What Thomas Hid in Plain Sight
Chapter 13 - What Thomas Hid in Plain Sight
Federal agents searched the bank vault, the mansion, and Thomas’s office. No Lantern files appeared.
Eleanor returned to the blue novel and read Thomas’s note again. The blue ledger contains the original ownership structure and the evidence needed to expose the theft.
They had assumed the ledger itself was the evidence.
But the notebook contained only financial records.
Daniel examined the binding. It was thicker than necessary. A document technician carefully removed the spine and found a narrow strip of transparent film.
It was not film. It was a flexible data storage wafer used in experimental military hardware.
Project Lantern had been hidden inside the ledger itself.
The wafer held design files, testing results, and encrypted communications proving Baines sold prototypes through Red Cedar. It also contained Thomas’s recorded conversations with Baines.
In one recording, Baines demanded access to the family’s voting shares. Thomas refused.
“You built this company with me,” Baines said.
“I built it beside you,” Thomas replied. “That did not give you permission to sell the country one circuit at a time.”
Baines threatened Daniel’s career and Rebecca’s security clearance. Thomas answered, “Touch my children and I will spend my last dollar burying you in court.”
The recording ended six weeks before Thomas died.
Agent Grant prepared to transfer the wafer to a federal evidence facility. Eleanor insisted on one condition.
“No one outside this room knows it was found.”
Grant studied her. “You think Baines has someone inside law enforcement.”
“He has survived by knowing what other people assume,” Eleanor said. “He will assume we found paper records, not the wafer.”
They created a decoy: a sealed evidence box transported under visible guard. News of the transfer leaked within an hour.
The real wafer remained inside the mansion, hidden where Vanessa had never looked—in Eleanor’s sewing basket, beneath a false wooden base Thomas had built decades earlier.
That evening, power failed across the estate.
Backup generators started, but the west wing remained dark.
Rebecca heard glass break upstairs.
She drew no weapon; the house was filled with federal agents. Instead, she moved toward her mother’s room and found the door open.
Eleanor was gone.
On the bed lay the sewing basket.
Its false bottom had been removed.
The wafer was still there.
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Beside it was a handwritten note.
BRING THE LANTERN TO THE OLD FACTORY. COME ALONE, OR ELEANOR DIES KNOWING BOTH HER CHILDREN FAILED HER.
