Chapter 8 - THE WOMAN WHO DISAPPEAREDNatalie Price had been hiding for eight months.
Not because Ethan alone wanted her gone.
Because she had uncovered Ravenstone before I did.
She agreed to speak only through an encrypted federal channel.
Agent Grant coordinated it.
At 7:15 p.m., Natalie’s face appeared on a laptop screen.
She was thirty-eight.
Short dark hair.
No makeup.
Tired eyes.
She sat in a room with no visible windows.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“For what?”
“For leaving you there.”
I didn’t understand.
“What do you mean?”
“I knew Ethan had started watching you.”
“How?”
“Because before I disappeared, I had access to one of Victor’s surveillance accounts.”
Daniel stood behind me.
Patel and Grant sat nearby.
Natalie continued.
She had been researching inflated municipal construction contracts.
Mercer Holdings appeared repeatedly.
But each time she traced the payments, records disappeared.
Sources changed their stories.
Officials stopped returning calls.
One source lost his job.
Another received an unexplained tax investigation.
Then Thomas Kell died.
Natalie became afraid.
She began studying Ethan instead of the contracts.
That led to Laura.
“Laura’s drowning was never properly investigated,” Natalie said. “A deputy initially wrote that bruising on her arms might indicate a struggle.”
“What happened to that report?”
“Revised forty-eight hours later.”
“By whom?”
“A supervisor.”
“Ravenstone?”
“Maybe. I can’t prove it.”
Natalie obtained copies of the original scene photographs through a source.
Laura had bruises.
Old and new.
Just like me.
Daniel walked away from the screen.
I forced myself to keep listening.
“Did Ethan kill her?”
Natalie hesitated.
“I believe Victor killed her.”
“On Ethan’s orders?”
“I don’t know.”
I thought of the Maple payment.
“What do you know?”
“I know Laura called someone from the lake house at 11:14 p.m.”
“Who?”
“Marcus Bell.”
Marcus had already admitted it.
“She told him she had financial evidence,” Natalie continued. “At 11:26, Marcus called Ethan.”
My chest tightened.
Marcus had never told us that part.
“He called Ethan?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
Grant immediately left to locate Marcus.
Natalie continued.
“At 12:03 a.m., a vehicle registered to Victor Sloane entered the lake property.”
“How do you know?”
“Toll data.”
“And Ethan?”
“His phone was there.”
My throat went dry.
“Where was Laura?”
“Alive at 12:11. She sent a text to her sister.”
“What did it say?”
Natalie looked down.
“Ethan knows.”
Two words.
A dead woman’s last warning.
Laura’s body was found at 6:40 the next morning.
I closed my eyes.
Ethan knows.
She could have been talking about the money.
About her plan to leave.
About Victor.
About everything.
“And Marcus?” I asked.
“He lied during the original investigation. Said he hadn’t spoken to her in weeks.”
Anger surged through me again.
Marcus had given us truth.
But not all of it.
There was always another layer.
Grant returned.
“Bell is in interview.”
“Did he call Ethan?”
“We’re asking.”
Natalie looked toward something offscreen.
“I don’t have much time.”
“Why?”
“Moving locations.”
“Are you coming in?”
Silence.
Grant answered for her.
“We’re working on it.”
Natalie looked directly at me.
“Your Package Four contains photographs of a ledger, right?”
“Yes.”
“Page labeled M-17?”
I remembered.
“Yes.”
“Don’t release that page publicly.”
“Why?”
“Because one of the names belongs to the person protecting me.”
Grant’s expression tightened.
“We’ll handle dissemination.”
Natalie shook her head.
“No offense, but Ravenstone has touched federal offices too.”
Grant didn’t object.
That frightened me.
“Then who do I trust?” I asked.
Natalie smiled sadly.
“That’s the problem.”
Package Four had been designed when I thought Ethan was the center of everything.
Now the final release could expose innocent sources along with criminals.
It could endanger witnesses.
Maybe Natalie.
For the first time, I considered stopping it.
Which was exactly what the threatening photograph demanded.
