Chapter 6 - Another Accident
My husband, David, had been dead for eighteen months.
A single-car crash on a wet road.
That was what the report said.
He had worked nights as a medical transport driver.
He had kissed Lily’s forehead before his last shift and promised pancakes in the morning.
For a year afterward, she refused pancakes.
Alexander watched me read the message.
“What is it?”
I handed Ortiz the phone.
She looked at me carefully.
“Your husband worked for a transport company?”
“Northline Medical.”
Rebecca went pale.
“What?”
She turned her laptop around.
Northline appeared in the payment records she had pulled from the trust’s supporting documents.
The transfers came through a Whitmore-controlled property business.
Same monthly amount.
Same date.
For almost three years.
I sat because my knees had stopped feeling reliable.
David had started coming home quiet near the end.
I thought he was tired.
I had been tired, too.
We had a child, overdue bills, and a dishwasher that flooded whenever we forgot to wedge a towel beneath it.
Ordinary problems.
I had not recognized fear wearing my husband’s face.
Ortiz crouched in front of me.
“This message could be intended to frighten you.
We don’t know that it means his death was connected.”
“He changed something on his phone before he died.”
“What?”
“He made a new backup.
He asked me not to delete it.”
I had kept his old phone in a kitchen drawer.
Not because of evidence.
Because sometimes Lily wanted to hear the silly voicemail he had recorded.
I called June.
“Is David’s phone still in the blue tin?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t turn it on.
An officer will pick it up.”
I looked toward the door.
For one ugly second, I wanted to leave.
Let the Whitmores tear each other apart.
Get Lily somewhere nobody knew our names.
Then I remembered the photograph.
They already knew.
Vanessa stood at the far end of the room beside her attorney.
She was crying now, quietly.
I walked over.
“Who sent that message?”
“I don’t know.”
I held up the photograph of Lily.
Vanessa stared.
“Cynthia handles Vale.”
“Where is Elise?”
“I don’t know the address.”
“Then tell me what you do know.”
Her attorney touched her arm.
“Don’t answer.”
Vanessa looked at Alexander.
He did not move toward her.
“She’s somewhere called Briar House,” she whispered.
Ortiz came closer.
May you like
Vanessa swallowed.
“And if they move her tonight, you won’t find her under her own name.”
