Chapter 5 - THE FIRE
Flames swallowed the hallway within seconds.
Rachel kicked at the emergency exit.
It wouldn’t open.
“Locked.”
Smoke filled my lungs.
The ledger.
The flash drive.
Dad’s letter.
Six years of buried truth were sitting inside that room.
Rachel grabbed a metal chair and smashed the small window.
“Go!”
“What about the evidence?”
“Take the drive!”
I shoved it into my pocket.
We climbed through the broken window seconds before flames consumed the ceiling.
Firefighters arrived quickly.
But most of the storage unit was destroyed.
The ledger burned.
Dad’s original letter burned.
The safe warped from the heat.
The flash drive survived because it was in my pocket.
Someone had tried to erase the evidence again.
Security footage showed a hooded person entering twelve minutes before us.
The vehicle used had stolen plates.
But one camera caught a partial face.
Rachel stared at the image.
“Do you recognize her?”
Her.
The arsonist was a woman.
I did recognize her.
Linda Mercer.
Detective Mercer’s wife.
By midnight, police were at the Mercer home.
Linda was gone.
Alan Mercer claimed he hadn’t seen her.
Investigators didn’t believe him.
Then they searched the house.
They found $480,000 in cash.
A burner phone.
And photographs of my family.
Some were recent.
Ethan at school.
Me leaving work.
Mom being transported between prison buildings.
We had been watched for years.
The burner phone contained dozens of messages to Victor.
One from six years earlier read:
C IS READY TO TAKE THE FALL.
Another:
KNIFE PLANTED.
Then:
KID MAY HAVE SEEN SOMETHING.
My stomach turned.
Ethan.
Victor’s reply was worse.
HE’S TWO. HE WON’T REMEMBER.
There it was.
Proof.
But the next message confused everyone.
Mercer had written:
WHAT ABOUT SOPHIE?
Victor replied:
LEAVE HER TO ME.
I stared at those words for a long time.
Rachel touched my shoulder.
“You okay?”
“No.”
Because I suddenly remembered something.
Three days after Dad died, Victor had taken me driving.
He had told me Mom was probably guilty.
He had told me accepting the truth would help me heal.
He had planted doubt before the trial even began.
Victor hadn’t just framed my mother.
He had manipulated her daughter into abandoning her.
The realization made me sick.
Mom had spent six years writing letters to a daughter Victor had taught not to believe her.
The next morning, I visited her.
“I’m sorry.”
Mom shook her head.
“No.”
“I believed him.”
“You were seventeen.”
“I stopped visiting.”
“You were a child.”
“I ignored your letters.”
“You read them.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you kept them.”
I started crying.
Mom reached through the opening beneath the glass.
I pressed my fingers against hers.
“You survived,” she whispered.
“That’s all I ever wanted.”
I wanted to tell her she was coming home.
But Rachel had warned me.
The conviction still existed.
The state would fight.
The original prosecutor, Thomas Reed, insisted the new evidence did not conclusively prove innocence.
His statement made national news.
“The jury considered overwhelming physical evidence.”
I watched it from Mom’s visitation room.
Mom stared at the television.
Then whispered:
“He knows.”
“Who?”
“Reed.”
“The prosecutor?”
Mom nodded.
“Victor met with him before my trial.”
I felt cold.
“How do you know?”
“I saw them.”
The conspiracy had just become bigger.
Much bigger.
Then Rachel called me.
“Sophie.”
Her voice was tight.
“We found Linda Mercer.”
“Where?”
“Dead.”
I closed my eyes.
Rachel continued.
“And there’s something you need to know.”
“What?”
“She left a note.”
May you like
I waited.
“It says Caroline Hayes ordered the murder of Daniel Hayes.”
