Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN BEHIND THE VEILFor several seconds, nobody moved.
Then I shouted.
“STOP HER!”
Florence lifted the front of her wedding dress and sprinted down the hallway.
A bride running from her own wedding should have looked absurd.
Nothing about it did.
My best man, Walter Greene, reacted before I did.
He had been my friend for thirty-seven years, through two recessions, my wife’s death, my daughter’s divorce, and every bad decision I had ever made.
At sixty-four, Walter wasn’t exactly built for a chase.
But he stepped into Florence’s path.
She shoved him hard enough to send him against the wall.
“Get away from me!”
Guests started pouring out of the ballroom.
“What happened?”
“Is everything okay?”
“Why is she running?”
Florence ripped off her veil.
“Jonathan has lost his mind!”
I was still staring at Rebecca’s bruised face frozen on Walter’s laptop.
My daughter.
My only child.
Hurt.
And somewhere else.
Possibly alone.
Leo hugged my leg.
“Grandpa?”
That brought me back.
I picked him up.
“Walter, call the police.”
Florence stopped.
The panic on her face lasted half a second.
Then her expression transformed.
Tears appeared.
It was almost impressive.
“Jonathan, please.”
“Where is Rebecca?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where is my daughter?”
“I haven’t seen her.”
“Then why did you try to take the drive?”
“Because she’s sick!”
My chest tightened.
“What?”
“She is obsessed with destroying us. You know that.”
No.
I didn’t know that.
I knew Rebecca had disliked the speed of our relationship.
Florence and I had met fourteen months earlier at a charity auction for the children’s hospital.
I was lonely.
That is the part older men rarely admit.
Three years earlier, my wife of thirty-six years, Marianne, had died from pancreatic cancer.
Afterward, I did what men of my generation were trained to do.
I went back to work.
I ran Prescott Development.
I attended meetings.
I signed contracts.
I smiled at dinners.
Then I went home every night to a house where Marianne’s gardening gloves still hung beside the back door.
Florence made me feel alive again.
She was smart.
Funny.
Interested in architecture.
She never seemed impressed by my money.
At least that was what I had wanted to believe.
Rebecca had been cautious from the beginning.
“Dad, I’m not saying she’s a bad person.”
“You certainly sound like you are.”
“I’m saying you barely know her.”
“I’m sixty-two, not twelve.”
“I know.”
“Then trust me.”
Rebecca had looked at me for a long moment.
“I do trust you. I don’t trust her.”
I had called that jealousy.
Standing in that hallway, I suddenly remembered the hurt in my daughter’s eyes when I said it.
Police arrived within twelve minutes.
Florence did not get far.
Hotel security stopped her near the service elevators.
By then, her wedding dress was torn near the hem.
She stood surrounded by two officers while guests whispered behind us.
She looked at me like I had betrayed her.
“You’re humiliating me.”
“Where is Rebecca?”
“I told you. I don’t know.”
Detective Serena Alvarez arrived twenty minutes later.
She was probably in her mid-forties, calm and unsentimental.
She watched Rebecca’s video twice without interrupting.
Then she asked me a question that made everything worse.
“When did you last physically see your daughter?”
“Three days ago.”
“When did you last speak with her?”
“This morning.”
“Video call?”
“No.”
“So you heard someone’s voice.”
“It was Rebecca.”
“Maybe.”
My stomach dropped.
“What are you saying?”
Alvarez looked toward Leo.
“Mr. Prescott, I need someone to take your grandson somewhere quiet.”
Walter volunteered.
Leo refused.
“No!”
He clung to me.
I crouched beside him.
“Buddy, Grandpa has to help Mommy.”
His eyes filled with tears.
“Find her?”
“Yes.”
“You promise?”
I had spent my entire career avoiding promises I couldn’t guarantee.
I made one anyway.
“I promise.”
Walter carried him upstairs.
Then Alvarez returned to the laptop.
She opened the RECORDINGS folder.
There were eleven audio files.
The first was dated six weeks earlier.
Rebecca’s voice came through the speakers.
“You forged his signature.”
Then Florence.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I have copies.”
A third voice interrupted.
Male.
“You should have stayed out of it, Rebecca.”
I looked at Alvarez.
“That’s Florence’s brother.”
“Name?”
“Adrian Fairmont.”
“What does he do?”
“Financial consulting.”
That answer suddenly sounded ridiculous.
Adrian had begun advising me on some family-office investments eight months earlier.
Florence had introduced us.
“He’s brilliant,” she had told me.
“He doesn’t need your money. He just likes solving problems.”
Apparently, I had been the problem he was solving.
The recording continued.
Rebecca said, “You moved four hundred thousand dollars through Hawthorne Consulting.”
Adrian laughed.
“You think your father notices four hundred thousand dollars?”
My hands curled into fists.
Florence’s voice was quieter.
“Rebecca, you’re making this harder than it needs to be.”
“For who?”
“For Leo.”
Silence.
Then Rebecca said, “Don’t you ever threaten my son.”
The recording ended.
Alvarez immediately turned toward me.
“Where is Adrian Fairmont now?”
“At the wedding.”
We searched.
He was gone.
Security footage showed Adrian leaving the hotel eight minutes before Leo handed me the USB.
