Chapter 10 - Rebecca Was Alive
Emma immediately called Claire.
Claire arrived with Marcus twenty-five minutes later.
They examined the photograph.
No obvious manipulation.
No metadata that immediately exposed its source.
Rebecca’s face was older.
Thinner.
Her hair shorter.
But Daniel’s family resemblance was unmistakable.
Marcus sent the image to an investigator he trusted.
Emma sent no reply to the unknown number.
Five minutes later, another message arrived.
If Martha learns you have this photograph, Rebecca dies for real.
Claire read it twice.
“This person wants us scared.”
Emma stared at Rebecca’s face.
“Or careful.”
The next morning, federal agents arrived.
Special Agent Nora Hayes led the team.
She was forty-something, direct, and visibly unimpressed by family drama.
“This is now potentially connected to controlled pharmaceutical diversion, fraud, homicide, and obstruction.”
Emma sat across from her.
“Potentially?”
“We prove things before naming them.”
Emma appreciated that.
Agent Hayes examined the recording of Martha’s call.
Then the photograph.
“Do you recognize the location?”
Emma shook her head.
Marcus did.
“Could be Westhaven.”
Hayes looked at him.
“Why?”
“Streetlight style. City uses those green bases.”
Within two hours, investigators identified the grocery store.
Westhaven.
Seventy-eight miles away.
Rebecca’s image had been captured outside a small independent market.
Agents went there.
The owner remembered her.
“She comes every Thursday.”
Under a different name.
Rachel Moore.
Emma wanted to go.
Hayes refused.
“You are not a federal investigator.”
“She hid evidence for me.”
“And someone sent you her photograph for reasons we do not yet understand.”
By afternoon, Rebecca was located.
By evening, she was gone.
Her rented apartment had been cleared out.
No clothes.
No documents.
No food.
Only one thing remained.
A yellow stuffed giraffe.
Emma’s stomach turned when Hayes showed her the evidence photograph.
It looked almost identical to Sophie’s.
“Coincidence?” Emma asked.
Hayes did not answer.
Emma went to Sophie’s toy basket.
The giraffe had been a gift.
From Martha.
At Sophie’s first birthday.
Emma picked it up.
Something inside the neck felt hard.
She squeezed.
Not stuffing.
Plastic.
Claire carefully cut one seam.
Inside was a tiny USB drive.
Emma stared at it.
For one full minute no one spoke.
The drive contained a single video.
Date stamped six years earlier.
Rebecca sat in front of a camera.
Alive.
She looked exhausted.
“My name is Rebecca Miller.”
Emma held her breath.
“If this reaches Emma, then Laura was right about her.”
Rebecca glanced over her shoulder.
“I was not the woman found in the car.”
Emma’s skin prickled.
“The dead woman was named Nicole Price. She worked at one of the clinics. Martha used Rebecca’s identification to close both problems at once.”
Claire whispered, “Jesus.”
Rebecca continued.
“Laura survived that night too.”
Emma stopped breathing.
“She took Ethan to Daniel because she believed he would run. He didn’t.”
Daniel, who had been asked by federal agents to attend remotely, lowered his head on the video call.
Rebecca continued.
“Laura returned months later to watch Emma.”
Emma stared.
“She chose Emma.”
The words made Emma’s eyes fill.
“She believed Emma would love Ethan without being controlled by the Miller family.”
Rebecca smiled faintly.
“She was right.”
Then her expression became serious.
“But Emma needs to know something Daniel never knew.”
Daniel looked up.
Rebecca leaned closer to the camera.
“Laura did not disappear because Martha found her.”
The video flickered.
“She disappeared because someone more powerful did.”
Static.
Then one final sentence.
May you like
“Martha was never the head of the network.”
The video ended.
