Chapter 4 - The Woman Clare Warned Him About
Thomas was already moving toward his car when Detective Brooks caught his coat.
“Stop.”
“She has my children.”
“We know.”
“I am going after her.”
“In this weather? Driving like that?”
“She has my children.”
“And you getting killed on an icy road helps them how?”
Thomas tore his arm free.
Martin stepped between him and the garage.
“Thomas.”
“Move.”
“Listen to Brooks.”
Thomas stared at him.
For twenty years, people had moved when Thomas Hartley told them to move.
Martin did not.
“The police can track her faster than you can.”
Brooks was already speaking into her radio.
Vehicle description.
License plate.
Possible endangered minors.
State patrol notification.
Thomas stood in the garage while snow blew across the concrete floor.
The helplessness was unbearable.
He had money.
Influence.
Employees on three continents.
A private aircraft.
A security team.
And none of it mattered.
His daughter had been staring through the back window of a disappearing SUV.
“GPS,” he said suddenly.
Martin looked at him.
“The vehicle.”
Rachel’s SUV was part of the Hartley fleet account.
Martin pulled out his phone.
Thirty seconds later, he had the coordinates.
“She’s heading north.”
Brooks took the phone.
“Route?”
“Interstate first. Then maybe Route 23.”
Thomas frowned.
“What’s north?”
Rachel had no family there.
No friends he knew of.
Then he remembered something.
A lake house.
Rachel had mentioned it once.
Her parents had owned a cabin near the Catskills when she was young.
“It might still be in her family.”
Brooks transmitted the information.
They left in separate vehicles.
Thomas rode with Martin.
He watched the GPS point move on the screen.
Every mile felt like a year.
“Slow down,” he said.
“She’s doing eighty-two.”
Thomas’s mouth went dry.
In snow.
With two children.
The point continued north.
Then suddenly stopped.
Thomas stared.
“Why did it stop?”
“Could be traffic.”
Thirty seconds.
One minute.
Two.
Then the point vanished.
“What happened?”
Martin refreshed the system.
“No signal.”
“She disabled it?”
“Maybe.”
“Can she?”
“If she knows where the telematics unit is.”
Thomas looked out the windshield.
Rachel knew exactly where it was.
Because Thomas had once bragged about the fleet security system during dinner.
He had handed her the information.
Again.
Always him.
His schedule.
His absence.
His arrogance.
Every useful tool Rachel had turned against his family had entered the house through a door Thomas opened.
His phone rang.
Unknown number.
He answered instantly.
“Hello?”
Silence.
Then breathing.
“Emma?”
A tiny voice.
“Daddy?”
Thomas closed his eyes.
“I’m here.”
“She said not to call.”
“Where are you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“Noah?”
“He’s crying.”
Thomas heard his son in the background.
The sound nearly broke him.
“Emma, listen carefully. Can you see anything outside?”
“Trees.”
“What else?”
“A gas station.”
Martin immediately pulled the car over.
Thomas put the call on speaker.
“What color?”
“Red.”
“What does the sign say?”
“I don’t know.”
Emma sounded terrified.
“That’s okay. You’re doing perfectly.”
“She’s coming back.”
Thomas’s heart stopped.
“Emma, hide the phone.”
“I took it from her purse.”
“Good. Put it somewhere she won’t see.”
“Daddy?”
“Yes?”
“Mom left you something.”
Thomas frowned.
“What?”
“Not Rachel.”
His breathing stopped.
“Clare?”
Emma whispered.
“Mommy.”
Then the call ended.
Thomas stared at the phone.
Martin looked equally confused.
“How could Clare leave Emma something?”
Thomas did not answer.
Clare had died almost three years earlier.
Emma had been four.
What could she possibly have left?
They found the gas station through location triangulation from the brief call.
Rachel was gone.
But the clerk remembered her.
“She looked upset,” he told Brooks over the phone. “Had a little girl and baby. Bought diapers, water, batteries.”