He had not taken the lobby.
He had used the loading dock.
Alvarez issued an alert.
I called Rebecca.
Her phone went directly to voicemail.
We drove to her house.
Police arrived first.
The front door was locked.
No sign of forced entry.
Inside, a lamp had been knocked over.
There was broken glass near the kitchen.
And blood.
Only a little.
Three drops beside the pantry door.
My knees nearly gave out.
“Rebecca!”
Alvarez stopped me from running upstairs.
Officers cleared the house.
Nobody.
Leo’s dinosaur backpack was still beside the sofa.
Rebecca’s purse was on the kitchen counter.
Her phone was found beneath the dining table.
That meant whoever had spoken to me that morning had not called from her phone.
Alvarez examined it.
“There’s a voice-message app installed.”
“What does that mean?”
“Possibly cloned audio. We’ll have our cyber unit inspect it.”
My daughter had never called me that morning.
Someone had made me believe she had.
Someone who needed me to proceed with the wedding.
I walked into Rebecca’s home office.
Drawers had been opened.
Files were scattered across the floor.
One framed photograph had fallen from the desk.
It showed Rebecca at seventeen, standing between Marianne and me at her high-school graduation.
Marianne had her arms around both of us.
I picked it up.
That was when I noticed the blinking red light beneath Rebecca’s bookshelf.
A tiny camera.
Alvarez removed it carefully.
“Security camera?”
“I didn’t know she had one.”
The memory card was intact.
We played the footage.
At 7:42 the previous evening, Rebecca entered the office carrying Leo.
She looked frightened.
She set Leo down and knelt in front of him.
The camera recorded her voice.
“Remember what Mommy told you?”
Leo nodded.
“If Grandpa is alone, you give him the little drive.”
“What if Florence is there?”
“You hide it.”
“Why?”
Rebecca swallowed.
“Because Grandpa needs to see it before he gets married.”
Then a sound came from downstairs.
Rebecca froze.
She whispered, “Stay here.”
She left the room.
Thirty seconds later, Florence entered the camera frame.
Not Adrian.
Florence.
Still wearing the cream-colored coat she had worn to our rehearsal dinner.
Leo was hiding behind the desk.
Florence did not see him.
She opened drawers.
Searched shelves.
Then Rebecca returned.
“What are you doing in my house?”
Florence turned.
“You should have deleted those files.”
Rebecca backed toward the door.
“Get out.”
Florence smiled.
“I can’t do that.”
The women disappeared from the camera’s view.
We heard shouting.
A crash.
Rebecca screamed.
Then Adrian walked into the office.
He looked directly toward the desk.
Toward where Leo was hiding.
“Where’s the drive?”
Rebecca shouted from downstairs.
“Run, Leo!”
The little boy burst from behind the desk.
Adrian grabbed for him.
Leo slipped past.
The camera showed him running down the hallway.
Alvarez paused the video.
“How did he get to the hotel?”
I suddenly remembered.
Walter had found Leo that morning with my longtime housekeeper, Rosa, who said Rebecca had dropped him off late the previous night.
But Rebecca had never arrived.
“Rosa.”
I called her.
She answered immediately.
“Mr. Prescott?”
“Who brought Leo to the house last night?”
“A taxi driver.”
My heart stopped.
“What?”
“He said a woman paid him to bring Leo. I tried calling you, but Ms. Florence said not to bother you because of the wedding.”
I closed my eyes.
Rebecca had somehow gotten Leo into a taxi.
She had saved her child.
But she had not escaped herself.
Alvarez resumed the footage.
Seven minutes after Leo ran, Adrian returned.
He was dragging Rebecca.
Her hands were tied.
There was blood on her forehead.
Florence followed.
Then Rebecca looked directly toward the hidden camera.
I will never forget her face.
Not fear.
Defiance.
She said loudly:
“My father will find me.”
Adrian laughed.
“No, he won’t.”
Florence answered him.
“Tomorrow, I’ll be his wife.”
Then they dragged my daughter out of frame.
The video ended.
Nobody spoke.
Alvarez reached for her radio.
I stared at the black screen.
Florence had not merely wanted my money.
She had planned around the marriage.
Meaning something important would change once she became my wife.
I turned toward Detective Alvarez.
“What would she gain today that she didn’t already have yesterday?”
Alvarez looked at me.
“That’s what we need to find out.”
My phone rang.
Unknown number.
I answered.
For two seconds there was silence.
Then Rebecca’s voice whispered:
“Dad?”
I nearly collapsed.
“Rebecca! Where are you?”
She was crying.
“I don’t know.”
“Are you hurt?”
“They left me—”
A noise interrupted her.
She gasped.
“Dad, listen to me. Don’t trust—”
The call cut off.
I stared at the screen.
Alvarez grabbed my phone.
“Can you trace it?”
Her team went to work.
Thirty seconds later, one officer looked up.
“We have a tower hit.”
“Where?”
He gave an address.
I knew it immediately.
It was one of my company’s abandoned properties.
An old textile mill twenty-three miles outside the city.
A property Adrian had convinced me not to sell.
May you like
And according to the records on Rebecca’s USB drive—
the building no longer belonged to me.
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