Chapter 7 - THE MAN WHO NEVER DROWNED
Police traced Brooke’s call to a roadside motel outside the city.
By the time officers arrived, she was gone.
So was Chloe.
The motel room was destroyed.
Blood on the bathroom floor.
A broken phone near the bed.
No bodies.
No witnesses.
Richard’s phone was off.
Vivian’s too.
I sat in Sarah’s office staring at the photos.
“This is my fault.”
“No,” Sarah said.
“If I hadn’t kicked them out—”
“Stop.”
She pointed toward me.
“Richard created this.”
A detective named Marcus Hale entered.
He had gray hair and the exhausted expression of a man who had seen too many families destroy themselves.
“We reopened Daniel Carter’s missing persons case.”
My heart skipped.
“Because of Brooke?”
“And the DNA report.”
“Did you find anything?”
Marcus placed a photograph on the table.
A man walking into a pharmacy.
Baseball cap.
Beard.
Thin face.
The image was blurry.
But I knew those eyes.
I stood so quickly my chair fell over.
“No.”
“Amanda?”
“That’s Daniel.”
Marcus nodded.
“The photo was taken eighteen months after his supposed drowning.”
I couldn’t breathe.
“He was alive?”
“It appears so.”
“Where?”
“Idaho.”
“Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
“Because no one knew it was him.”
He slid another photo toward me.
Daniel leaving the pharmacy.
This time, another man stood beside him.
Richard.
My vision blurred.
“No.”
Marcus leaned forward.
“We believe Richard knew Daniel survived.”
I stared at the photograph.
“Why?”
“That’s what we’re trying to understand.”
Sarah spoke softly.
“Money.”
Marcus nodded.
“Possibly.”
He opened another folder.
“Daniel inherited shares in Carter Industrial from his grandfather.”
I knew that.
Daniel rarely spoke about the company.
“He sold them before he disappeared.”
Marcus shook his head.
“No.”
“What?”
“He transferred temporary voting control.”
“To who?”
Marcus turned the paper.
The name printed at the bottom made my stomach twist.
Vivian Whitman.
“That can’t be right.”
“It is.”
“But Daniel hated Vivian.”
Marcus raised an eyebrow.
“Daniel knew Vivian?”
I froze.
“I thought they’d never met.”
The detective leaned back.
“Then somebody has been rewriting your history.”
My phone rang.
Unknown number again.
I answered immediately.
“Amanda?”
A man’s voice.
Weak.
Raspy.
Familiar.
My heart stopped.
“Daniel?”
Silence.
Then—
“Don’t trust Richard.”
My eyes filled with tears.
“Where are you?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Daniel, where are you?”
“He knows Ethan isn’t safe.”
The call crackled.
“Who knows?”
“Richard.”
“Why?”
May you like
Daniel whispered something that made my blood turn to ice.
“Because Ethan owns what Richard has been trying to steal for five years.”