“Which direction?”
“East.”
That meant she was not heading toward the old family cabin.
She was changing direction deliberately.
Running.
Brooks contacted surrounding departments.
Thomas paced beneath the fluorescent lights of the gas station.
Emma’s last sentence repeated in his mind.
Mom left you something.
Suddenly he remembered the day Clare died.
She had been weak.
Barely conscious.
Rachel had been there.
Everyone had.
Clare had asked Thomas to come closer.
She had whispered something.
“Desk.”
At the time, Thomas had assumed she wanted him to get something from the bedroom desk.
But Rachel had told him later that Clare had been asking for medication.
Thomas had believed her.
Because Clare had died that night.
And grief had destroyed his ability to question anything.
“What desk?” Thomas whispered.
Martin heard him.
“What?”
Thomas called the house.
One of Brooks’s officers answered.
“I need you to go into my late wife’s study.”
They stayed on the phone while the officer walked there.
“It’s locked.”
“Keypad. Try 0419.”
Clare’s birthday.
The door opened.
“Go to the desk.”
The officer moved.
Thomas visualized it perfectly.
Walnut desk.
Three drawers.
Old brass lamp.
Photographs.
“Check the bottom drawer.”
“Locked.”
Thomas frowned.
Clare had never locked that drawer.
“Break it.”
The officer did.
Inside was a small metal box.
Also locked.
Martin asked, “Combination?”
Thomas thought.
Then knew.
“Emma’s birthday.”
The box opened.
The officer went silent.
“What?”
“There’s an envelope.”
“What does it say?”
The officer read slowly.
“For Thomas. If I am gone and Rachel is still here.”
Thomas felt every hair on his arms rise.
“Open it.”
Paper rustled.
The officer began reading.
Thomas,
If you are reading this, then I did not get the chance to explain it myself.
I need you to listen to me without defending her.
Rachel scares me.
Thomas sat down.
The officer continued.
During the last months of Clare’s illness, Rachel had become increasingly involved in her care.
Too involved.
She had controlled medications.
Meals.
Visitors.
Clare wrote that Rachel resented Emma’s attachment to her mother.
That she had once heard Rachel tell four-year-old Emma that “Daddy will need a new family soon.”
Thomas felt sick.
Then came the sentence that changed everything.
I asked Rachel to leave three weeks ago. She told me you would never believe me because I was sick, medicated, and jealous.
Thomas covered his mouth.
He had never known.
Clare had been dying.
Rachel had already been positioning herself inside their family.
And Clare had seen it.
“She wrote more,” the officer said.
“Read it.”
There is something else.
Rachel knows about the trust.
Thomas stood.
“What trust?”
Martin looked at him.
The officer continued.
My father’s estate created a trust for Emma before he died. Rachel saw the documents accidentally. She knows Emma receives control of the principal at twenty-five, but there is a clause allowing early management authority to pass to her surviving legal guardian under certain circumstances.
Thomas’s mind shifted instantly into business mode.
“How much?”
The officer read.
Approximately sixty-eight million dollars.
Martin swore.
Thomas barely heard him.
This had never only been about control.
There was money.
A staggering amount of it.
And Rachel knew.
Brooks entered the gas station.
“We found the SUV.”
Thomas turned.
“Where?”
“Abandoned fifteen miles east.”
“The children?”
“Not inside.”
Thomas’s blood went cold.
Brooks continued.
“But there was another vehicle waiting.”
“Whose?”
“We pulled traffic cameras.”
She placed her phone on the counter.
A grainy image showed Rachel standing beside a dark pickup truck.
A man was holding Noah.
Emma stood beside him.
Thomas leaned closer.
He recognized the man.
Not well.
But enough.
It was Daniel Vance.
Rachel’s older brother.
A man Rachel had told Thomas she had not spoken to in twelve years.
May you like
And in the photograph, Daniel was looking directly toward the traffic camera.
Smiling.