Was that threat actually from someone trying to protect Natalie?
Or did Ravenstone want me confused?
Fear again.
Doubt again.
Ethan’s favorite weapons.
I needed a solution that did not depend on trust.
“For the final package,” I said, “I can change recipients without changing the contents.”
Grant leaned closer.
“How?”
“The distribution system lets me add destinations.”
“Can you remove the public reporters?”
“Yes.”
Natalie immediately said, “Do that.”
I didn’t.
Not yet.
Instead, I asked Natalie one final question.
“What happened eight months ago? Why did Ethan start framing me?”
Her face changed.
“Because of me.”
“What?”
“The woman’s photograph you found in his office.”
“Yes.”
“I put it there.”
Everyone stared.
“Why?”
“I needed to know whether someone inside Ethan’s house was willing to question him.”
“You used me as bait?”
Natalie’s eyes filled with regret.
“I left a professional headshot and a name where you could find it. I hoped you’d search.”
“You endangered me.”
“I know.”
“You watched while he started monitoring me?”
“I didn’t know how far he would go.”
“You knew enough to disappear.”
She had no answer.
I was furious.
But beneath the anger was something useful.
A connection.
Ethan discovered I searched Natalie.
Then he created the false bank account.
That gave us motive and timeline for the frame.
More importantly, Natalie still had evidence from before she disappeared.
Emails.
Surveillance logs.
Copies of Victor’s files.
Enough to independently corroborate parts of mine.
By midnight, investigators had interviewed Marcus again.
He admitted calling Ethan after Laura contacted him.
“I thought I was protecting the company,” he said.
He told Ethan Laura had accessed financial documents.
Then Laura died.
Marcus had lived with that guilt for eleven years.
He had not ordered anything.
But his phone call may have sealed her fate.
“I was a coward,” he said in the recorded interview.
That statement eventually became one of the most important pieces of the case.
Not because it proved murder.
Because it established knowledge.
Ethan knew Laura had evidence.
Victor arrived afterward.
Laura died.
Victor received a Maple payment.
Eleven years later, my name appeared under the same category.
Pattern.
Intent.
History.
At 2:30 a.m., Grant received word that Natalie was being transported to a secure federal facility.
For the first time, I allowed myself to sleep.
At 5:12, an alarm woke me.
Not hospital alarm.
Daniel’s phone.
He answered.
“Cross.”
His expression changed.
“What?”
He looked at me.
“Mom?”
I sat upright despite the pain.
“What happened to Mom?”
Daniel listened.
Then slowly lowered the phone.
His face was white.
“Her protection detail found the front door open.”
My heart stopped.
“Where is she?”
“They don’t know.”
I ripped the monitor leads from my chest.
Daniel grabbed my arm.
“Rachel.”
“Where is she?”
“Police are searching.”
“You said she had protection!”
“They changed shifts at five. There was a twelve-minute overlap issue.”
“Twelve minutes?”
Grant entered, already talking into her phone.
My mother’s bedroom was empty.
No signs of struggle.
Her purse remained.
Her medication remained.
Her car remained in the driveway.
On the kitchen table was one object.
A childhood photograph of Daniel and me.
And beneath it, a handwritten note.
STOP THE RELEASE.
I stared at the photograph on Grant’s phone.
The handwriting wasn’t Ethan’s.
Victor.
I knew because I had seen his notes on security invoices.
Daniel punched the wall.
I sat frozen.
All my careful planning.
All my redundancy.
All my precautions.
And now they had my mother.
The final package was due to release in seventeen hours.
For six months, I believed the file protected me because Ethan could never destroy every copy.
I had never considered the possibility that he wouldn’t attack the file.
He would attack the people I loved.
Grant looked at me.
“We’ll find her.”
I looked at the countdown on my laptop.
Sixteen hours.
Fifty-three minutes.
I placed my finger over the cancellation command.
Then my mother’s smartwatch transmitted a signal.
One location ping.
A place I recognized immediately.
May you like
The Mercer family lake house.
Where Laura died.
