Chapter 3 - The Woman Who Knew Sarah
The door swung inward.
Mrs. Parker stood there trembling.
Rachel lowered her weapon.
"Where have you been?"
"Hiding."
"From whom?"
"He came back."
"David?"
Mrs. Parker nodded.
"He's alive?"
"I never believed he was dead."
Rachel entered the room.
"Tell me everything."
The story came in fragments.
Sarah Bennett had worked part-time in billing for a private medical transport company.
Seven years earlier, she discovered records showing that emergency transports were being billed for patients who never existed.
Money disappeared through shell companies.
David Mercer worked there.
But he hadn't created the scheme.
He had discovered it too.
"Sarah trusted him," Mrs. Parker said.
"Then why did he take Mark?"
"I don't know."
"What did Sarah find?"
"A ledger."
"Where?"
"She never told me."
The night Sarah died, she had planned to meet David.
She never arrived.
Her car went off a rural road.
Police called it an accident.
Mark accepted that conclusion because there was no evidence otherwise.
Until recently.
"What changed?"
"Mark found Sarah's old email account."
Rachel leaned closer.
"How?"
"Ellie needed family medical history. Mark searched an old computer."
He found messages between Sarah and David.
One message mentioned Mrs. Parker.
So Mark confronted her.
"And you told him?"
"Some."
"Not everything?"
"I was scared."
Rachel's jaw tightened.
"Your fear may have put him in danger."
Mrs. Parker began crying.
"I know."
Rachel's phone rang.
A detective had traced David Mercer's identity.
His death certificate was fraudulent.
He had been living under another name.
More importantly, investigators found a storage unit connected to that alias.
Inside were boxes of medical records.
Photographs.
Old billing statements.
And a map.
One location had been circled.
The service road where the SUV was found.
Another location was marked farther north.
An abandoned medical transport depot.
Rachel joined the search team.
They arrived shortly after midnight.
The depot looked deserted.
One building remained locked.
Police forced entry.
Inside were folding chairs.
Empty water bottles.
Rope.
A bloody bandage.
"Mark was here," Rachel said.
Forensics found his fingerprint on a chair.
But no Mark.
On a desk sat an old laptop.
A technician opened it.
A video file had been created hours earlier.
Rachel clicked.
David Mercer appeared on-screen.
"If police are watching this, you found the wrong place too late."
Rachel's eyes narrowed.
David continued.
"Mark Bennett isn't my prisoner."
Everyone in the room went silent.
"He came with me because he finally understood what happened to Sarah."
Rachel leaned toward the screen.
"Then where is he?"
As though answering her, David continued.
"We were followed from the pharmacy. The people who killed Sarah know Mark found the ledger."
Rachel looked at the others.
David held something toward the camera.
A handwritten page.
Names.
Dates.
Payments.
"The fraud wasn't the reason Sarah died. This was."
The video distorted.
Then returned.
"Children were being transported through the company under false identities. Sarah discovered one child whose records had been changed."
Rachel's stomach tightened.
David's face hardened.
"That child was Ellie."
The video ended.
Nobody spoke.
Rachel immediately called the hospital.
"Put security outside Ellie Bennett's room."
Already there.
She called Daniel.
"Nobody gets access to that child without verification."
Then she returned to the laptop.
There was another file.
A scanned document.
Ellie's birth record.
The mother listed was Sarah Bennett.
The father listed was Mark Bennett.
But another document beneath it showed an amended hospital admission record.
A different surname had been erased.
Rachel stared at it.
This case had just changed again.
She drove to the hospital.
Mark wasn't merely missing because he investigated Sarah's death.
Someone had been protecting a secret connected to Ellie for seven years.
Ellie was sleeping when Rachel arrived.
A nurse stood nearby.
"She's doing better."
Rachel looked through the glass.
"Good."
Her phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
One text.
DON'T TRUST DAVID.
Then another.
MARK IS STILL ALIVE.
Rachel typed:
PROVE IT.
A photograph arrived.
Mark sat inside a dim room holding today's newspaper.
Bruised.
Exhausted.
Alive.
Rachel enlarged the image.
Behind Mark was a wall.
On it, someone had written an address.
Rachel recognized the street.
It was less than two miles away.
May you like
Then a final message appeared.
COME ALONE OR HE DIES.
