Chapter 5 - THE LETTER
Police filled the mansion.
Diane was arrested.
Vanessa escaped through an old tunnel leading to the neighboring vineyard.
Lucas sat inside an ambulance with Lily wrapped in a blanket beside him.
Maria was treated for her injury under police protection.
Detective Noah Grant approached them.
“I need the letter.”
Lily looked at Lucas before handing over the folded pages.
“Can Dad read it first?”
Grant hesitated.
Then he photographed each page and returned the original.
Lucas unfolded the letter.
His hands shook as he read Rachel’s final words.
Lucas,
If you’re reading this, Vanessa found a way back into our lives.
You knew her as my college roommate, but I never told you the whole truth. Vanessa became obsessed with everything I had. My career. My home. You.
When Daniel discovered money disappearing from Bennett Development, he traced it to shell companies controlled by Diane Mercer. Vanessa begged me to stay quiet. She said her mother would go to prison.
Then Daniel’s brakes failed.
Lucas stopped reading.
Lily leaned closer.
“Keep going, Dad.”
He forced himself to continue.
Daniel sent me copies of the records before he died. I hid them where Vanessa would never search—in Lily’s music box.
If something happens to me, do not accept an accident as the truth.
And protect Lily. She saw Vanessa inside our garage the night before Daniel died. She was too young to understand, but Vanessa knows she was there.
Lucas looked at his daughter.
“Do you remember?”
Lily’s face tightened.
“A woman was standing by Uncle Daniel’s car.”
“Was it Vanessa?”
“I never saw her face.”
Maria approached slowly.
“But I did.”
She explained that Rachel had asked her to follow Vanessa after discovering the stolen money.
Maria saw Vanessa enter the company garage carrying a mechanic’s bag.
Two days later, Daniel’s brakes failed.
Rachel intended to expose her.
Then Rachel collapsed at home after drinking tea Vanessa had prepared.
The coroner ruled it a reaction to prescription medication.
“Vanessa switched the pills,” Maria said. “Rachel told me over the phone. By the time I reached the house, she was unconscious.”
“Why didn’t you tell the police?”
“I tried. Diane paid an officer to bury my statement. Then someone broke into my apartment and left pictures of my grandchildren on my bed.”
Detective Grant’s expression darkened.
“Do you know the officer’s name?”
Maria nodded.
“Captain Raymond Cole.”
Grant went still.
Cole was his commanding officer.
Lucas looked toward the mansion.
Captain Cole had arrived ten minutes earlier and was supposedly directing the search for Vanessa.
Grant quietly reached for his radio.
Before he could speak, every police channel erupted at once.
An officer shouted from inside the mansion.
“Detective, the Bennett girl is missing!”
Lucas spun around.
The blanket beside him was empty.
May you like
On the ambulance floor lay Lily’s music box—and a note written in red ink:
COME ALONE IF YOU WANT HER BACK.
