Chapter 5
Sarah was beside me in an instant.
“Is that…?”
“Mom’s room.”
We both watched the screen.
My mother was lying in bed, asleep.
A nurse was checking her vitals.
Everything looked normal.
But someone had been watching her.
Watching everything.
“Megan must have planted a camera when she visited last week,” Sarah said. “That’s how they knew when Richard was alone with her. That’s how they knew when to transfer the money.”
I looked at the timestamp in the corner of the feed.
It was live.
Real-time.
“Can we trace this?”
Sarah was already typing.
“The laptop’s connected to the building Wi-Fi. The camera feed is routed through three different VPN servers. But if I can get access to the laptop’s browser history…”
She typed faster.
“Got it. The camera was installed four days ago. IP address resolves to a disposable cellular hotspot. But there’s something else.”
She turned the laptop toward me.
A series of deleted emails she’d recovered from the trash.
Between Megan and an account named [email protected].
The most recent one was sent at 11:17 p.m.—thirty minutes ago.
*He knows about Victoria. Richard talked. Police picked him up. We need to move now. The plane leaves at 4 a.m. from Hanscom. Don’t be late.*
The reply came five minutes later.
*On my way. One last stop first. The loose end at the hospital needs to be tied permanently.*
My blood turned to ice.
“Sarah.”
She read the message.
Her face went white.
“Your mother.”
We ran out of the apartment.
I drove like a maniac back to the hospital.
Ran every red light.
Cut off three cars.
Sarah was on the phone with the hospital the entire time.
“Security to room 412 immediately! There’s an imminent threat to the patient! Send everyone you have!”
We skidded into the hospital parking lot four minutes later.
Ran through the emergency entrance.
The elevator took forever.
When the doors finally opened on the fourth floor, the hallway was chaos.
Nurses running.
Security guards shouting.
My mother’s door was wide open.
I ran toward it.
Two security guards were restraining a woman in scrubs I’d never seen before.
She was thrashing.
Screaming.
“Let me go! She deserves to die! Evelyn deserves to rot!”
I pushed past them into the room.
My mother was sitting up in bed.
Her face was pale.
But she was alive.
The breathing tube lay disconnected on the floor.
“Mom!”
I was at her side in two steps.
“I’m okay,” she breathed. “She got in here. Dressed like a nurse. She was going to—”
“I know. It’s okay. She’s gone now.”
Sarah came in behind me.
She was talking to one of the security guards.
Then she turned to me.
Her expression was grim.
“It wasn’t Victoria.”
“Who was it?”
“Another woman. Name’s Lisa Chen. She was a nurse here until six months ago. Your mother fired her for stealing medication.” She paused. “Police are on their way. She’s already saying Victoria paid her fifty thousand dollars to finish the job tonight.”
Fifty thousand dollars.
Victoria was tying up loose ends.
And she would have succeeded if we hadn’t found the laptop when we did.
My mother gripped my hand.
“Daniel. She’s not going to stop. Not until I’m dead and she has every last dollar.”
“Then we stop her first.” I looked at Sarah. “Hanscom Field. Private jet leaving at 4 a.m. That’s where they’re going.”
Sarah checked her watch.
“It’s 2:47 now. Hanscom is thirty minutes from here without traffic. If we leave now, we can get there before they board.”
“Call the police. Tell them to meet us there.”
I kissed my mother’s forehead.
“Rest. I’ll call you when it’s over.”
She grabbed my arm.
“Daniel, please. Don’t go. Let the police handle it.”
“I can’t let her get away, Mom. Not after everything she’s done.”
I pulled away.
Sarah and I ran back to the car.
The drive to Hanscom was the longest thirty minutes of my life.
My mind raced.
Victoria.
Megan.
My father in jail.
My mother almost dead twice in one night.
All because of a will changed thirty years ago.
All because of money and revenge.
We pulled up to the private aviation terminal at 3:22 a.m.
Two police cars were already there.
Lights flashing.
Detective Marquez was waiting for us.
“Got your call,” she said. “FAA records show a Learjet registered to a shell company filed a flight plan for St. Kitts. Departure time 4 a.m. That matches your timeline.”
“Are they here yet?”
“Not that we’ve seen. We have officers at all three access gates. No one gets on that plane without going through us.”
We waited.
And waited.
3:45.
3:55.
3:59.
4:00.
No one showed up.
Marquez checked her radio.
“Nothing at any gate. They’re not coming.”
Sarah looked at me.
“They knew. Someone warned them.”
“How?”
Then I remembered.
The laptop.
We’d left it on.
Connected.
Showing the hospital feed.
They’d watched us find the emails.
Watched us leave the apartment.
Watched us race to the hospital.
And they’d changed their plans.
“Damn it!” I kicked a trash can across the pavement. “We were so close!”
Marquez put a hand on my shoulder.
“We’ll get them. Their names are in every system now. Passports flagged. Bank accounts frozen. They can’t run forever.”
But I knew better.
Victoria had been planning this for thirty years.
She’d thought of everything.
She was already gone.
And we would probably never see her again.
We drove back to the city as the sun was coming up.
I dropped Sarah at our apartment.
She needed sleep.
I needed to see my father.
The precinct was quiet at 6 a.m.
They let me into the visiting area.
My father looked even worse than before.
He’d been in a holding cell all night.
No sleep.
No lawyer.
“Daniel,” he said when he picked up the phone. “You look terrible.”
“Victoria tried to kill Mom again last night. Hired a nurse to finish the job.”
His eyes went wide.
“No.”
“Yes. And she and Megan were going to run. We almost caught them at the airport. But they knew we were coming. Watched us find everything on Megan’s laptop.”
He closed his eyes.
“I told you she was dangerous.”
“Dad.” I leaned against the glass. “I need you to tell me everything. Every detail. Every conversation. Every meeting. If we’re going to find her, I need to know how she thinks.”
He was quiet for a long time.
May you like
Then he nodded.
“Okay. I’ll tell you everything. But you’re not going to like it.”
