Chapter 3 - The Man at the Hotel
The next morning, Elsie was transferred to the pediatric floor.
Her fever had dropped. She was drinking small amounts of apple juice and asking for strawberry yogurt. The doctors said she would need monitoring, nutrition support, and time, but she was improving.
Micah refused to leave her side.
He sat in the chair near her bed with a coloring book in his lap and colored the same picture of a house over and over again.
Each house had three people inside.
A dad.
A boy.
A little girl.
No mother.
Rowan noticed.
He did not say anything.
Not yet.
Detective Brooks arrived just after noon with an update.
“Grant Holloway checked out of the hotel at 5:10 this morning,” she said. “Delaney left with him.”
“Where did they go?”
“We’re tracing his vehicle. But we found something in the hotel room.”
She handed Rowan a clear evidence bag.
Inside was a flash drive.
“He left it?” Rowan asked.
“Maybe. Or maybe he thought it had been destroyed.”
Rowan stared at it.
“What’s on it?”
“We have not fully examined it yet. But our digital unit found documents connected to your company.”
His chest tightened.
Six months earlier, Rowan had discovered irregularities in Mercer Development Group’s accounts. Money had been moved through shell vendors. Project invoices had been inflated. Grant had overseen the division responsible for the transactions.
When Rowan confronted him, Grant denied everything.
Then he resigned.
Rowan assumed that was the end.
Apparently, it was only the beginning.
Detective Brooks continued.
“We also found messages between Grant and Delaney.”
Rowan looked at her.
“What kind of messages?”
“Enough to suggest they have been communicating for several months.”
His jaw tightened.
“Were they having an affair?”
“That appears likely.”
The words should have hurt.
Maybe they would later.
But right then, betrayal felt almost secondary.
His children had been starving.
Elsie had nearly died.
And Delaney had been drinking champagne in a hotel room.
“Did she know Grant was stealing from my company?” Rowan asked.
“We do not know yet.”
Detective Brooks studied him.
“But we have reason to believe Grant may have needed something from you.”
“What?”
“Access.”
Rowan understood immediately.
His company was about to submit a bid for a major city redevelopment contract. It involved millions of dollars, political attention, and months of private financial planning.
Only a handful of people knew the final numbers.
Grant had known them once.
Delaney might still have had access to Rowan’s home office.
To his computer.
To the passwords he had foolishly assumed were safe because he trusted his wife.
“Check my house,” Rowan said. “My office. Everything.”
Detective Brooks nodded.
“Already requested a warrant.”
Later that afternoon, Rowan sat beside Elsie’s bed while she slept.
Micah stood near the window.
“Dad?”
“Yes?”
“Was Mom with the flower man?”
Rowan looked at him carefully.
“Grant?”
Micah nodded.
“Did you see him before Monday?”
“Yes.”
“How many times?”
Micah counted silently on his fingers.
“A lot.”
Rowan’s stomach turned.
“Did he come to the house?”
“Yes.”
“When I wasn’t there?”
Micah nodded again.
“He told Mom he was going to help us move.”
Rowan went still.
“Move where?”
“He said somewhere with a pool.”
Elsie stirred in the bed.
“Mom said we were going on a trip,” she murmured weakly.
Rowan leaned close.
“What trip, sweetheart?”
Her eyes opened halfway.
“The big trip. Where Daddy can’t find us.”
The room went silent.
Detective Brooks had been standing in the doorway.
Her expression hardened.
She stepped out and immediately spoke into her phone.
“Get the warrant expedited,” she said. “This may be custodial interference—and possibly planned abduction.”
Rowan looked down at his children.
For years, he had believed Delaney was simply unhappy.
She had complained about his work hours. She said he cared more about meetings than family. She called him distant, controlling, emotionally unavailable.
He had accepted every accusation because he knew he was not perfect.
He had worked too much.
He had missed dinners.
He had thought financial stability would make up for absence.
But Delaney had used his guilt as cover.
And now she had nearly turned his children into collateral damage.
That evening, police searched Rowan’s home.
They found that several documents from his office were missing.
They found a printed copy of the redevelopment bid.
They found Grant Holloway’s fingerprints on a drawer in Rowan’s study.
And tucked inside a cookbook on the kitchen shelf, they found a handwritten note from Delaney.
It listed three names.
Grant Holloway.
Delaney Mercer.
And one more:
Elliot Kane.
Rowan knew that name too.
Elliot Kane was the CEO of a rival development company.
The same company competing against Rowan for the Nashville redevelopment contract.
The affair was not the worst betrayal.
The children were not abandoned because Delaney forgot them.
They had been left behind because she and Grant were preparing to disappear with information worth millions.
And now that the police were involved, Rowan knew they might be desperate enough to come back for the one thing they had failed to take.
May you like
Micah and Elsie.
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