Chapter 4 - Claire’s Missing Forty-Eight Hours
The woman outside was Rebecca Shaw.
Two officers immediately detained her.
Rebecca insisted she had come because Voss had escaped the airport surveillance team.
But she had something more important.
David’s autopsy.
Not the official one.
A private toxicology report.
David had ordered bloodwork days before his death because he had begun experiencing unexplained dizziness.
The report showed traces of a medication he had never been prescribed.
It didn't prove murder.
But it proved Evelyn had been denied information.
Rebecca had hidden the report.
That confession destroyed whatever sympathy Evelyn might have possessed.
“You don't get to decide which truth my family can survive.”
Rebecca lowered her head.
“I know.”
“No. You don't.”
Claire asked Rebecca about the forty-eight hours between arriving at Solstice Haven and waking in the basement.
Rebecca hesitated.
Grant had transported her.
But before that, Claire had been kept at the retreat.
During those two days, Voss personally questioned her.
“What did I tell him?” Claire asked.
“Nothing useful.”
“What did he want?”
“David's files.”
Claire looked at Evelyn.
Grant and Voss believed David had left more evidence.
They thought Claire had inherited it.
She hadn't.
But now Evelyn remembered something.
David’s old camera.
He had taken it everywhere.
After his death, she stored it in the basement of her own house.
Ortiz sent officers with her.
The camera was still there.
Inside was a memory card.
Most photographs were ordinary.
Fishing trips.
Claire’s graduation.
Evelyn gardening.
Then came photographs David had never shown her.
Voss entering Solstice Haven.
Grant meeting Voss years before Grant married Claire.
That changed everything.
Grant hadn't stumbled into the conspiracy through consulting.
He had known Voss before he met Claire.
Claire's marriage itself might have begun as part of the scheme.
Evelyn couldn't imagine telling her.
But Claire saw her face.
“What?”
Evelyn showed her.
Claire stared at the photograph.
Grant and Voss.
Date stamped nine years earlier.
Claire met Grant seven years ago.
Her voice disappeared.
“He knew who I was.”
Evelyn held her hand.
“Maybe.”
“No.”
Claire enlarged the photograph.
Grant held a folder.
David Mercer was written across it.
“He knew.”
Claire began shaking.
Every anniversary.
Every vacation.
Every morning beside him.
Was any of it real?
Evelyn couldn't answer.
That night Grant requested to speak with Claire through his attorney.
Claire refused.
Then he offered something.
The location of David's remaining records.
In exchange, he wanted a deal.
Ortiz told him deals weren't hers to promise.
Grant gave them the location anyway.
A safe-deposit box.
Inside were financial records and a letter from David.
This one was unquestionably genuine.
David wrote that he had discovered Voss's fraud.
But he also wrote something unexpected.
Grant had contacted him.
Years before marrying Claire.
Grant had originally worked for Voss.
Then he tried to become an informant.
David believed Grant genuinely wanted out.
Evelyn read the next sentence twice.
Grant says he has fallen in love with Claire. I don't know whether that makes him safer or more dangerous.
Claire closed her eyes.
The marriage hadn't necessarily been fake.
That somehow made everything worse.
Grant may have loved her.
And still imprisoned her.
Claire folded the letter.
“Love doesn't excuse what he did.”
“No,” Evelyn said. “It doesn't.”
For the first time since the rescue, Claire sounded certain.
Ortiz entered with news.
Voss had been found.
His vehicle was abandoned near a private airfield.
But Voss himself was gone.
Inside the car police discovered a burner phone.
One unsent message remained.
It was addressed to Grant.
ONLY CLAIRE KNOWS WHERE DAVID PUT THE ORIGINAL LEDGER.
Claire stared at it.
“I don't know.”
Evelyn believed her.
Then Claire suddenly looked toward her father's letter.
“Wait.”
She unfolded it.
At the bottom David had written something Evelyn had overlooked:
Some truths should be kept where the first lesson was learned.
Claire whispered:
“The first lesson.”
Evelyn understood at the same moment.
The SOS code.
David had been there when Evelyn taught seven-year-old Claire the signal.
They were camping beside Lake Bell.
David turned the lesson into a game.
He had hidden a little metal box beneath their cabin porch and made Claire find it using clues.
That cabin still belonged to Evelyn.
Ortiz ordered officers dispatched immediately.
But the property was nearly two hours away.
They arrived after midnight.
The cabin looked untouched.
Evelyn walked to the porch.
Claire, still recovering, had remained at the hospital.
Ortiz crouched beside Evelyn.
They removed an old wooden panel.
Behind it sat a rusted metal box.
Evelyn reached toward it.
Ortiz stopped her.
“Let forensics handle it.”
An officer photographed the box and opened it carefully.
Inside was a ledger.
David's handwriting covered the pages.
Names.
Dates.
Accounts.
Payments.
Enough to expose the entire network.
Then Evelyn saw the final page.
One name had been circled.
GRANT BENNETT.
Beside it David had written:
He came to me tonight. He wants to help.
Underneath was another sentence.
If Grant changes his mind, Claire will be the price.
Evelyn stared at the words.
A floorboard creaked inside the supposedly empty cabin.
Ortiz raised her flashlight.
“Police!”
No answer.
Then the bedroom door slowly opened.
A man stepped into the hallway.
Evelyn recognized him immediately.
May you like
Harold Voss smiled.
And in his hand was Claire's hospital bracelet.
