Chapter 4 - Pine HollowDetective Bell threatened to arrest me if I drove to Pine Hollow alone.
I believed him.
So I waited exactly eleven minutes for a patrol car to meet me near Route 2.
Natalie rode beside me.
Neither of us spoke much.
Rain began twenty miles outside Concord.
By the time we reached the old access road, branches scraped against the windshield and mud sprayed beneath the tires.
Pine Hollow had once been beautiful.
Dad built the cabin when Derek was nine and I was seven.
Summers there meant fishing, burned marshmallows, board games during thunderstorms, and Mom complaining about mosquitoes.
Then Dad died on the lake.
After that, Mom never returned.
Neither did I.
Derek apparently had.
Police vehicles surrounded the cabin when we arrived.
Bell met me before I reached the porch.
“She isn't inside.”
My stomach dropped.
“What?”
“Wait.”
“You said—”
“We found evidence someone was here recently.”
“What evidence?”
He looked toward another officer.
“Your mother's cardigan.”
My hand flew to my mouth.
“Blood?”
“No.”
“Then where is she?”
“We're searching.”
Inside, the cabin smelled of damp wood and dust.
But not abandonment.
There were fresh tire tracks outside.
Food wrappers in the kitchen.
A portable electric heater.
And in the upstairs bedroom, rope tied around one bedpost.
Natalie stared at it.
“Oh my God.”
Bell wouldn't let us enter.
Crime-scene technicians photographed everything.
On the kitchen table sat a disposable cup from a gas station.
In the trash were medical gloves.
And wedged beneath the refrigerator was a folded piece of paper.
A photocopy of Dad's old life-insurance policy.
I looked at Bell.
“Why would Derek have that?”
“You tell me.”
“I don't know.”
Dad died when he was forty-five.
Accidental drowning.
At least, that's what we were told.
He had taken the canoe out alone after dinner.
A storm rolled through.
His body was recovered the next morning.
Mom had been devastated.
Derek had been fifteen.
I was thirteen.
“What was your father's relationship like with Derek?”
I frowned.
“Why?”
“Your mother's notes mention him.”
I thought back.
Dad and Derek fought sometimes.
Nothing unusual.
Teenage rebellion.
Dad wanted discipline.
Derek wanted freedom.
But there was one memory I'd buried.
The afternoon before Dad died, I heard them arguing behind the cabin.
Derek shouting.
Dad yelling back.
Then something breaking.
I had forgotten until that moment.
“What were they fighting about?” Bell asked.
“I don't know.”
“Try.”
I closed my eyes.
Fragments came back.
Dad saying, You stole from your own mother.
Derek saying, It's not stealing if it's family money.
My eyes opened.
Bell saw the answer on my face.
“What?”
“Money.”
“What about it?”
“I think Derek had taken some.”
“How much?”
“I was thirteen.”
Bell wrote something down.
Then a radio crackled.
A search team had found tire tracks behind the cabin leading toward an old fire road.
We followed as far as police permitted.
Half a mile into the woods, an abandoned ambulance stood beside the trail.
Empty.
The back doors were open.
A blanket lay on the floor.
So did a plastic medical bracelet.
MARGARET CARTER.
I started running.
Bell caught me.
“Emily!”
“She's here!”
“We don't know that.”
“That's her bracelet!”
“You cannot contaminate the scene.”
I fought tears.
“My mother is somewhere in these woods.”
And then, through the rain, we heard something.
Three knocks.
Pause.
Three knocks.
Pause.
Bell froze.
“Quiet.”
Again.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Officers spread out.
The sound came from downhill.
We moved toward it.
There was an old storm shelter buried beneath leaves thirty yards from the fire road.
Dad used to store emergency supplies there.
The metal door had been padlocked from the outside.
One officer cut it.
Bell opened the hatch.
“Police!”
A weak voice came from below.
“Emily?”
I dropped to my knees.
“Mom!”
Two officers climbed down.
They brought her up wrapped in a blanket.
Her skin was pale.
Her lips were cracked.
There were bruises around both wrists.
But she was alive.
I held her so tightly Bell finally had to tell me paramedics needed access.
