The Dog Everyone Feared Chose a Little Girl—Then He Exposed a Secret Inside the Estate

Claire stared at the document on Ellis’s screen.

Her signature was at the bottom. Above it was a statement describing a delivery she had witnessed at a warehouse three years earlier. It named Rourke, a driver, and a young accountant who had disappeared soon afterward.

“I never signed this,” she said.

Ellis enlarged the signature. Claire recognized the shape of her letters, but the last stroke was wrong.

“Where were you working three years ago?” Ellis asked.

“At a hotel downtown. Housekeeping.”

Grant remembered the hotel. Rourke’s people had used its conference rooms for private meetings.

Claire’s face drained of color. “I did see something.”

She had been restocking a meeting room when two men argued in the hall. One held a folder against his chest. The other told him to get in the car and stop asking questions. Claire remembered the accountant’s face because he had looked frightened and apologized when he nearly ran into her cart.

A week later, she had learned he was missing.

“Why didn’t you tell anyone?” Ellis asked.

“I told a detective. He took my statement in the hotel lobby.” Claire swallowed. “He said they’d call if they needed me.”

Nobody had called.

Ellis checked the old case file. Claire’s original statement was gone. The one on Grant’s drive had been rewritten to make it sound as if Claire had seen Rourke order the accountant into the car.

“That would put you at the center of the case,” Ellis said.

“And someone used my name to do it,” Claire answered.

Grant turned toward her. “Did you know I owned a share of that hotel?”

“No.”

His stomach sank. The hotel’s records could have led Rourke to Claire long before she came to work at the estate. Had her application been a coincidence? Or had Victor put her there?

Ellis called the estate’s hiring office. Victor had recommended Claire personally. He had told the manager she needed work and came with excellent references.

Claire felt sick. “He found me.”

“He placed you near Grant,” Ellis said. “He may have thought he could use you if the records surfaced.”

“And Lily?”

Ellis didn’t answer immediately.

Grant’s phone buzzed. A video had arrived from Victor’s number. It showed the burning warehouse. Then the camera turned to a man sitting in the passenger seat of a car.

The missing accountant.