Page 33 of Girl, Empty
Ella moved, careful not to disrupt the positioning of the body.‘He’s wearing sweatpants and a jumper.’
‘So?’
‘Security chiefs didn't typically show up to banks in leisure wear, especially not after hours when they have no reason to be here.So either Grayson was lured here or he came voluntarily.Maybe to meet someone.’
‘To a bank vault?’Riggs asked.
‘Or to stop someone,’ Ripley offered.‘What if Grayson knew something was going down?What if he tried to intervene?’
The thought sent a shudder through her.A security professional who'd stumbled onto something bigger than himself, who'd tried to be a hero and paid the ultimate price for it.It was the kind of tragedy that reminded her why she’d gotten into this job.
'Could be.I guess we need to,' Ella stopped abruptly as she caught sight of something gleaming underneath the victim's thigh.She leaned down, gently raised his leg and plucked the concealed item from within.
It was a set of keys.
‘What’s that?’Ripley shouted.
‘Keys.One for a Ford, one for a front door.’
‘Poor guy might have tried to jimmy his way out.’
‘Fat chance of that in a bank vault,’ Ella said as she inspected the keys, and then noticed something odd.On the tip of what she assumed was Thomas Grayson’s house key, she saw flecks of silver paint.
Dots suddenly connected in her mind.Grayson didn't have much time, maybe a minute or two before the gas took him.That was just long enough to understand two things: that death was coming, and that there was no way out.A man like him, a man whose career was security, wouldn't waste his final seconds on panic.He'd use them.
‘Mia, Riggs,’ Ella shouted.‘I think Grayson left us a message.’
Ripley’s head peered around the door.‘A message?How?’
‘Look for something painted silver.’
Ella scanned the vault's interior for anything silver, but the irony wasn't lost on her – everything in here was steel.Steel shelves, steel drawers, steel walls that had become Thomas Grayson's coffin.The cash bands were green and purple and yellow, the counting table was black, and Grayson's clothes were dark blue and gray.Nothing silver except the door.
Of course.The massive vault door with its silver paint job.Grayson would have scratched his message on whatever surface he could reach from his position in the corner.The door opened outward, which meant its exterior face would have been inside the vault when he was dying.
She rushed out of the vault and found the door.Riggs and Ripley appeared at her side.
All eyes were drawn to the same thing.
Two faint words etched into the door.The words that Thomas Grayson had chosen to carve as his final act on earth.
Not his kids’ names, not a goodbye, not a final piece of philosophic wisdom.
Whatever it meant, it had been worth more to him than any last words of love or regret.
Cell backdoor.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
‘Agents, I assure you, there’s no backdoor into the bank vault.’
Ella was standing outside the First National Bank with Mike Miller, the branch manager.Ripley was there too, and all three of them were pretending not to be bothered by the cold.Forensics were working the scene in the underground vault, and the Alpine Cleaning Services truck had to be turned away because this wasn’t the time for lemony fresh polished floors.
‘Is there a backdoor into anywhere in the bank?’
‘No.Absolutely not.It’s a bank.There are regulations about entries and exits.Theonlyentrance is this front door right here.’
‘Does the wordcellmean anything in a banking context?’
