Chapter 5
Detective Chen asked me the same question three different ways.
“When did you meet Mark?”
“At a charity fundraiser.”
“Who invited you?”
“My coworker at the time.”
“What charity?”
“The Margaret Hope Foundation.”
Chen stopped writing.
“What?”
“That was its name.”
“Your mother was Margaret.”
“Yes.”
“Coincidence?”
“I thought so.”
“Who founded the charity?”
I searched my memory.
“Westbridge sponsored it.”
Chen leaned back.
“Sarah, I don’t think your meeting was random.”
The idea made me nauseous.
“You think Mark targeted me?”
“I think we need to find out.”
I laughed softly.
Not because anything was funny.
Because sometimes terror gets so large your body doesn’t know what else to do.
“I was twenty-eight.”
Chen waited.
“He brought me coffee every morning for three weeks.”
I stared at my hands.
“He remembered everything I told him.”
My favorite restaurant.
My mother’s birthday.
The song she used to sing in the car.
The way I hated thunderstorms.
The fact I wanted children.
The fact I was lonely.
“He was perfect.”
Chen’s voice softened.
“People who want access to someone often work hard to become exactly what that person needs.”
My stomach turned.
“What did he want access to?”
“Maybe you.”
“Why?”
“Because your mother may have had something Thomas Mercer wanted protected.”
“The drives.”
“Possibly.”
“But if Mark had one, why stay married to me?”
Chen didn’t answer immediately.
“Maybe because he didn’t have everything.”
A knock came at the door.
An officer entered and handed Chen a folder.
She read the first page.
Her face changed.
“What?”
Chen looked at the officer.
“Where did they find this?”
“Kitchen wall. Behind the refrigerator.”
The officer left.
Chen turned the folder toward me.
Photographs from my house.
A small black camera hidden behind a vent.
Another inside a smoke detector.
Another behind a bookshelf.
I couldn’t breathe.
“He was recording us?”
“Investigators found four devices so far.”
I covered my mouth.
Emma.
Her bedroom.
Her conversations.
Every time I cried after Mark went to sleep.
Every phone call with Dad.
Every moment I thought I was alone.
Chen said, “We don’t yet know who installed them.”
“I do.”
“Don’t assume.”
“Mark controlled the house.”
“He may have.”
“He installed the security system.”
“That matters.”
I looked at her.
“Did they find anything in Emma’s room?”
“No devices have been reported there.”
Relief hit me so hard my eyes closed.
Then another thought came.
“What about the drive?”
“It has been secured pending a warrant.”
“Can Mark stop you from searching it?”
“He can challenge it. That doesn’t mean he’ll succeed.”
“Will he get out?”
“Possibly.”
My heart sank.
“Tonight?”
“Not likely tonight. But you should prepare as if he could be released soon.”
I nodded.
“Protective order?”
“An advocate is coming.”
“Good.”
She studied me.
“There’s something else.”
I almost laughed again.
Of course there was.
“What?”
“Your husband made a phone call from booking.”
“To his lawyer?”
“No.”
“Who?”
“A man named Richard Voss.”
The name meant nothing to me.
“Who is that?”
Chen’s expression remained neutral.
“Chief counsel for Westbridge Development.”
I stared at her.
“Mark called the company’s chief lawyer before calling his own attorney?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“That’s what I’d like to know.”
My phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
My heart jumped.
Chen saw the screen.
“Answer it.”
I looked at her.
“Put it on speaker.”
I accepted the call.
“Hello?”
Thomas’s voice.
“Where are you?”
Chen silently shook her head.
Don’t tell him.
I said, “Somewhere safe.”
“Robert with you?”
“Yes.”
“Emma?”
“She’s safe.”
“Good.”
His voice sounded relieved.
Then he said, “You took the drive?”
I looked at Chen.
“Yes.”
“Where is it?”
“I’m not telling you.”
Silence.
“Sarah.”
“You don’t get to disappear my entire life and start giving me orders.”
“I’m trying to keep you alive.”
“You didn’t even know Mark was hurting me.”
“That was my mistake.”
“One of many.”
He exhaled.
“You sound like your mother.”
I closed my eyes.
“Don’t.”
“Sarah—”
“Detective Laura Chen says you died eleven years ago.”
Silence.
Chen’s eyes widened slightly.
I had ignored her plan.
I didn’t care.
Thomas finally said, “Then Detective Chen has been reading the right files.”
Chen leaned toward the phone.
“Mr. Mercer, this is Detective Laura Chen.”
Thomas’s voice changed instantly.
Professional.
Guarded.
“Detective.”
“We need to speak.”
“No.”
“You contacted a potential victim in an active domestic violence investigation and gave information connected to a criminal matter.”
“I warned my daughter.”
“You also told her law enforcement may be compromised.”
“Some of it is.”
“Names.”
“Not on an unsecured line.”
