another exit?”
“Yes, through the service stairwell, but—”
Footsteps echoed through the phone.
A man’s voice demanded something Elise could not hear clearly.
Sabine whispered, “He’s taking the last page.”
There was a crash.
The call ended.
Elise ran back into the dining room.
“Someone has locked Sabine in the records room,” she told Gabriel.
“Your security people are trying to remove the register.”
Gabriel stood.
“Who?”
“I don’t know.
But we’re not repeating what happened to my father.”
He moved toward the corridor, followed by one of his guards.
Elise stopped him.
“No weapons.
No private punishment.
I have already called my lawyer, and we’re calling emergency services.”
Gabriel’s eyes narrowed.
“You think you can give me orders?”
“I’m telling you how to keep another person from getting hurt.”
After a long second, he signaled for his guard to remain behind.
Elise asked the venue manager to accompany them and called emergency services herself, reporting the locked exit and the possible threat to a staff member inside.
They reached the north corridor just as the overhead lights flickered.
The main door would not open.
From behind it came Sabine’s voice.
“I’m here!”
Elise pressed her palm against the wood.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.
But someone came through the service stairwell.
He tore a page from the book.”
“Who was he?”
“I don’t know his name.
He had a dark suit and a silver pin on his jacket.”
Gabriel turned sharply.
Only a small number of his security employees wore that pin.
One of them was Miles Keene, a longtime contractor who had recently begun reporting directly to Celeste.
The venue manager fetched the building’s emergency access key and released the corridor lock.
The fire safety system registered the unauthorized closure, and an alarm began sounding through the service area.
When they opened the door, Sabine was sitting on the floor beside the register, one arm wrapped protectively around its heavy cover.
Several pages were scattered across the carpet.
The last inspection sheet was gone.
Elise knelt beside her.
“Did you get the photograph?”
Sabine nodded.
“Yes.
Before he took it.”
“Then we still have it.”
Sabine began to cry with relief.
Gabriel stood in the doorway, staring at the empty place where the page had been.
“Where’s Celeste?” he asked.
Nobody knew.
Back downstairs, the dining room had become a scene of confused guests and hurried restaurant employees.
The gala’s ceremonial signing was suspended, and the property-transfer folder remained on the table.
Elise checked her phone.
Ruth had received the photographs.
One image showed the relevant inspection entry with Luc’s unmistakable handwriting.
Another displayed a cargo-release reference, the registration number of a private trucking company, and an authorization code matching the document in Gabriel’s folder.
But the most important detail appeared near the bottom of the page.
Luc had formally rejected the equipment release because the cargo did not match the approved destination.
Beside his objection was a second notation, entered later that night.
North exit secured under special instruction.
The instruction was linked to Celeste’s redevelopment office.
The photographed page was not a complete criminal case by itself.
Investigators would need to authenticate the register, identify who made the notation, obtain supporting electronic logs, and establish who gave the order.
But it was enough to make the previous
