Chapter 4
The fire spread across the old curtains in seconds.
Daniel lifted Lucy and ran toward the stairs.
Naomi followed with Evelyn.
Detective Hale shouted for the officer inside Rebecca’s room, but there was no answer.
Smoke swallowed the hallway.
The security alarm remained silent.
Someone had disabled it.
At the bottom of the stairs, a side window stood broken.
Cold rain blew through the opening.
A dark figure crossed the garden.
Hale saw it too.
He radioed the officers outside.
Daniel wanted to follow, but Lucy was coughing against his chest.
His daughter came first.
He carried her through the front door.
Naomi pulled Evelyn behind them.
Firefighters arrived within minutes.
The fire was contained to the east hall, but Rebecca’s room was destroyed.
The dollhouse collapsed.
Claire’s red camera melted.
The officer who had remained inside was found unconscious near the window.
He had been struck from behind, but he was alive.
The evidence bag containing the original memory card was gone.
Naomi still had the forensic copy.
Only three people knew she had saved it separately.
Daniel.
The technician.
And Detective Hale.
Whoever set the fire believed the evidence had been destroyed.
That gave them one small advantage.
Security footage showed a hooded person entering Evelyn’s property through a service gate.
The intruder kept his face hidden.
But he moved with a slight limp.
Daniel remembered Tyler Sloan had injured his left leg in a motorcycle accident.
Marlene’s missing son immediately became a suspect.
Evelyn sat inside an ambulance while a paramedic checked her breathing.
She looked at the burned windows.
“This is my fault.”
Daniel held Lucy beneath a blanket.
“It became your fault when you lied for Andrew.”
“I thought I was saving him.”
“You were teaching him that nothing had consequences.”
Evelyn began to cry.
“I cannot change what I did.”
“No. You can only decide what you do now.”
Detective Hale approached them.
“We found a phone near the service gate.”
“Whose?” Daniel asked.
“It was purchased with cash. One outgoing number.”
“Andrew?”
“Tyler Sloan.”
Daniel looked toward the burned room.
“So Tyler set the fire?”
“We don’t know. The call lasted eight seconds.”
Lucy shifted beneath the blanket.
“The running man wasn’t Tyler.”
Hale crouched beside her.
“You saw him?”
“From Grandma’s window.”
“What did you notice?”
“He had shiny shoes.”
Daniel thought of Andrew’s polished dress shoes.
But Andrew did not limp.
Unless the limp was an act.
Lucy added, “He smelled like Daddy’s office.”
“What does Daddy’s office smell like?” Hale asked.
“Smoke.”
Daniel did not smoke.
Andrew did.
He hid the habit from Evelyn by using expensive clove cigarettes in the office courtyard.
Their smell clung to his coats.
Hale wrote it down.
They returned to Daniel’s house after midnight.
Naomi slept in the guest room.
A police officer remained outside.
Daniel tucked Lucy into his bed because she refused to enter her own room.
She held the damaged stuffed rabbit against her chest.
“Daddy?”
“Yes?”
“Was Mommy scared?”
Daniel’s throat tightened.
“Sometimes.”
“Did Uncle Andrew scare her?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t Mommy tell you?”
“She was trying to protect us.”
Lucy looked at the torn ear on her rabbit.
“I tried to protect Mommy’s key.”
“You did.”
“But Marlene got mad.”
“You were very brave.”
“I don’t want to be brave anymore.”
Daniel lay beside her.
“You don’t have to be. You only have to be four.”
She touched his cheek.
“Are you mad at me?”
“Never.”
“Marlene said you would send me away if you knew I opened the box.”
“She lied.”
“She said Mommy left because I was bad.”
Daniel’s eyes burned.
He pulled Lucy close.
“Your mother loved you more than anything in this world.”
“Even heaven?”
“Even heaven.”
Lucy finally fell asleep.
Daniel did not.
At six in the morning, Naomi knocked on the bedroom door.
“Tyler Sloan contacted me.”
Daniel sat up.
“How?”
“He emailed the office address on my website. He wants to meet.”
“Where?”
“He suggested the old bus station downtown.”
“It could be a trap.”
“It probably is.”
Detective Hale arranged surveillance.
Daniel was told to remain in the car while Naomi entered the station.
He ignored that instruction when he saw Tyler.
The young man limped badly.
His face was bruised from what appeared to be a recent assault.
He looked nothing like the figure running from Evelyn’s house.
Tyler raised his hands when Daniel approached.
“I didn’t set the fire.”
“How do you know about it?”
“My mother called before they took her phone.”
“She called you?”
“She used the station phone at the jail.”
Naomi glanced at Hale.
He stepped away to verify it.
Tyler sat on a bench.
“I never received your money.”
“It went into your company.”
“A company Andrew made me open. He controlled the login.”
“Why agree to that?”
Tyler looked ashamed.
“I owed forty thousand dollars to people who don’t forgive debt.”
“And Andrew paid it.”
“Yes. Then the debt belonged to him.”
