.”
