Chapter 6
I felt rage rising.
“You used me.”
“I’m trying to keep both of us out of prison.”
“No,” I said. “You started trying after you realized he would sacrifice you too.”
Vanessa went pale.
She didn’t argue.
That silence was the closest thing to honesty I had gotten from either of them.
Evelyn spent the next hour making calls.
Federal agents wanted the evidence.
We were instructed not to contact Daniel again.
But then my phone rang.
Daniel.
I let it ring.
Then another call came.
No caller ID.
Evelyn answered on speaker.
“Claire?”
Daniel’s voice.
He had blocked his number.
“Where is Noah?”
My chest tightened.
“He’s safe.”
“You took my son.”
“He’s my son too.”
“We need to talk.”
“No.”
“Claire, you have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into.”
For years, those words would have frightened me.
That night, they only made me angry.
“I know exactly what I got myself out of.”
Silence.
Then Daniel’s voice changed.
Soft.
Almost tender.
“Come home.”
I laughed.
“No.”
“Claire.”
“No.”
Another pause.
“Ask Vanessa what happened to Ethan.”
Vanessa went white.
I looked at her.
“Who is Ethan?”
Daniel hung up.
Vanessa backed toward the wall.
Evelyn stood.
“Who is Ethan?”
Vanessa’s hands trembled.
“My brother.”
I stared at her.
“What happened to him?”
She closed her eyes.
“He used to work for Daniel.”
The truth came slowly.
Ethan Cole had been a junior accountant at Mercer Development.
Three years earlier, he found irregular vendor payments.
He confronted Daniel.
Two weeks later, he died in a car accident.
The police found no evidence of foul play.
Vanessa had always believed it was an accident.
Until she found an email from Daniel written the night before Ethan died.
He’s becoming a liability.
I felt sick.
“You knew this and still stayed with him?”
Her eyes filled with tears.
“I didn’t know until three months ago.”
“Then why didn’t you go to the police?”
“Because Daniel had documents with my name on them. Because I was sleeping with him. Because he told me no one would believe me.”
I understood that fear more than I wanted to.
But Evelyn remained cold.
“You still have to tell investigators everything.”
“I will.”
The federal agents arrived before midnight.
They copied files, interviewed Vanessa, and photographed every document.
Noah slept through most of it in the guest room.
At dawn, an agent named Ruiz asked me something strange.