Chapter 5 - THE MAN BEHIND MY HUSBAND
For the first time since Blackwood Lake, I felt something for David that wasn't hatred.
Fear.
Not love.
Not forgiveness.
Fear.
Because the photograph changed everything.
David may have betrayed me.
He may have helped arrange the collapse.
He may even have wanted me dead.
But somebody else was controlling the board.
And now that person wanted me silent.
Detective Brooks ordered everyone away from the windows.
Officers arrived within minutes.
They searched the property, the road, the woods behind my mother's house.
No shooter.
No vehicle.
No witnesses.
The rock had been thrown from beyond the front hedge.
The photograph was freshly printed.
David's disappearance was no longer voluntary.
At least, not entirely.
"Do you recognize where he's being held?" Brooks asked.
I forced myself to look at the image again.
Concrete floor.
Dark wall.
Rusty metal shelving.
A green stripe painted along the baseboard.
Nothing obvious.
Rebecca stared longer.
Then she whispered, "I do."
Brooks turned.
"Where?"
"Hawthorne's old maintenance building near Blackwood."
My stomach dropped.
"There is a building there?"
"About two miles from the lake. It used to store construction equipment when Hawthorne first started surveying the area. The purchase fell apart, so they mostly abandoned it."
"Mostly?"
"Senior staff still use it for document storage."
Brooks was already calling tactical officers.
I grabbed her wrist.
"Who was the man on that recording?"
She looked at me.
I said the name aloud.
"Martin Vale."
Rebecca went pale.
Hawthorne Development's CEO.
David's boss.
The man who had given a speech at our wedding about loyalty, family, and David's bright future.
Martin Vale had known my father.
He'd attended his funeral.
And according to my memory, the mysterious voice pressuring David to "handle" the situation belonged to him.
Brooks listened again.
"You sure?"
"Yes."
Rebecca looked sick.
"Martin controlled every major acquisition."
"Could he have known about your father's shell companies?"
"He had to."
Brooks' expression darkened.
"Then David may not be the top of this."
I almost laughed.
Of course he wasn't.
Even his attempt to destroy me hadn't been entirely his own creation.
But that didn't excuse him.
A weak man choosing evil because a powerful man offered it was still choosing evil.
Police raided the maintenance building before sunset.
David wasn't there.
They found rope.
A chair.
Blood on the floor.
And the same green stripe visible in the photograph.
Someone had moved him.
More disturbing, officers discovered boxes containing copies of Blackwood surveys my father had supposedly destroyed twenty years earlier.
Martin Vale stopped answering calls.
His lawyer claimed he was traveling internationally.
His private jet, however, was still at the local airport.
Brooks obtained a warrant.
By then, my contractions had returned.
At first, I ignored them.
Every twenty minutes.
Then fifteen.
Then ten.
Mom noticed before I admitted it.
"Hospital. Now."
"I'm only thirty-one weeks."
"Exactly."
Grant drove.
Halfway there, a contraction doubled me over.
He kept one hand steady on the wheel.
"Slow breath."
"Don't tell me to breathe."
"Fair."
Another contraction hit.
I grabbed the door handle.
"My baby isn't supposed to come yet."
"Then we're going to the people who can convince her to wait."
At St. Matthew's, doctors gave me medication to slow the contractions and steroid injections to help my daughter's lungs in case she arrived early.
For twelve hours, everything became small again.
No Martin.
No David.
No money.
No Blackwood.
Only the monitor.
Only the heartbeat.
Only my baby.
Grant waited outside the room until my mother finally insisted he go home.
Rebecca remained under police protection.
At dawn, my contractions eased.
Dr. Park smiled.
"Your daughter has apparently decided to stay put."
I cried from relief.
Then Brooks arrived.
Her expression told me the relief wouldn't last.
"We found David."
I sat up.
"Alive?"
"Yes."
"Where?"
"Walking along Route Eight. Barefoot, dehydrated, bruised, one wrist fractured."
A strange ache moved through me.
"Did he tell you who took him?"
"He says Martin Vale."
Rebecca had been right.
"What does Martin want?"
Brooks pulled a chair closer.
"The flash drive."
My father's flash drive.
"David says Martin believes Charles kept enough evidence to prove Hawthorne executives committed bribery, fraud, and environmental crimes going back almost twenty years."
"And David?"
"He admits participating in the recent embezzlement."
"Admits?"
"He asked for immunity."
I laughed despite everything.
"Of course he did."
"He won't get full immunity."
"Good."
"But he's talking."
Brooks handed me a transcript.
