Chapter 5 - The Mistress Who Knew Too MuchMadison Brooks called me at 6:12 the next morning.
I had never spoken to her privately. During the two years she had been involved with Jason, our conversations had consisted of carefully staged encounters, polite insults, and the occasional message she sent from a number she assumed I had not blocked.
Her voice sounded nothing like the confident woman I had watched in court.
"I need to meet you."
I looked at the clock.
"Does Jason know you're calling me?"
"No."
"Does he know you want to meet?"
A pause.
"Iris, please. I wouldn't be doing this if I had another choice."
I nearly hung up.
Then she said, "I know what happened to Olivia."
My fingers tightened around the phone.
"Where is she?"
"I don't know where she is now. But I know she survived."
"How?"
"Because I helped Jason hide her."
The words landed with the force of a slap.
For a moment, I couldn't form a response.
Madison continued quickly. "I know how that sounds. I know you have every reason to hate me. But I can explain."
"Then explain."
"Not over the phone. He monitors the accounts, and I think he has access to my messages."
"Meet me at the courthouse."
"No. Somewhere he wouldn't expect."
"Then you're going to have to trust my attorney to choose the place."
She went silent.
Finally, she agreed.
We arranged to meet in a small conference room at Daniel's office, with security present and every entrance monitored. I arrived twenty minutes early. Daniel checked the room himself, reviewed the building's security footage, and asked an investigator to wait nearby.
At 9:00, Madison entered.
She wore jeans, a plain jacket, and sunglasses that concealed most of her face. Without the designer clothing and the confident posture, she looked younger than I had realized. There were dark circles beneath her eyes. Her hands trembled as she removed her sunglasses.
I had imagined this meeting a hundred times.
In some versions, I slapped her. In others, I calmly told her that she had won a man who was never worth keeping. Sometimes I simply walked away.
I had never imagined pity.
"Why are you here?" I asked.
"Because Jason is planning to leave the country."
Daniel leaned forward.
"When?"
"I don't know the exact date. His travel office has been arranging a private flight. He told the board it was for a conference in Europe, but the documents I saw included a one-way transfer for several accounts."
"Which accounts?"
"I don't have the numbers. I work in corporate communications, but I have access to certain executive schedules. I saw the transfers because he used my login to approve a batch of internal documents."
Daniel's expression remained neutral.
"You said you helped hide Olivia Mercer."
Madison stared at the table.
"About nine years ago, Jason asked me to meet a woman at a private clinic outside Milwaukee. He said she was a former employee who had become unstable after the laboratory accident. He wanted me to arrange discreet accommodation and make sure she didn't contact anyone from the company."
"Did you see her?"
"Yes."
"What did she look like?"
"She had a scar near her hairline. Her right hand was damaged. She kept asking for someone named Iris."
My throat tightened.
Olivia had injured her hand during a prototype accident years earlier. She had a thin, curved scar beside her hairline from a bicycle fall when she was a teenager.
It could have been her.
"What did you do?" I asked.
"I arranged the apartment. I used a company account to pay the rent. Jason told me the woman was dangerous, that she had stolen confidential files and might try to extort the company. He said we were protecting her from herself."
"And you believed him?"
Madison lifted her eyes.
"I wanted to believe him."
The honesty in her answer irritated me more than an excuse would have.
She had known Jason was married. She had sat beside him while he humiliated me. She had enjoyed the life he provided and told herself that whatever happened to me was none of her concern.
"I knew about you before I started the relationship," she admitted. "He told me you lived separate lives and that the divorce had been agreed upon. When I discovered he was lying, I should have left."
"But you stayed."
"Yes."
The room fell silent.
Then Madison reached inside her jacket and removed a small envelope.
"I found this in Jason's private office last week. I wasn't supposed to be there. He had asked me to prepare documents for a meeting with his financial advisers, and I noticed a folder with your name."
Daniel did not take the envelope.
"Where has it been since you found it?"
"In my apartment."
"Has anyone else handled it?"
"No."
He put on gloves before opening it.
Inside were four pages of typed correspondence, a photocopy of a building plan, and an internal message dated two days before the fire.
The message had been sent from Jason's company account to Peter Lang, the security technician.
Confirm that the lower chamber is sealed. Remove all references to the secondary archive from the access system. The original materials must remain inaccessible until the transfer is complete.
I read it twice.
