Chapter 7 - THE WOMAN WHO RAN
Margaret knew the mansion better than the police.
There was an old service passage behind the pantry.
By the time officers discovered it, she had been gone nearly forty minutes.
But Margaret made one mistake.
She used her own driver.
Police found the sedan abandoned near a private airfield.
No Margaret.
No driver.
No flight plan.
At sunrise, Detective Ramirez met me at the hospital.
“We froze her passport.”
“She has others.”
“How do you know?”
“My mother taught me never to assume powerful people follow ordinary rules.”
Ramirez studied me.
“Fair.”
Noah slept against my chest.
His little hand was wrapped around my finger.
I had spent half the night watching him breathe.
Ramirez sat opposite me.
“Forensics opened the basement floor.”
I looked up.
“And?”
“No body.”
Relief hit me first.
Then confusion.
“What was under it?”
“A metal case.”
“Another one?”
“This one was sealed.”
He handed me photographs.
Cash.
Passports.
Two guns.
Old newspaper clippings.
And a stack of handwritten letters.
One name appeared repeatedly.
Rebecca.
“She was planning to disappear?” I asked.
“Maybe.”
Ramirez slid over another photo.
The letters were addressed to Charles Mercer.
Rebecca’s handwriting.
I read one line visible in the photograph.
Margaret knows Daniel is not hers, and I believe she intends to make sure no one can prove I am his mother.
I looked up.
“There’s more?”
“A lot more.”
“Where is Rebecca?”
“We don’t know.”
“What about Emily?”
Ramirez leaned forward.
“We reopened the accident investigation.”
My heart started pounding.
“And?”
“The brake line on her car had been replaced three days before the crash.”
“I remember. Margaret arranged the service.”
Ramirez nodded.
“The repair shop has no record of replacing it.”
I froze.
“So someone worked on her car somewhere else.”
“That’s what we think.”
“Margaret.”
“We need evidence.”
I stood too fast.
Noah woke and began fussing.
I forced myself to calm down.
Then Ramirez’s phone rang.
He answered.
Listened.
His expression changed.
“What?”
He stood.
“We found Margaret’s driver.”
“Where?”
“Behind an abandoned warehouse near the airfield.”
“Alive?”
“Barely.”
Ramirez moved toward the door.
I followed.
“What did he say?”
“He managed to give officers one sentence before they took him into surgery.”
“What sentence?”
Ramirez looked directly at me.
“He said Margaret isn’t running away.”
My stomach tightened.
“Then what is she doing?”
“She’s going to finish something she started fourteen years ago.”
I stared at him.
Fourteen years.
Not twenty-eight.
Not fourteen months.
Fourteen years.
Then I remembered something.
Fourteen years ago was when my father’s old estate manager disappeared.
May you like
A man named Samuel Hale.
Rebecca’s younger brother.
