Chapter 14 - DR. SAMUEL VALE
Samuel was found at a roadside motel under a false name.
He surrendered without a fight.
“I knew this day was coming.”
Mara recorded the interview.
Cedric watched through glass with Portia.
Samuel admitted giving Eleanor the sedative.
“Frances told me it would make her appear confused for a few hours.”
“Why agree?” Mara asked.
“My clinic owed Graham twelve million dollars.”
“So you drugged a woman.”
Samuel looked ashamed.
“Yes.”
“Did you double the dose?”
“No.”
“Who did?”
Samuel swallowed.
“Martin.”
Cedric went still.
Martin Shaw, the lawyer.
Samuel said Martin entered Eleanor’s room later that evening claiming he needed her signature on emergency documents.
“When I checked the medication bottle afterward, half the remaining dose was gone.”
“Why didn’t you report it?”
“Because then I would have to admit what I had done.”
Cowardice again.
The engine behind almost every tragedy.
Mara asked about Sofia.
Samuel knew nothing.
But he knew Frances maintained a private payment ledger outside Project Orchid.
“Where?”
“In her country house.”
Cedric frowned.
Frances owned no country house.
Samuel gave the address.
Alonzo recognized it.
It was the farmhouse where Sofia’s body had been identified after the crash.
Police raided the property that night.
Inside a locked basement, they found old phones, license plates, cash, and surveillance photographs.
One photograph showed Sofia’s car minutes before the crash.
Another showed the driver who followed her.
Alonzo stared at the face.
He knew the man.
He worked security for the Blackwood family for eleven years.
May you like
Marcus Dane.
And Marcus was currently guarding Maisie at the estate.
