Page 45 of Shattered Truth (Off The Grid: FBI #15)

Chapter Twenty-Five

Haley woke up slowly, her head pounding like someone was using a sledgehammer against her skull.

The first thing she noticed was an industrial, metallic smell.

The second thing was that she couldn't move her arms. She was tied to a chair, and as her gaze cleared, she realized she was in a warehouse.

A high ceiling, concrete floors, and rows of empty shelving stretched into darkness.

A few work lights provided harsh illumination in the immediate area, but everything beyond that circle was lost in shadows.

She wanted to scream for help, but she had the feeling there was no help nearby, only danger. Maybe it was better to remain quiet, to pretend to be unconscious.

As her brain cleared, she remembered what had happened. She'd used the restroom at Matt's office and had been in the hallway when the lights went out. Someone had come out of the stairwell, knocked her out, and obviously kidnapped her and brought her here.

What had happened to Matt?

Panic gripped her chest as terror raced through her.

Trent and the agents had not been that far away.

She'd heard shouting, but what else… Had they been in trouble?

Had someone been attacking them while she'd been grabbed?

Was Matt okay? Her anxiety escalated at the thought of Matt being stabbed or shot or worse…

She tried to move but then realized it wasn't just her hands tied behind the back of the chair; her ankles were also bound to the chair legs. She wasn't going anywhere. She couldn't help anyone, not even herself.

A door slammed, jolting her with new fear.

Footsteps came from behind her. And then three men walked into view, one she didn't recognize, but the gun in his hands told her he was there to ensure she didn't get away.

The second man was Viktor Danilovich, the man she'd seen at the hospital with Kyle, and the third man…

Her blood ran cold as she stared at Drew Sanderson, Landon's big brother in the fraternity, the guy who'd pretended to care about her brother, about her loss. In the last few days, things had been pointing to Drew, but she'd secretly been hoping it was Henry who was in charge, not Drew.

"You're the one in charge? The one who killed my brother?" she asked Drew.

"Well, look at you. You finally figured it out," he drawled, no sign of the easygoing, happy-go-lucky, didn't-care-much-about-anything man she'd thought he was.

"Landon was your little brother. He was supposedly one of your best friends. How could you kill him?"

"That was an accident," Drew said with an unapologetic shrug.

"I don't believe you."

He shrugged, his eyes stunningly cold. "I don't care what you believe. It's not going to matter. You're not going to tell anyone anything. This is the end of the road, Haley. Your unwillingness to let Landon's death go finally caught up to you."

She shuddered at the threat behind his words, but she wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of seeing her fear. "If it's not going to matter, tell me what happened to my brother."

He hesitated as if he wasn't sure what he wanted to tell her, but clearly, he wanted her to know. That's why he was here and not just Viktor. He wanted this conversation. And she needed to keep him talking as long as she possibly could.

"Landon was being uncooperative," he said finally. "Not as helpful as he was supposed to be as one of our brothers—as my little brother, the one who was supposed to have my back."

"You didn't have his."

He ignored her. "Landon didn't understand the concept of all for one, one for all."

"You wanted him to cheat. You wanted him to do illegal, immoral things. Of course, he'd say no. He knew what was right and what was wrong."

"Annoyingly so," Drew agreed.

"What did you do? How did it happen?" It was going to hurt like crazy to know about her brother's last moments, but she had to hear what he'd gone through. She had to finally know the truth.

"Landon came to the house that night. He was worked up about Professor Harrington going over his head and changing our grades after he'd already refused to do it.

He felt betrayed by Harrington's willingness to use his access code in case the scandal ever leaked.

The man he'd admired was a loser, and Landon finally saw that. "

"But that wasn't all you wanted from Landon, was it? It was about more than getting your grades changed. Because you didn't really need Landon after Harrington agreed to bypass my brother."

"You're right. I wanted more. I wanted Landon to share his brilliant idea, something he'd told us a little about one night when we were drinking.

I couldn't stop thinking about his plan, but I knew he wasn't looking at it the right way.

He wanted to build a safeguard for smaller investors, but there's no money in safeguards.