“What did he ask you to do?”
“At first, nothing. Then he needed accounts. Signatures. Deliveries.”
“Did your mother know?”
“Not in the beginning.”
“But she helped him drug me.”
Tyler looked at the floor.
“She told herself it was medicine.”
“She hurt my daughter.”
“I know.”
“You expect me to feel sorry for her?”
“No.”
That answer stopped Daniel.
Tyler did not defend Marlene.
“She did terrible things,” he continued. “She thought keeping Andrew happy would keep me alive. But she also liked the money. Don’t let her tell you she had no choice.”
Naomi sat across from him.
“What proof do you have?”
Tyler removed his shoe.
Inside the lining was a tiny flash drive.
“Everything I could copy before Andrew’s men took my laptop.”
Daniel reached for it.
Naomi stopped him.
“Let Hale bag it.”
Tyler handed it to the detective.
“What is on there?” Hale asked.
“Account records. Messages. Audio files.”
“Anything about Claire Mercer’s death?”
Tyler swallowed.
“One payment.”
“To whom?”
“A mechanic named Frank Dobbins.”
Daniel’s heart hammered.
“What was the payment for?”
“I don’t know. But it happened four days before the crash.”
The flash drive contained enough evidence to connect Andrew to thirteen shell companies.
It also showed more than four million dollars diverted from Daniel’s company and Claire’s trust.
Then they found the payment to Frank Dobbins.
The description read emergency vehicle service.
The address linked to an abandoned garage outside the city.
Detective Hale sent officers there.
Frank was gone.
Inside the garage, they found tools, several false identification cards, and a burned photograph of Claire’s car.
Andrew was brought in for questioning.
He arrived with two attorneys.
He denied knowing Frank.
He denied controlling Tyler’s accounts.
He claimed the messages had been fabricated.
Because the flash drive was a copy rather than the original device, his lawyers attacked its reliability.
Andrew was released.
By noon, he had called an emergency meeting of the Mercer Development board.
He claimed Daniel’s mental condition threatened the company.
Daniel attended with Naomi.
Andrew sat at the head of the table.
Their mother’s chair was empty.
The board members avoided Daniel’s eyes.
Andrew displayed medical records showing Daniel had sedatives in his blood during a recent insurance examination.
Then he showed the unauthorized transfers bearing Daniel’s biometric approval.
“He is under criminal investigation,” Andrew announced.
“I reported the crime,” Daniel said.
Andrew leaned back.
“After the money was discovered.”
Naomi placed Claire’s recording transcript on the table.
“Andrew is the subject of an active police investigation.”
His attorney pushed it aside.
“An unverified recording.”
“We have the recording.”
“You have a copy. The original was conveniently destroyed.”
Daniel looked around the table.
“These transfers passed through shell companies Andrew controlled.”
Andrew smiled sadly.
“My brother needs help.”
Daniel hated how convincing he sounded.
The board voted to suspend Daniel as chief executive until an independent review could be completed.
Andrew became acting CEO.
As Daniel left the room, his brother followed.
“You should have taken care of your daughter instead of playing detective.”
Daniel turned.
“Stay away from her.”
“You won’t have her after tomorrow’s hearing.”
“Is that why you drugged me?”
“I didn’t put the cup in your hand.”
“You threatened Claire.”
“She threatened this family.”
“She discovered what you were.”
Andrew’s smile vanished.
“You always had everything.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Dad gave you the company. Mom forgave every mistake you made. Claire looked at you as if you were the only decent man alive.”
“She was right about you.”
Andrew stepped closer.
“Claire thought she could expose me and walk away.”
Daniel’s phone was recording inside his pocket.
He needed Andrew to continue.
“What did you do to her?”
Andrew’s eyes flicked toward Daniel’s jacket.
Then he smiled again.
“You’ll never get me to say what you want.”
He walked away.
Daniel listened to the recording afterward.
It was not a confession.
But Andrew’s words were enough to strengthen the investigation.
That evening, Daniel prepared for the custody hearing.
Naomi warned him that Andrew’s attorneys would use everything against him.
His grief.
His missed meetings.
The drug test.
Even his anger during the confrontation with Marlene.
“You tell the truth,” she said. “Do not let them provoke you.”
Lucy colored at the dining table while they worked.
A police officer stood in the hall.
Daniel believed she was finally safe.
Then the officer received a radio call about an intruder near the rear gate.
He stepped outside.
The lights flickered.
Daniel ran to the dining room.
Lucy’s chair was empty.
Her crayons were scattered across the floor.
The rear door stood open.
On the table was Claire’s damaged photograph.
Someone had written across her face in black ink.
STOP DIGGING.
Daniel ran outside, screaming Lucy’s name.
A car engine roared beyond the trees.
He reached the gate in time to see a dark sedan disappear onto the road.
Then his phone rang.
Marlene was calling from jail.
May you like
Daniel answered with shaking hands.
“If you want Lucy alive,” she whispered, “you need to get me out before Andrew finds out where I hid her.”
