Chapter 4
Ryan called Rebecca three times.
She did not answer.
Detective Brooks asked for her address, vehicle information, and every place she might take Daniel Reeves.
Ryan gave him the details, but his mind was elsewhere.
“My sister knew,” he said.
Claire looked at him.
“How much?”
“I don’t know.”
I did.
Or at least I knew more than Ryan realized.
“Rebecca visited me two weeks ago.”
He turned toward me.
“You never told me.”
“She said she wanted to apologize.”
“For what?”
“For the way Margaret treated me.”
Ryan looked confused.
Rebecca had never defended me.
Not once.
She repeated every criticism Margaret made, but she did it with a sweet smile that made her cruelty easy to miss.
“She brought a baby gift,” I continued. “Then she started asking questions about your father’s estate.”
Claire leaned closer.
“What questions?”
“She wanted to know if Ryan had added our baby to any family documents.”
Ryan’s expression hardened.
“What did you say?”
“That we had updated our wills.”
“Did you tell her where the documents were?”
“No. She walked through the study while I was making coffee. I thought she was looking at the nursery plans.”
“She was searching for the trust letter,” Claire said.
I nodded.
Rebecca had hugged me before leaving.
She had touched my stomach and said she could not wait to meet her niece or nephew.
Now that memory made my skin crawl.
Detective Brooks returned half an hour later.
Officers had found Daniel Reeves’s office open and empty.
There was blood on the edge of his desk.
Not much.
But enough to confirm something had happened.
His car remained in the parking garage.
Rebecca’s SUV had been recorded leaving the building twelve minutes after his call to Ryan.
“She took him,” Ryan said.
“We don’t know that yet,” the detective replied.
“We heard her voice.”
“We heard a voice you identified as hers. We still need evidence.”
Ryan looked ready to argue, but I called his name.
“Go.”
He turned toward me.
“I’m not leaving you.”
“Your daughter may be in danger.”
His face tightened at the word daughter.
Claire stood.
“I’m going to Fort Worth.”
Detective Brooks shook his head.
“You need to stay somewhere secure.”
“I’m not hiding while my child is threatened.”
Ryan looked between Claire and me.
I knew what he wanted.
He wanted to protect everyone.
But there was no way to be a husband to me and a father to Ava in two cities at once.
“Go with Claire,” I said.
“No.”
“I’m surrounded by doctors and security. Ava has a locked door and a frightened aunt.”
“Emily—”
“Go meet your daughter.”
His eyes filled.
“I shouldn’t meet her like this.”
“You already lost nine years. Don’t lose another night.”
Ryan kissed me gently.
Then he rested his hand against my stomach.
“I’ll come back.”
“You’d better.”
Claire waited near the door.
Before she followed him out, she looked at me.
“Thank you.”
“Keep him safe.”
She nodded.
“And you keep that envelope safe.”
Detective Brooks took the original documents into evidence.
Claire’s attorney had digital copies, but no one could reach him.
The hospital assigned an officer to my floor.
My parents arrived just after midnight.
My mother rushed to my bed and held me so tightly I could barely breathe.
My father stood behind her.
He looked exhausted.
Then he saw the bruise beginning to form beneath my hospital gown.
His expression changed.
“I’m going to kill her.”
“Dad.”
“She attacked my daughter and granddaughter.”
My mother stared at me.
“Granddaughter?”
Despite everything, I smiled.
“The doctor accidentally told us.”
My father covered his mouth.
For a moment, the fear disappeared.
We talked about names.
My mother suggested Rose, after her grandmother.
My father suggested Patricia, after my mother, which made her cry.
I told them Ryan and I had not decided.
Then my father’s phone rang.
He glanced at the number.
“Unknown caller.”
“Don’t answer,” I said.
It rang again.
Then mine did too.
The nurse had placed my broken phone in a plastic bag, so the sound came from Ryan’s spare phone on the table.
A message appeared.
You should have left our family alone.
The sender had attached a photograph.
It showed my parents’ auto shop.
Smoke was pouring through the windows.
My father ran into the hall.
My mother followed him.
“Dad, stop!”
He was already calling his manager.
The fire department had responded minutes earlier.
No one was inside.
But the office and customer records were gone.
Detective Brooks returned.
He took the phone and studied the message.
“Do not respond.”
“They burned my parents’ business,” I said.
“We don’t know who started the fire.”
“Yes, we do.”
The monitor beside me began to beep.
A nurse hurried in.
Detective Brooks lowered his voice.
“Mrs. Walker, I need you calm.”
“Then arrest Rebecca.”
“We’re trying to locate her.”
“And Margaret?”
“She was released.”
I stared at him.
“What?”
“She posted bail.”
“She kicked a pregnant woman.”
“The judge imposed conditions. She cannot contact you or come within five hundred feet of this hospital or your home.”
I almost laughed.
Margaret had ignored boundaries her entire life.
A court order was only paper.
“Who paid her bail?” my father asked.
Detective Brooks looked at Ryan’s phone.
“Rebecca.”
Of course she had.
My mother sat beside me.
“Come home with us when the doctors release you.”
“The shop was attacked.”
“Then we’ll go somewhere else.”
I looked toward the window.
Ryan and Claire were driving toward a daughter he had never met.
Daniel Reeves was missing.
Rebecca was hiding.
Margaret was free.
There was nowhere safe to go.
At two in the morning, Ryan called.
His voice was quiet.
“We found Ava.”
I closed my eyes in relief.
“Is she safe?”
“Yes. She and Claire’s sister are at a police station.”
“Did you meet her?”
A long pause followed.
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“She looked at me and asked if I was sorry.”
My heart broke for him.
“What did you say?”
“I told her I was sorry for every birthday, every school play, every scraped knee, and every night she wondered why I wasn’t there.”
“What did she say?”
“She asked if I wanted to see her drawings.”
I smiled through my tears.
“That sounds promising.”
“She draws houses.”
There was something strange in his voice.
“What kind of houses?”
“The same house in every picture. Ours.”
I sat up.
“How would she know what our house looks like?”
“Claire doesn’t know.”
He sent me a photograph.
Ava had drawn our redbrick Dallas home.
The front porch.
The oak tree.
The upstairs nursery window.
The details were exact.
At the bottom of the page, in a child’s handwriting, she had written:
Grandma says this house should have been mine.
“Margaret met her,” I whispered.
“Ava says a woman visited her three times. She introduced herself as a friend of Claire’s mother.”
“Did she know it was Margaret?”
“I showed her a photograph.”
“And?”
“It was Mom.”
Claire’s voice sounded in the background.
She was asking Ava another question.
Then Ryan went silent.
“What is it?” I asked.
He returned to the phone.
“Ava says Mom gave her a necklace.”
“Why?”
“She said it was a family gift.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
Ryan’s next words came slowly.
“The necklace has a tracking device inside it.”
I gripped the blanket.
Margaret had not merely watched Ava.
She had tracked her.
Ryan continued.
“There’s more. Ava says Margaret kept asking whether Claire stored important papers at her apartment.”
“The trust records.”
“Yes.”
A new message appeared on Ryan’s phone while we spoke.
It came from Rebecca.
A photograph loaded.
Daniel Reeves was tied to a chair.
His face was bruised, but he was conscious.
Rebecca stood behind him holding a document.
May you like
Beneath the picture was one sentence.
Bring Claire’s evidence to Dad’s lake house before sunrise, or the lawyer dies with the truth.
