Part 2: He Came Home With Diamonds for His Mistress and Found the Nursery Empty, but His Wife Had Left One Thing He Could Never Buy Back

The safehouse telephone—a hard-wired landline running through an encrypted copper loop—rang three times before falling silent. Five seconds later, it rang twice.

Sean nodded toward the receiver. "Pick it up. It’s him."

Candace lifted the black plastic phone to her ear. She didn't speak.

"Candace?"

The voice on the other end was fractured, wheezing, stripped of the smug arrogance that had defined Trevor Vance for ten years. It was the voice of a man drowning in his own hubris.

"Trevor," she said, her voice ice.

"Thank God... Jesus, thank God Sean found you," Trevor stammered. Background noise spilled through the receiver—the clatter of a commuter train, the hiss of pneumatic brakes. He was on the move. "Candace, listen to me. You have to listen to me! You can't let them take Leo. You can't let them near him!"

"You sent them, Trevor," she said coldly. "You brought Victor Sloan into our home. You brought his enforcers to my sister’s doorstep. You traded our son for your gambling debts."

"No! That’s what they made it look like!" Trevor’s voice cracked into a sob—a pathetic, desperate sound that made Candace’s stomach turn. "I didn't know who Sloan was! My father told me Sloan was an investment broker who could refinance the estate. I didn't know they wanted the archive! I swear to you, Candace, on my mother’s grave, I thought I was just buying out the real estate!"

"Your father used you, Trevor. Just like you used me."

"They’re going to kill me, Candace," Trevor whispered, his voice trembling so violently he could barely form the syllables. "Julian Thorne called me an hour ago. He said... he said the loose ends were being trimmed. He told me that after they secure Leo in Maine, my body would be found floating in the Charles River. An apparent suicide from financial ruin."

"Why are you calling me, Trevor? For sympathy? For money?"

"Because I have the third key," Trevor blurted out.

Candace froze, glancing over at Sean, who had stepped closer to the receiver, his brow furrowed.

"What third key?" she demanded.

"The blind trust in Zurich... it isn't a two-party authorization," Trevor said rapidly. "My father didn't trust Thorne, either. There are three physical keys required to open Box 814. Laurent had the trustee key. You have your father’s key. And I stole my father’s key from his safe deposit box in New York before Sloan’s men could breach it."

"You have it with you?"

"I’m at South Station in Boston," Trevor said, breathing heavily. "They’re watching the terminals. There are men in gray suits on the concourse. I can’t get to a car. I can’t get to an airport. If I leave the station, they’ll snatch me. Candace... please. Bring Sean. Bring whoever you have left. If you get me out of here alive, I’ll give you the key. I’ll sign every waiver Laurent puts in front of me. I’ll disappear. You’ll never see me again."

Candace closed her eyes. The memories of Trevor’s betrayal flooded back: the perfumed shirts, the diamond necklace he had bought for his mistress while Leo had a fever, the mocking sneer across the mahogany table in the divorce court. He deserved nothing. He deserved whatever fate Julian Thorne had written for him.

*Except the key,* she thought. *Without his key, the archive stays locked. And as long as the archive is locked, Thorne will never stop hunting Leo.*

"Candace?" Trevor pleaded, his breath hitching. "Please."

"Stay in the crowd, Trevor," she said evenly. "If you move from the center concourse, you die alone. We’re coming."

She slammed the phone down.

Sean looked at her, his expression grim. "It’s a kill box. South Station has forty security cameras tapped into state surveillance. Thorne owns the private security firm contracted to the terminal."