Chapter 4 - The Seattle Connection
The clock on the dashboard read 5:45 AM as Marcus and I pulled away from the estate in an unmarked SUV. The city was still shrouded in pre-dawn charcoal, streetlights reflecting off the wet pavement of Park Avenue.
"We have three hours until the emergency board meeting," Marcus said, typing furiously on his tablet while I drove. "Julian Thorne is ruthless. If he walks into that boardroom with a notarized durable power of attorney and a medical certificate of incapacity from Dr. Sterling, the board will have no choice. Under corporate bylaws, Jonathan’s fifty-one percent voting block automatically yields to his designated conservator during a medical emergency."
"Dr. Sterling is the lynchpin," I said, my hands steady on the leather steering wheel. "He’s been Dad’s physician for fifteen years. Dad trusted him implicitly. If Sterling signed off on Dad’s competency while Celeste was poisoning him, he’s not just negligent—he’s an accomplice."
"Then we need leverage that breaks Sterling before nine," Marcus muttered. "Because a corporate lawsuit takes months. If Celeste takes control of Ashford Enterprises today, she can liquidate foundation reserves, transfer cash into offshore shell companies, and be in a non-extradition country before our first discovery motion is heard."
"What about Harold Finch's daughter?" I asked suddenly. "The Seattle victim. You said she fought the settlement."
Marcus looked up, his fingers freezing over the keyboard. "Chloe Finch. She’s an architect in Seattle. She spent two years trying to convince the King County prosecutor that her father was murdered. They dismissed her as an angry heir who was cut out of the will. She ended up taking a nominal payout just to pay off her legal fees."
"Call her."
"Evelyn, it's before three in the morning on the West Coast—"
"I don't care if it's the middle of the apocalypse. Call her now."
Marcus dialed through his encrypted bridge line, putting the call on the car's speaker system. It rang five times, six times, seven times. I was about to tell him to redial when the line clicked open with a raspy, irritated voice.
"Who is this? Do you know what time it is?"
"Chloe Finch?" I spoke clearly over the engine hum. "My name is Evelyn Ashford. I’m calling from New York. My father, Jonathan Ashford, is currently in a medically induced coma at Manhattan Presbyterian."
There was a sharp silence on the other end. "I'm sorry about your father, Miss Ashford, but I don't know you."
"You don't know me," I continued, "but you know Elena Novak. Only in New York, she calls herself Celeste Vaughn."
A sudden, sharp intake of breath hissed through the speakers. The irritation in Chloe’s voice vanished, replaced by an electric, trembling tension.
"What did she do?" Chloe whispered. "Did she kill him?"
"Not yet," I said. "We caught her trying to finish the job tonight. But she has a notarized conservatorship and an amended will signed by my father while he was under the influence of digitalis. You fought her in probate three years ago. What did you find that the police missed?"
"Everything," Chloe said, her voice trembling with a mixture of grief and long-suppressed rage. "She's not working alone, Evelyn. She never works alone. Elena targets the man, but she has a network that handles the legal and medical machinery."
"Julian Thorne?" Marcus chimed in.
"Thorne is the legal architect," Chloe confirmed. "He handles the paper trail. But there was a lab—a private compounding pharmacy in New Jersey called *BioCrest Labs*. My private investigator found records showing Thorne owned a forty percent silent partnership in that pharmacy. They don't just supply the drugs; they produce custom, synthetic batches of plant toxins with altered molecular weights so standard municipal hospital tox screens miss them!"
"My God," Marcus murmured. "Kenneth Chen used liquid chromatography at Presbyterian, which caught the digitalis, but a standard county coroner running basic panels would have seen nothing."
"Listen to me, Evelyn," Chloe pleaded, her voice rising in urgency. "My father had an autopsy done privately, but before the samples could reach the independent toxicologist in California, the courier van was broadsided in an intersection and the evidence lockers were stolen. They play dirty. They will kill anyone who threatens the paper trail. If you have her cornered, do not let her reach Julian Thorne's office."
"Where does Thorne keep his offshore server mirrors?" I asked. "If he's coordinating this across multiple states, he has records."
"He doesn't keep them in his Manhattan office," Chloe said. "He keeps a physical backup server at his private residence in the Hudson Valley—an equestrian estate in Garrison. My investigator traced encrypted transmissions between Elena and a localized server there three days before my father died."
"Chloe," I said, "if I send a private jet to Seattle this morning, will you fly to New York and testify before a federal grand jury?"
"I'd walk across glass barefoot to put that woman in a cage," Chloe answered without a second of hesitation. "Send the plane."
I hung up, looking over at Marcus. "How fast can you get a warrant on Thorne's Garrison property?"
Marcus shook his head grimly. "On what grounds? An unverified tip from a grieving daughter three years after a closed civil suit? No federal judge is signing a search warrant on Julian Thorne’s primary residence at six in the morning based on that. Thorne has judges on his Christmas card list."
"Then we don't ask for a warrant," I said, my jaw tightening as I swung the SUV toward the West Side Highway.
"Evelyn, what are you doing?"
May you like
"We have two hours before the board meeting," I said. "Dr. Robert Sterling has an office on Park and 74th. His morning appointments don't start until eight, but he arrives at six-thirty every day to review charts. We're going to pay my father's trusted physician a house call."
***