Chen frowned.
“Then tell me where you are.”
“No.”
“If Sarah is in danger—”
“She is.”
“Then cooperate.”
“I tried that once.”
His voice turned cold.
“It got people killed.”
The room went silent.
Chen glanced at me.
“Who?”
Thomas ignored the question.
“Sarah, listen carefully. Mark doesn’t work for Westbridge.”
I frowned.
“He does.”
“No. He belongs to Westbridge.”
“What does that mean?”
“He was recruited out of college by Richard Voss.”
Chen began writing.
Thomas continued.
“Voss uses employees with clean backgrounds to move money, purchase properties, and collect information.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
“Your mother had a ledger.”
I felt Dad’s story returning.
“What ledger?”
“Payments. Shell companies. Names.”
“On the drives?”
“Yes.”
“Then why didn’t you expose it?”
“I did.”
Chen interrupted.
“No public case involving Westbridge produced a ledger.”
“Because the original disappeared before federal prosecutors could authenticate it.”
Thomas’s voice tightened.
“Your mother had the backups.”
I whispered, “And she died.”
Silence.
That silence told me enough.
“You think they killed her.”
“I know her crash wasn’t an accident.”
I stopped breathing.
Chen leaned closer.
“How do you know?”
“Because the mechanic who worked on her car disappeared forty-eight hours later.”
Dad had never told me that.
Thomas continued.
“And because Margaret called me twenty minutes before she crashed.”
My eyes filled.
“What did she say?”
Thomas didn’t answer.
“What did my mother say?”
His voice broke for the first time.
“She said they found her.”
I covered my mouth.
I could see my mother that morning.
Standing in our kitchen.
Hair still damp.
Coffee in one hand.
Kissing me on the cheek before leaving.
I had been annoyed with her.
I barely remembered why.
Something stupid.
She told me she loved me.
I said, “I know.”
Not “I love you too.”
For fourteen years, that had haunted me.
Thomas said, “I told her to drive to a state police station.”
“What happened?”
“She never made it.”
I started crying.
Chen slid tissues toward me.
I pushed them away.
“Why did you disappear?”
“Because I was next.”
“You left Dad alone.”
“I thought he’d be safer if they believed I was dead.”
“You left me.”
“I had no right to come into your life.”
“You’re my biological father.”
“Robert is your father.”
I looked at the phone.
That answer surprised me.
Thomas continued.
“He raised you. He loved you. He stayed when I couldn’t.”
Dad had called Thomas a criminal.
Thomas called Dad my father.
Nothing was simple.
“Why now?”
“Because Mark found me six months ago.”
Chen’s pen stopped.
“How?”
“He accessed sealed financial records.”
“Through Westbridge?”
“Yes.”
“And then?”
“He offered me a deal.”
“What deal?”
Thomas’s voice went flat.
“The drives for your life.”
My blood turned cold.
“He threatened me?”
“He sent me pictures of you and Emma.”
I looked at the surveillance photographs in the folder.
“What did you do?”
“I told him I didn’t have the drives.”
“Did he believe you?”
“No.”
“So he started pressuring me.”
“Yes.”
“The money?”
“What?”
I thought of the fight that started everything.
“He wanted money from Emma’s account.”
Thomas went silent.
Chen caught it.
“What’s special about the account?”
I looked at her.
“Nothing. It’s a college fund.”
Thomas said, “Who opened it?”
“I did.”
“With what bank?”
I told him.
He cursed.
“What?”
“Sarah, that wasn’t random either.”
I felt sick again.
“I chose a bank.”
“No. Mark encouraged you to choose it.”
I remembered.
He had.
He said their education accounts had better tax benefits.
“What’s wrong with the bank?”
Thomas answered.
“Westbridge controls a private investment company that owns a large stake in its parent corporation.”
Chen was already searching on her laptop.
Thomas continued.
“Mark didn’t want Emma’s savings.”
“Then what?”
“He wanted you to authorize a transfer.”
“To where?”
“A holding account.”
“Why?”
“Because your signature can unlock something his can’t.”
I stared at the phone.
“My signature?”
“You inherited something from Margaret.”
“No, I didn’t. Dad handled her estate.”
Chen’s face changed as she stared at her screen.
“Mrs. Bennett.”
I looked at her.
She rotated the laptop.
An old corporate filing.
A trust.
Created thirty-eight years ago.
Beneficiary: Margaret Elise Carter.
Secondary beneficiary: Sarah Elise Carter.
My maiden name.
My hands went cold.
“What is that?”
Thomas answered quietly.
“The reason Westbridge has been watching your family for thirty-seven years.”
I looked at the amount listed beside the trust’s original asset valuation.
It wasn’t a savings account.
It wasn’t even money.
It was shares.
Founding shares.
May you like
In Westbridge Development.
Enough shares to affect control of the entire company.
