Chapter 4
The car disappeared before the police reached the street.
Officers searched for Diane and Mark all night.
I returned to the hospital just before sunrise.
Emily was awake.
One look at my face told her something terrible had happened.
“What did they take?”
“The documents, our passports, and the birth certificate.”
I did not mention the nursery.
Not yet.
She needed calm.
But Claire walked in behind me and destroyed that hope.
“We have to tell her everything,” she said.
Emily looked between us.
“Tell me what?”
Claire confessed what happened to my father.
Her voice broke repeatedly, but she did not stop.
When she finished, Emily reached for my hand.
I could not feel her fingers.
All I could see was my father teaching me to ride a bicycle.
My father cheering at my graduation.
My father telling me that family meant protecting people, not controlling them.
Diane had turned his death into a lie.
Mark had helped her live with it.
“Why are they desperate for the trust documents now?” I asked.
Emily hesitated.
“Because I hired a forensic accountant.”
“You did what?”
“I gave her the photographs. She found payments from your trust to a company owned by Mark.”
“How much?”
“Nearly six hundred thousand dollars.”
Claire gasped.
“That’s impossible.”
“It happened over nine years,” Emily said. “There may be more.”
A nurse entered and told Emily she would be discharged if the contractions remained stopped.
My phone rang.
It was the bank.
A woman from the fraud department asked whether I had authorized a transfer from my emergency account ten minutes earlier.
“How much?”
“Forty-two thousand dollars.”
“No.”
“We blocked it. The person attempting the transfer answered your security questions correctly.”
Diane knew my first school.
She knew the name of my childhood dog.
She knew every detail a bank might use to identify me.
“Freeze everything,” I said.
The woman transferred me to a security specialist.
While I waited, Emily’s phone rang.
Her face tightened.
“It’s Mark.”
“Put it on speaker.”
She answered.
Mark’s breathing was heavy.
“If you want your documents back, come to Dad’s old cabin.”
“You broke into our home,” I said.
“You weren’t supposed to be there.”
“You destroyed my daughter’s nursery.”
“Mom did that.”
Claire stepped closer to the phone.
“You were driving the getaway car?”
“No. Mom was driving.”
“What do you want?” I asked.
“Emily has copies of the accountant’s report. Bring them.”
“And if we refuse?”
A woman cried in the background.
Claire went pale.
“That sounds like Aunt Rose.”
Rose was my father’s sister.
She had stopped speaking to Diane after the funeral.
Mark lowered his voice.
“Aunt Rose kept records about Dad’s company. Mom asked for them. She refused.”
I gripped the phone.
“Let me speak to her.”
Rose screamed.
Then the line went dead.
Claire began shaking.
“They have her.”
I called the detective.
He warned us not to approach the cabin.
Police units were already searching for Diane’s vehicle.
But Rose lived less than ten miles from the lake.
The cabin was another fifteen miles beyond her home.
Diane could reach it before the police found her.
“We give them the report,” Claire said.
“We don’t have it.”
“Emily’s accountant does.”
Emily lifted her phone.
“I can download a copy.”
“No,” I said. “You are not going anywhere near them.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
She sent me the file.
Then she looked straight into my eyes.
“Bring Rose home.”
Two hours later, Claire and I rode with Detective Ruiz toward the lake.
Officers followed in unmarked vehicles.
We stopped half a mile from the cabin.
Ruiz handed me a small recording device.
“You stay outside. You do not play hero.”
Smoke rose from the cabin chimney.
Diane’s car was parked behind the trees.
I approached the front porch alone, holding an envelope filled with blank paper.
The door opened before I knocked.
Mark pointed my father’s old hunting rifle at my chest.
“Where’s Emily?” he demanded.
“At the hospital.”
“You were told to bring her.”
“That was never part of the deal.”
Diane appeared behind him.
She smiled as if we were arriving for a family dinner.
“Let him in, Mark.”
I entered.
Aunt Rose sat tied to a chair.
Her face was bruised, but she was alive.
I placed the envelope on the table.
Diane reached for it.
I held it down.
“First, tell me why Dad created the trust.”
Her smile faded.
“Because he was planning to leave me.”
Rose lifted her head.
“No,” she said. “He created it because he discovered what Diane was doing to Daniel.”
My mother looked at her with murder in her eyes.
“What was she doing to me?” I asked.
May you like
Rose swallowed painfully.
“She was never supposed to raise you.”