You don't change the world by lowering risk; you change it by increasing risk, by taking chances, thinking big. "

She shook her head in disgust. "Landon wanted to save people; you wanted to destroy them."

"It's survival of the fittest, Haley. My father taught me that a long time ago."

"What did you do to him?"

"I had to make him see reason. But the anger and betrayal in his eyes made me realize that Henry was right.

Landon was losing it. He was never going to go along with anything.

He was going to go to the dean about Professor Harrington.

He was going to take all of us down, unless we forced him to our side. "

"How could he be on your side if he was dead?"

"That wasn't the plan," Drew snapped. "We were going to set him up.

I poured him a drink, and when he wasn't looking, I put a drug into it.

Just something to make him stay put and forget the whole night.

When he woke up in the morning, he'd just think he'd gotten drunk.

But there would be photos of him and an underage girl.

It would look like he had sex with her and knocked her around.

If he didn't do what we wanted, he'd be kicked out of school, arrested, embarrassed, and his life would be a shambles. "

She shook her head in disbelief. "You are sickening. How could you do that to your friend?"

"He wasn't being a friend," Drew said in an uncaring tone.

She realized then that Drew had no real feelings, no heart, no emotions, except greed and desire. But she needed to hear the rest—every last horrifying detail. "If killing him wasn't the plan, how did he end up dead?"

"The drug made him crazy, not relaxed the way it was supposed to work.

I left the room to talk to Henry, to get the girl, and when I got back, Landon was gone.

We tried to find him, but we didn't see him in the woods, and he wasn't at his apartment.

It turns out he stumbled and fell into the pond, just the way everyone said. "

"That was convenient for you, which is why I don't believe it," she said hotly.

"It's what happened. It was an accident."

"You caused the accident. You drugged him. Why didn't that show up in the toxicology report?"

He waved his hand as if that was the stupidest question he'd ever heard. "Because evidence can be tampered with. People can be bought."

"Investigations can be shut down," she said heavily.

His evil smile sent a chill down her arms.

"Did you and Henry do it alone? Or did your fathers help?"

"Everyone helped. Every parent of a kid in that fraternity was concerned that their son would be in trouble. Many calls were made. I didn't have to do a thing. Only a few people knew what really happened."

"But Henry knew what you did. You two were in it together."

"We're brothers."

"Landon was your brother, too."

"Not when it counted," Drew said harshly.

She hated that Landon had run from the frat house, probably knowing something was terribly wrong, but not being able to escape. She just prayed that he'd been so out of it he hadn't really known what was happening, that his death had come quickly and not painfully.

She looked back at Drew. "He never did anything to hurt you."

"He was going to hurt me. He was going to destroy me. I couldn't let that happen. And it didn't have to be that way. We weren't going to cut him out. We could have all gotten rich together."

"You already had his notebooks. Why did he have to die? You had what you needed?"

"Not all of it. Some of it was on his laptop."

"Which you stole along with his phone."

"When he first passed out, yes, but that was because I was going to hold the information over his head. Once we had the notebooks and his computer, we could force him to finish building the algorithm."

"So, it wasn't done?" she asked in surprise.

"No. And some of the information was false. Some of his later notes changed the way it worked."

"He was trying to protect it from you," she said, realizing the truth. "He must have anticipated you were going to try to steal it, and he changed key points to prevent you from making it work. That's why he had the videos from his apartment and your room."

"Yeah, I found that camera the day after he died. He was spying on me."

"He didn't trust you, and he had good reason." She paused. "Is that why it's taken you six years to get to this point? You killed the brains behind the algorithm, and then you had no one to finish it."

His lips tightened. "Most of it was there. It just took a little longer than we thought to bring it to fruition. But it's ready now, and we are going to be very, very rich. Landon built the perfect weapon for financial warfare, and he didn't even realize it."

"He realized it; he just wasn't evil."

"Maybe not, but he's dead." Drew gave her a hard look. "I thought we were done with him a long time ago, until that stupid woman started digging up the past."

"How did you find out about Sabrina?"