Mom gripped my sleeve.
“Derek?”
“He's not here.”
Her eyes widened.
“You have to stop him.”
“We will.”
“No.” She shook her head violently. “You don't understand.”
“Mom, you're safe.”
“He knows.”
“Knows what?”
She looked at Bell.
Then at Natalie.
Her voice dropped.
“He knows I recorded Richard.”
“Richard Vale?”
She nodded.
“About the house?”
Mom shook her head.
“About your father.”
The rain seemed to disappear.
“What about Dad?”
Mom stared at me.
“Your father didn't drown by accident.”
I stopped breathing.
Bell crouched beside her.
“Mrs. Carter, who killed your husband?”
Mom's eyes filled with tears.
“I don't know.”
Then she whispered:
“But Derek was with him that night.”
Mom spent two nights in the hospital.
She was dehydrated and had sedatives in her bloodstream, but doctors expected a full physical recovery.
Psychologically, she was another matter.
For the first twelve hours she wouldn't speak about Derek at all.
Then, on the second afternoon, I sat beside her bed while rain streaked the hospital window.
“Tell me everything.”
Mom stared at her hands.
“It started after you moved overseas.”
“Derek?”
She nodded.
“He lost money.”
“How much?”
“I don't know. Hundreds of thousands at first.”
“He told me his construction company was doing well.”
“It wasn't.”
She explained slowly.
Derek had convinced investors to put money into luxury property developments.
Projects stalled.
Costs exploded.
Then funds disappeared.
He borrowed privately.
Then from lenders.
Then from people Mom described only as “bad men.”
When Derek needed collateral, he came home.
“He told me you wanted him to manage the property while you were overseas.”
“I never said that.”
“I know.”
“Why didn't you tell me?”
Mom's face crumpled.
“He showed me messages.”
“From me?”
“Your number.”
Fake texts.
Exactly what I had feared.
“He said you were angry with me.”
“Mom…”
“He said you thought I was becoming confused.”
I held her hand.
“He lied.”
“I know that now.”
Derek gradually took over her phone, accounts, medical appointments, transportation.
Then he brought Richard Vale.
The same attorney who had handled the house purchase.
“They needed my signature.”
“For the deed?”
“For many things.”
“Did you sign?”
“Some.”
“Why?”
Mom looked ashamed.
“Because Derek showed me a video of you.”
I blinked.
“What video?”
“You were getting into a car outside an office in Hong Kong.”
Cold spread through me.
“So?”
“He said men were watching you.”
My stomach turned.
“He threatened me?”
“He said if I refused, the people he owed could reach you.”
I stood.
“He used me to control you.”
Mom nodded.
“And then he used you to control me.”
That was the brilliance of it.
For six years Derek had kept two women separated by ten thousand miles, feeding each of us just enough information to keep us compliant.
But one question remained.
“What happened to Dad?”
Mom looked toward the door.
“I found something last year.”
“What?”
“Your father's journal.”
I frowned.
“Dad kept a journal?”
“Business notes. Personal entries.”
“Where?”
“I hid it.”
“Storage unit?”
“No.”
“Then where?”
Mom looked at me.
“The house.”
Derek controlled the house.
“Where?”
“Behind the pantry.”
I remembered the old butler's pantry beside the kitchen.
“There is no room behind it.”
“There is.”
Dad had apparently built a narrow concealed compartment inside the wall while renovating the house.
Mom discovered it years later.
She kept certain documents there.
Including Dad's journal.
“Derek doesn't know?”
“He knows something is hidden.”
My phone buzzed.
Detective Bell.
I answered.
His first words:
“Where is your brother?”
“At the house, I assume.”
“No.”
My heart dropped.
“What happened?”
“We went to arrest him for unlawful imprisonment and filing false statements.”
“And?”
“He's gone.”
“Vanessa?”
“Gone too.”
Mom heard.
Her face drained of color.
Then she whispered:
“The journal.”
I grabbed my coat.
Bell said, “Emily, don't—”
Too late.
Because I finally understood.
Derek wasn't running.
Not yet.
May you like
He was cleaning up.
And the one thing he feared most was still hidden inside the house he had stolen.
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