“We received your message,” she said, her eyes moving from his face to the loose IV line, to the phone clenched in his hand. “What happened?”
Jack held the screen out to her.
She read the messages, and he saw the change register in her expression, subtle but unmistakable.
“They’re here,” Jack said. “Inside the hospital. They knew when Annie left. They knew my room number.”
Chen didn’t hesitate. “Get him back in bed,” she ordered one of her agents. “I want hospital security, state police, and our Knoxville field office notified. Lock this floor down immediately. No movement without clearance.”
The room filled with clipped communication, radios coming alive, instructions stacking fast and controlled. Jack allowed himself to be guided back onto the mattress, but his attention never left the doorway.
“Annie went to see her uncle,” he said. “She doesn’t know.”
“She will,” Chen replied. “We already have agents moving.”
Only then did Jack let out the breath he’d been holding.
As the agents moved to secure the room, his thoughts drifted, unbidden, to Eleanor Blackwood. He was certain she had known this feeling. The moment when threat sharpened from possibility into inevitability. When silence stopped protecting and started counting down. She had acted anyway. She had written. Hidden. Recorded. She had believed the truth mattered enough to risk her life for it.
Jack closed his eyes briefly, the weight of that settling over him.
They weren’t finished. Not yet.
Chapter 13
Annie knocked softly on Uncle Eric's hospital room door, her heart lifting at the sound of his familiar voice calling her to come in. After Everything that had happened—the attack, the fire, the chase through the mountains—seeing him sitting up in bed with color in his cheeks felt like a miracle.
"Annie, sweetheart." His voice was still hoarse, but his eyes were clear and alert as he reached for her hand. "I've been so worried about you. The nurses told me about the fire, about what you've been through."
"I'm okay, Uncle Eric. We're all okay." She settled into the chair beside his bed, noting the bandages around his head and the way he winced when he moved. "How are you feeling?"
"Like I got hit by a truck, but the doctors say I'll be fine." He squeezed her hand gently. "Annie, there are things I need to tellyou. Things about our family, about why those people came after us."
Annie felt her pulse quicken. "What kind of things?"
"I never told you much about your grandmother Joy, did I? About her mother, Eleanor?" Uncle Eric's expression grew distant, as if he were reaching back through decades of memory. "Your grandmother was only four years old when her mother disappeared, but she remembered things. Important things."
"What kind of things?"
"Eleanor used to tell her stories about a special necklace, a locket that contained important papers. Joy thought they were just fairy tales until she grew older and started asking questions about what really happened to her mother." Uncle Eric shifted carefully in his bed, his eyes never leaving Annie's face. "The official story was that Eleanor ran away, abandoned her family. But Joy never believed it."
Annie's hand moved instinctively to her pocket, where Eleanor's locket rested like a weight of responsibility. "Uncle Eric, I found the locket. It was in the estate sale items from the Blackwood house."
His eyes widened. "You found it? After all these years?"
"There's a letter inside. From Eleanor to her husband. She knew Someone was going to kill her, and she documented Everything." Annie pulled out the locket, watching Uncle Eric's face as recognition dawned.
"Dear God," he breathed. "That's it. That's exactly how Joy described it." He reached out with trembling fingers to touch the tarnished surface. "Annie, do you understand what this means? Eleanor was your great-great-grandmother. You're her direct descendant."
The words hit Annie like a physical blow. All this time, she'd been fighting for justice for a stranger, never realizing she was fighting for her own family. Eleanor's blood ran in her veins.Eleanor's courage, her determination to see the truth preserved despite mortal danger—it was a legacy that had passed down through generations.
"That's why they targeted you specifically," Uncle Eric continued. "Not just because you found the locket, but because you're Eleanor's heir. If there's evidence in that safe deposit box, if there are financial records or property deeds, you would have a legal claim to whatever the Blackwood family left behind."
"But the Mitchell family inherited Everything when Richard turned eighteen."
"Did they?" Uncle Eric's expression was grim. "Annie, think about this logically. If Eleanor was murdered before she could give birth to a son, if Richard inherited based on a lie, then Everything he gained was obtained through fraud. That kind of inheritance fraud doesn't have a statute of limitations."
Annie felt the room spinning as the implications hit her. The Mitchell family fortune, built over nearly a century on Richard's inheritance of the Blackwood businesses—it could all be illegitimate. And as Eleanor's descendant, she might have a legal claim to assets worth millions of dollars.