"What's the transfer?" I asked.
Madison shook her head.
"I don't know."
Daniel examined the building plan.
The lower chamber was beneath Laboratory 3.
Someone had drawn a red circle around a rectangular room accessed through a maintenance passage. The room was not listed on any of the official architectural plans filed with the city.
A handwritten note appeared in the margin.
ORIGINAL MIRROR SYSTEM. DO NOT CONNECT TO NETWORK.
Daniel photographed the document.
"Whoever wrote this was concerned about electronic access."
Madison nodded.
"Jason kept talking about a mirror. I assumed it was a data backup. He had a separate storage system built after the fire, and only three people were allowed to access it."
"Who were they?"
"Jason. Peter Lang. And someone whose name was never included in the access register."
"Olivia?"
"I think so."
I studied Madison carefully.
"Why didn't you come forward before the divorce hearing?"
Her expression tightened.
"Because Jason had something on me, too."
She removed another sheet from the envelope.
It was a copy of a luxury hotel receipt bearing my name and signature. The room had been booked two years earlier, during a business trip I had never taken.
I knew the hotel.
It was in Boston.
I had been in Chicago that week, attending rehabilitation sessions after an unrelated surgery on my damaged hand.
"Jason made you use my identity."
"He told me it was a way to protect the company's privacy. He said the hotel would bill a private account and that nobody would see the records."
"And you agreed."
"At first."
"At first?"
Madison swallowed.
"Later, I found out the bookings were being used to create evidence that you had been spending money secretly, meeting other men, and traveling without telling him. He planned to use them to discredit you if you ever challenged the divorce settlement."
I closed my eyes.
The hotel receipts had been mentioned in the preliminary divorce filings. Jason's lawyers had described them as evidence of undisclosed spending. I had never visited those hotels, but proving a negative against fabricated paperwork was difficult.
"Did you sign any of them?"
"Several."
"Did you sign my name?"
She nodded.
"Yes."
For the first time, her eyes filled with tears.
"I know there's no excuse."
"No," I said. "There isn't."
She looked away.
"But I can help you stop him."
Daniel closed the folder.
"Helping us will not erase your actions. You understand that?"
"Yes."
"You may face legal consequences."
"I know."
"Then begin by telling us everything you remember about the apartment."
Madison described a modest building near Milwaukee, a woman who refused to use her own name, and a caretaker who delivered groceries twice a week. She remembered that the woman kept a small metal box beneath her bed and became visibly distressed whenever Jason mentioned the company.
Then Madison gave us an address.
Daniel checked it against the records.
The apartment had been rented through Northbridge Research Holdings. The tenancy had ended three months earlier.
The building had since been sold.
Olivia was gone.
I stood to leave, but Madison caught my sleeve.
"There is one more thing."
I looked down at her hand.
She released me immediately.
"Jason knows about the divorce hearing evidence. He knows Daniel has the flash drive."
"How?"
"I don't know. But last night, he told me that if you ever exposed the truth about the fire, he would make sure you regretted surviving it."
She leaned closer.
"He also said that if anything happened to him, someone would make sure you never found the original patent."
"What original patent?"
Madison's face turned pale.
"He said it was never supposed to belong to you."
Daniel and I exchanged a glance.
Before either of us could respond, Madison's phone began vibrating on the table.
Jason was calling.
She stared at the screen.
Then a message appeared beneath his name.
I KNOW WHERE YOU ARE.
A second message followed.
DON'T MOVE.
From the corridor came the sound of hurried footsteps.
Daniel stood.
Our security investigator opened the conference room door, his face tense.
"We have a problem."
"What's happened?" Daniel asked.
"The building's main security system has been accessed remotely. Someone has disabled the cameras on this floor."
Madison began trembling.
"He found me."
The lights went out.
For one second, the room was completely dark.
Then a phone screen illuminated the table.
It was Madison's.
Another message had arrived.
This time, it contained a photograph.
A woman lay on a hospital bed, her face turned away from the camera.
Beneath the image were five words.
SHE SHOULD HAVE STAYED DEAD.
I recognized the hospital gown.
It was the same design used at the rehabilitation center where I had spent six months recovering from the fire.
And the woman in the photograph had a scar near her hairline.
Olivia Mercer was alive.
May you like
But someone had found her.
And judging by the message, Jason intended to finish what he had started ten years earlier.
Related Stories