David claimed Martin had first recruited him years earlier when Hawthorne learned I controlled Blackwood.
Dating me had been useful.
Marrying me had been better.
My fingers stopped moving.
I read the line again.
Dating me had been useful.
Marrying me had been better.
My entire marriage had begun as an assignment.
Not love.
Not chance.
Not fate.
Strategy.
Mom read over my shoulder and swore softly.
I kept reading.
David claimed he eventually did love me.
That almost made it worse.
Because love hadn't stopped him.
When my pregnancy changed the trust terms, Martin panicked.
An internal audit at Hawthorne was also approaching.
Martin ordered David to secure Blackwood immediately.
If I wouldn't sell, David was supposed to create a circumstance allowing him to gain control of the estate.
The lake offered the opportunity.
David admitted loosening the bolts.
My hand began shaking.
There it was.
Not suspicion.
Not inference.
A confession.
He claimed he'd intended to stage a collapse in which he would "fail" to rescue me.
Rebecca wasn't supposed to fall.
When she did, David chose to save her because he needed her cooperation to manipulate Hawthorne's financial records afterward.
I stopped reading.
The room tilted.
My husband had watched me drown on purpose.
Brooks took the pages away.
"That's enough."
"No."
"Simone."
"I want all of it."
She met my eyes.
Then gave the transcript back.
David said he hadn't expected Grant to be nearby.
He hadn't expected me to survive.
Once I did, Martin began cleaning up evidence.
The storage fire.
The threats.
The kidnapping.
Everything.
David insisted Martin abducted him because he thought David had kept backup records as leverage.
"Did he?" I asked.
Brooks hesitated.
"Yes."
Of course.
"Where?"
"David gave us an account number tied to an encrypted cloud archive."
"And what was inside?"
"We don't know yet."
"Brooks."
She sighed.
"Enough to indict several people if it's authentic."
My daughter kicked.
I pressed my palm to the movement.
"When do you arrest Martin?"
"As soon as we find him."
"You lost him?"
"We never had him."
Martin's house was empty.
His phones were off.
His passports remained at home.
His financial accounts had not moved.
A man with millions of dollars and international connections had simply vanished.
Then my hospital phone rang.
Unknown caller.
Brooks motioned for me not to answer.
It rang again.
Then my temporary phone buzzed with a text.
ASK DAVID WHAT HE PUT IN YOUR PRENATAL VITAMINS.
I stared.
My mouth went dry.
"No."
Brooks took the phone.
"What vitamins?"
For the last two months, David had brought me a glass of water every night with a prenatal capsule.
I had thought it was one of the few sweet habits left in our marriage.
Doctors had been confused by my recent headaches.
My unexplained dizziness.
My blood pressure swings.
I'd blamed pregnancy.
Brooks called Dr. Park immediately.
Blood was drawn.
More tests ordered.
My mother drove home with officers to collect the vitamin bottle from my bathroom.
Two hours later, Dr. Park entered with a toxicologist.
Her face was grave.
"Simone, we're waiting on confirmation, but several of your symptoms could be consistent with exposure to a medication that wasn't prescribed to you."
"What medication?"
"A blood-pressure drug."
"Would it hurt my baby?"
"Depending on dosage and duration, it can cause complications."
Terror tore through me.
"Is she okay?"
"Her monitoring is reassuring."
"Who put it in the vitamins?"
Dr. Park couldn't answer.
Brooks could.
She called David from outside my room.
Ten minutes later, she returned.
"He denies it."
I almost smiled.
"Of course."
"Rebecca says she never knew about medication."
"So Martin?"
"Possibly."
Then my mother's phone rang.
She answered.
Her face changed.
"Who is this?"
Silence.
Her eyes moved toward me.
She put the call on speaker.
A man's voice came through.
Smooth.
Controlled.
Familiar.
Martin Vale.
"Simone," he said, "your father caused me problems for twenty years."
My blood went cold.
"What do you want?"
"The flash drive."
"You tried to kill my daughter."
"I tried to control a situation your husband mishandled."
Brooks was already signaling officers.
Martin continued.
"Your father was smart enough to keep insurance against men like me. You appear to have inherited his stubbornness."
"Where are you?"
He chuckled.
"Closer than you think."
The line went dead.
At that exact moment, the hospital fire alarm began to scream.
Red lights flashed.
Nurses rushed into the hall.
Grant appeared at my door.
"Simone, we need to move."
Smoke was already curling beneath the stairwell door.
May you like
Then the lights went out.
And somewhere in the dark corridor, a man shouted my name.
