Chapter 3
The video had been recorded less than an hour earlier.
David sat inside his truck.
Rain streaked the windshield behind him.
His face looked exhausted.
“Lily, I’m sorry,” he began. “You deserved a better father than I was brave enough to be.”
Lily leaned against me as we watched.
“I should have protected you from my parents. I kept telling myself their behavior wasn’t serious. I told myself I could make them change without choosing sides.”
He wiped his face.
“But every time I stayed quiet, I chose their side.”
Lily’s fingers tightened around the tablet.
“If your mother shows you this, tell her the red cabin. She’ll understand.”
I didn’t.
David looked over his shoulder.
“I have to go. Lily, none of this is your fault. I love you.”
The video ended.
“What’s the red cabin?” Lily asked.
“I don’t know.”
My phone rang again.
Officer Ramirez told me that police had reached company headquarters.
Maria’s office was empty.
Her car remained in the parking garage.
Her purse and coat were on her desk.
There was no sign of her.
“We’re reviewing the cameras,” he said. “Stay home and lock your doors.”
“David warned me not to trust her.”
“Do you?”
“I did.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
I looked at David’s note.
“I don’t know anymore.”
I took Lily upstairs and checked every window.
Then I called my sister, Rachel.
She lived twenty minutes away and arrived with her teenage son, Noah.
The moment Rachel saw Lily’s face, she hugged her.
“What happened?”
“Everything,” I said.
I showed her David’s note and video.
Rachel watched in silence.
When it ended, she looked at me.
“Red cabin. Dad’s cabin?”
Our father had owned a hunting cabin near Red Hollow Lake.
After his death, I sold it to pay taxes on his estate.
Or I thought I had.
“David never visited that cabin,” I said.
“But he knew about it,” Rachel replied. “You showed him those old photographs.”
One photograph had been displayed in my office for years.
Dad standing beside the cabin.
A red door behind him.
I opened the property records on my laptop.
The cabin had been sold eight years ago to a company called Mercer Land Trust.
Claire Mercer.
My heart started pounding.
“She bought it,” I said.
“Who?”
“The woman connected to David’s apartment.”
Lily looked between us.
“Is she Dad’s girlfriend?”
“I don’t know.”
The honest answer hurt her, but I would not lie the way David had.
Rachel offered to stay with Lily while I went to the cabin.
“No,” Lily said immediately. “Mom isn’t going anywhere alone.”
“I’ll be with Aunt Rachel.”
“She means I’m going too,” Rachel said. “No arguments.”
We left Noah with Lily and contacted Officer Ramirez before leaving.
He told us not to enter the property.
A county deputy would meet us there.
Red Hollow Lake was ninety minutes outside Charlotte.
The rain followed us north.
Rachel drove while I searched everything I could find about Claire Mercer.
She was forty-seven.
An accountant.
Former employee of Bellamy Holdings.
She had worked for my father fifteen years earlier.
Her employment file ended with one line.
Terminated for misconduct.
“What kind of misconduct?” Rachel asked.
“The digital record doesn’t say.”
“Call someone who was there.”
There was only one person besides Maria who had worked closely with Dad that long.
Samuel Reed, our former legal counsel.
He was retired, but he answered.
“Grace? Is something wrong?”
“Do you remember Claire Mercer?”
Silence.
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“Why are you asking about her?”
“Because my husband rented her an apartment with stolen company money.”
Samuel breathed heavily.
“Do not meet that woman alone.”
“What did she do?”
“She accused your father of hiding money through fake construction projects.”
I gripped the phone.
“Was she telling the truth?”
“At the time, we found no evidence.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“She copied confidential files. Your father fired her.”
“And Maria?”
“Maria reported her.”
David’s warning returned to me.
Do not trust Maria.
“Did Claire ever threaten my father?”
“She threatened to expose him.”
“Expose what?”
Samuel hesitated.
“Your father believed someone inside the company had been stealing for years. Claire said it was Maria. Maria said it was Claire.”
“Who did he believe?”
“Maria.”
I looked through the rain-darkened window.
“And what did you believe?”
“I believed your father wanted the matter to disappear.”
The cabin stood at the end of an unpaved road.
A deputy waited near the gate.
He introduced himself as Deputy Cole.
“The property appears empty,” he said. “I checked the outside. One vehicle is behind the cabin.”
“What kind?”
“A gray sedan registered to Claire Mercer.”
We approached together.
The cabin had been repainted, but the front door was still red.
Deputy Cole knocked.
“Sheriff’s department!”
No answer.
The door was unlocked.
He ordered us to remain outside while he entered.
Thirty seconds later, he called for an ambulance.
Rachel and I ran inside despite his warning.
Claire Mercer lay on the floor beside the fireplace.
Blood marked the side of her head.
She was alive, but barely conscious.
David was nowhere in sight.
The cabin had been searched.
Drawers were open.
Papers covered the floor.
A laptop had been smashed.
Claire opened her eyes when I knelt beside her.
“Grace?”
“How do you know me?”
“You look like him.”
“My father?”
Her hand closed around my sleeve.
“David tried to protect me.”
“Where is he?”
“They took him.”
“Who?”
She struggled to speak.
“The woman you trust.”
Maria.
An ambulance arrived ten minutes later.
Before paramedics carried Claire out, she whispered one more thing.
“Under the floor.”
Deputy Cole searched the cabin.
Beneath a loose board near the fireplace, he found a metal box.
Inside were dozens of bank statements and a small voice recorder.
The statements covered fifteen years.
Millions of dollars had moved from Bellamy Holdings through shell companies.
Some ended in accounts controlled by Robert Blackwood.
My father-in-law.
Rachel stared at the documents.
“How did Robert have access to Dad’s company?”
“He shouldn’t have.”
Deputy Cole sealed the box as evidence.
“You’ll receive copies after investigators review it.”
“What about the recorder?”
He pressed play long enough to identify the contents.
My father’s voice filled the cabin.
“If anything happens to me, Maria Chen and Robert Blackwood are responsible.”
The recording stopped.
I could barely breathe.
My father had died in a car accident five years earlier.
His brakes failed on a mountain road.
Police ruled it an accident.
Deputy Cole looked at me.
“I’m contacting the state bureau.”
My phone rang.
Unknown number.
I answered.
Maria spoke.
“Grace, listen carefully. Claire is lying to you.”
“Where’s David?”
“I don’t know.”
“She said you took him.”
“She has spent fifteen years trying to destroy your family.”
“The records connect Robert to stolen money.”
“They’re fabricated.”
“My father recorded your name.”
Maria went silent.
“You found the box,” she said.
Her voice was no longer frightened.
It was calm.
Almost relieved.
“Yes.”
“Then you finally know why I stayed close to you.”
“To protect me?”
“To protect what your father left behind.”
“Where are you?”
“You need to return home.”
“Why?”
“Because Ethan was released.”
My blood turned cold.
“Lily.”
I called Noah.
He answered immediately.
“Aunt Grace, someone’s outside.”
“Lock every door. Take Lily upstairs.”
“The power just went out.”
A crash sounded through the phone.
Noah shouted.
Then the line died.
Rachel and I ran for the car.
The drive back felt endless.
I called police, neighbors, and the security company.
Officer Ramirez reached the house before us.
The front door had been forced open.
Noah was found unconscious in the hallway.
He had been struck from behind, but he was breathing.
Lily was gone.
On her bedroom wall, someone had written a message in red paint.
BRING THE BOX.
May you like
COME ALONE.
Helen’s burned steak was sitting on Lily’s bed.
