Chapter 11 - MY SISTER’S MESSAGE
Every eye in the room turned toward Rachel.
“That isn’t mine,” she said.
“The number is registered to you,” Ortiz replied.
“I’ve never seen it.”
Amanda leaned back in her chair.
“Everyone in this family says that when their signature shows up.”
Rachel lunged toward her, but I caught her.
“Don’t.”
“You believe her?”
“I don’t know what to believe anymore.”
That was the ugliest truth of all.
Ortiz asked Rachel for her regular phone. A forensic technician compared the two devices and discovered the private number had been activated using a copy of Rachel’s driver’s license.
The activation occurred at a convenience store near Amanda’s apartment.
Security footage showed a woman in a baseball cap buying the prepaid phone.
She looked like Rachel from a distance.
When the clerk zoomed in, we saw a small tattoo behind her ear.
Amanda had the same tattoo.
Amanda stopped smiling.
“You used my sister’s identity,” I said.
“Darren told me it was insurance.”
Rachel stepped close enough that only the table separated them.
“You let him lock me in a trunk.”
“I didn’t know he would do that.”
“You never know anything until someone gets hurt.”
Amanda lowered her eyes.
For the first time, she looked ashamed.
Ortiz wasn’t moved.
“Where would Darren go if the plan collapsed?”
Amanda hesitated.
“I need protection.”
“Give me something useful.”
“He has a plane.”
Ortiz immediately contacted federal authorities.
Amanda explained that Darren maintained a private hangar under the name Daniel Vale. His escape plan involved flying to Canada before crossing overseas with forged passports.
One of those passports was for Sophie.
Another was for Amanda.
“Why would he take you?” I asked.
“He wouldn’t. He wanted police to believe I escaped with him.”
Darren had planned to kill Amanda too.
The realization finally cracked her composure.
“He said he loved me.”
“No,” Claire said from the doorway.
She had left the hospital against medical advice, her shoulder bandaged beneath a borrowed coat.
“He studies what people need to hear. Then he turns those words into a leash.”
Ortiz ordered her back to the hospital, but Claire handed her a tracking device.
She had hidden it inside the folder Darren wanted.
“The signal just moved,” Claire said.
A red dot traveled across the map toward the private airport.
Darren had managed to steal the wrong folder during the church attack.
And he was carrying our tracker directly to his plane.
Then a second signal appeared beside it.
May you like
Martin Hale’s hospital bracelet was moving with him.
Darren had taken the only living man who knew where the original ownership certificates were hidden.
