Chapter 4
Clara stared at the warrant.
“I didn’t make Marcus disappear.”
The officer asked her to turn around.
Ethan grabbed her hand.
“No! She didn’t do anything!”
Arthur pulled out his phone.
“I’m calling my attorney.”
“You can call anyone you want,” the officer said. “She still has to come with us.”
Clara knelt in front of Ethan.
“Look at me.”
He was crying too hard to answer.
“I need you to be brave.”
“They’ll take you away.”
“Only until the truth catches up.”
“That’s what my mom said before she died.”
The words nearly broke her.
Clara wrapped her arms around him.
Arthur promised he would bring her home.
At the station, detectives showed Clara security footage from Marcus’s apartment building.
A woman wearing Clara’s coat entered the building shortly before Marcus vanished.
The woman’s face was hidden beneath a hood.
Clara recognized the coat immediately.
It had disappeared from the laundry room two days earlier.
“There’s more,” the detective said.
He placed a photograph on the table.
Marcus’s blood had been found in the trunk of Clara’s car.
Clara went silent.
Arthur’s attorney, Daniel Brooks, leaned toward her.
“Do not answer another question.”
Meanwhile, Arthur searched the house.
He found the laundry room door unlocked.
A second security camera had been disabled.
Someone with access had moved through his home without being seen.
Arthur called every employee into the living room.
The cook, the driver, the groundskeeper, and both remaining guards stood before him.
“One of you helped Vanessa.”
No one spoke.
Ethan sat on the stairs with his tablet.
Arthur turned to the driver.
“Who used Clara’s car?”
“Only Clara, sir.”
“Then how did blood get into her trunk?”
The cook began to cry.
Everyone looked at her.
Her name was Rosa.
She had worked for Arthur’s family for twelve years.
“I saw someone in the garage,” she whispered.
“Who?”
Rosa looked toward the windows.
“I can’t say.”
Arthur closed the curtains.
“You can.”
“She’ll hurt my daughter.”
“Who will?”
“Mrs. Cross.”
Arthur moved closer.
“What did Evelyn do?”
Rosa wiped her eyes.
“Three weeks ago, she asked me for the alarm codes. I refused. The next day, my daughter was fired from her job. Then someone left photographs of my grandchildren outside my apartment.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You were going to marry Vanessa. I thought you would choose them.”
Arthur heard the shame in her voice.
Everyone in his house had learned not to trust him.
“What did you see in the garage?”
“Vanessa wearing Clara’s coat. Marcus was with her.”
“Was he alive?”
“Yes. He was frightened, but he was alive.”
“What happened?”
“Vanessa drove away in Clara’s car. Another vehicle followed them.”
Arthur called Daniel immediately.
Rosa gave a formal statement, but the blood still connected Clara to Marcus.
The police refused to release her.
That evening, Vanessa appeared on television.
She stood outside a hospital with a bandage on her cheek.
“My former fiancé is being manipulated by a dangerous woman,” she told reporters. “I tried to protect his child, and I was attacked.”
Arthur turned off the television.
Ethan stood behind him.
“Why does everyone listen to her?”
“Because she knows how to sound innocent.”
“But she isn’t.”
“No.”
“Are you going to let her win?”
Arthur looked at his son.
“No.”
His phone rang.
It was Clara.
Daniel had arranged a short call from the station.
“Rosa saw Vanessa,” Arthur told her. “We’re getting you out.”
“Listen to me,” Clara said. “Marcus called me before he called you.”
Arthur stiffened.
“What did he say?”
“He said Vanessa had files about your company. He wanted money in exchange for them.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I thought it was another trap.”
“Did you agree to meet him?”
“No, but he sent me an address.”
Clara recited it from memory.
Arthur wrote it down.
It belonged to an abandoned storage facility outside the city.
“I’m going there.”
“No,” Clara said quickly. “Call the police.”
“If Vanessa moved Marcus—”
“She wants you angry and reckless. Stop giving her what she wants.”
Arthur closed his eyes.
Even from a jail cell, Clara was protecting him from himself.
“I’ll send Daniel.”
“Keep Ethan close.”
After the call, Arthur gave the address to the detective.
The police searched the facility.
They found Clara’s missing coat, Marcus’s phone, and more blood.
They did not find Marcus.
But they found a laptop.
Most of its files had been deleted.
One survived.
It was a draft agreement transferring voting control of Arthur’s company to Evelyn Cross after his marriage to Vanessa.
Arthur had never seen it.
His digital signature was already attached.
Daniel examined the metadata.
“The document was created six months ago.”
“That was before I proposed.”
“They planned to take your company before Vanessa agreed to marry you.”
Arthur felt sick.
The detective opened another recovered file.
It contained payments to Marcus, a private investigator, and an employee at Ethan’s school.
Then Daniel found a name that made Arthur stop breathing.
Laura Hale.
Arthur’s late wife.
The payments began three days before Laura’s fatal car accident.
Arthur gripped the edge of the table.
“Why is my wife’s name here?”
The detective looked at him carefully.
“We don’t know.”
Arthur opened the final attachment.
It was a photograph taken outside Laura’s car the night she died.
May you like
Vanessa stood beside the vehicle.
She had told Arthur they had never met.
