Chapter 7 - THE TRUTH ABOUT THE NIGHT
They hid in an abandoned train station outside Bellhaven.
Emma slept beneath Claire’s coat while rain hammered the broken roof.
Adrian stood near the tracks, staring at the ledger.
“Tell me everything,” he said.
Claire wrapped her arms around herself. “The night I escaped, I was taken to an old clinic. Daniel was there.”
“Was he working with the Ledger?”
“He said he was trying to destroy it from the inside.”
“And the baby?”
“Emma was born early. She was sick. Daniel arranged for a doctor to save her.”
Adrian’s voice sharpened. “You trusted my brother with my child.”
“I had no choice.”
“You always had a choice. You could have come to me.”
“I thought you were being watched!”
“You didn’t know that.”
“I knew enough!”
Their voices echoed through the station.
Emma stirred.
Claire immediately lowered her voice.
Adrian looked away. For years, he had imagined Claire choosing to leave him. He had imagined her betrayal in a thousand different forms.
He had never imagined she left because she believed he was in danger too.
Marcus opened the ledger.
“Look at this.”
Several pages contained payments made through Adrian’s company. The transfers began seven years earlier, on the night Claire disappeared.
One name appeared repeatedly.
Evelyn Vale.
Adrian’s mother.
“She’s been dead for five years,” he said.
Marcus shook his head. “The accounts were active after her funeral.”
Claire moved closer. “Your mother may have faked her death.”
Adrian felt sick.
His mother had raised him after his father’s death. She had been the only person who stayed when Daniel became reckless. She had stood beside Adrian’s grave and cried with him when he buried Claire.
He remembered how tightly she had held his hand.
A phone rang inside the station.
Not Adrian’s.
Not Claire’s.
Emma’s small pink backpack.
Claire froze.
“That phone isn’t hers.”
Adrian opened the bag and found an old flip phone hidden beneath a stuffed rabbit.
It rang again.
He answered.
A woman whispered, “Adrian, don’t trust Claire.”
He recognized the voice.
His mother.
Adrian’s grip tightened around the phone.
“You’re dead.”
“I had to disappear.”
“Where are you?”
“Bring Emma to the old Vale hotel. Come alone.”
The call ended.
Claire stared at him. “What did she say?”
Adrian did not answer.
Outside, headlights appeared through the rain.
Several vehicles stopped near the station.
Men poured out.
Then a woman stepped from the center car.
She wore a red coat.
May you like
And Adrian knew her face.
Cliffhanger: His dead mother had come to collect Emma.
