Chapter 8 - Margaret’s Perfect Lie)
Claire walked into the main hall alone as deputies entered. She wore Ethan’s blood on her nightdress and carried no phone. Margaret rushed toward her with an expression of maternal terror.
“Thank God. Did he hurt you?”
Claire let herself shake. “He is downstairs.”
Margaret embraced her. Into Claire’s ear, she whispered, “Smart girl.”
The deputies found Dr. Vale tied to a chair, exactly as Anna arranged. Ethan and Anna had vanished through the tunnel with the copied drive. Vale told the deputies that Ethan attacked him after learning Claire was pregnant.
Claire understood: Vale was still protecting Noah.
She supported the story long enough to be taken outside. Then, in front of body cameras, she asked for a hospital and an attorney. Margaret tried to enter the ambulance, but Claire refused.
At the hospital, independent tests confirmed Claire’s early pregnancy and traces of a sedative in her blood. A nurse photographed the injection mark on Claire’s arm from the wedding dinner, a mark she had mistaken for a mosquito bite.
Claire called Detective Mara Ruiz, an investigator she knew from her work as an insurance fraud analyst. Ruiz listened without interrupting. The physical evidence was troubling, but Margaret’s foundation had influence, and the underground clinic might be emptied before a warrant arrived.
“We need something she cannot move,” Ruiz said.
Claire remembered the locket.
Margaret wore it every day, even while sleeping.
Meanwhile, news broke that Ethan Blackwood was wanted for assault and kidnapping. His photograph appeared on every local channel. Margaret gave a tearful statement from the hospital steps, begging her ill son to surrender.
Claire watched from her room and saw the smallest detail: the locket was missing.
A message arrived on the burner phone.
COME TO THE OLD BOATHOUSE ALONE. BRING THE LEDGER PAGE OR ETHAN DIES.
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Attached was a photograph of Ethan bound to a chair.
Around his neck hung Margaret’s locket.
