Chapter 7
Detective Ruiz ordered me not to respond.
I agreed.
Then my phone rang.
Thomas was crying on the other end.
“Claire, don’t give her anything.”
Diane took the phone.
“You have until midnight.”
“Let him go.”
“Bring your mother’s evidence to the lake house.”
I remembered the letters between Diane and Victor.
They had met at a lake house thirty years ago.
Ruiz traced the property to a company Victor once owned.
The house stood nearly two hours away, surrounded by forest.
Diane demanded that I come alone.
Instead, Ruiz created a plan.
The real evidence remained locked at the police station.
I carried a bag containing copied ledgers and empty flash drives.
A tracking device was hidden inside my coat.
Officers followed at a distance.
Snow began falling as I drove north.
At eleven thirty, I reached the lake house.
The porch light was on.
Thomas sat in a chair near the fireplace, his wrists tied behind him.
A bruise darkened the side of his face.
Diane stood behind him with a gun.
“Put the bag down,” she ordered.
I placed it on the floor.
“Let him go.”
She laughed.
“You still think you can give me orders?”
Her polished appearance was gone.
Her hair hung around her face. Her expensive coat was stained with mud.
For the first time, I saw what lived beneath her elegant smile.
Fear.
She opened the bag and searched it.
“These are copies.”
“They are enough to prove everything.”
“I need the originals.”
“They’re somewhere you’ll never reach.”
Diane pressed the gun against Thomas’s head.
He closed his eyes.
“You always were a stubborn little girl,” she said to me. “Just like your mother.”
“You killed her.”
“She should have taken the money and stayed quiet.”
Thomas looked up in horror.
“Diane, what did you do?”
She turned on him.
“I protected our family.”
“You destroyed it.”
“No. Claire destroyed it.”
Her hand trembled.
“She took Ryan from me. She made him weak.”
I stared at her.
“You sent him to marry me.”
“He had one job. Find the evidence and secure the house. But then he started pretending he loved you.”
Pretending.
The word cut through me, even after everything.
“Did he ever love me?”
Diane smiled cruelly.
“Ask him.”
A floorboard creaked upstairs.
Diane’s eyes lifted.
That was when Thomas threw himself sideways.
The chair crashed into her legs.
The gun fired.
Glass exploded behind me.
I ran toward Thomas as Diane grabbed the weapon again.
Police lights burst through the windows.
“Drop it!” Ruiz shouted from the doorway.
Diane dragged Thomas upright and held the gun under his chin.
“No one comes closer!”
Ruiz kept her weapon trained on her.
“There is nowhere to go.”
Diane backed toward the rear door.
Thomas suddenly stomped on her foot.
She screamed.
I grabbed the fireplace shovel and knocked the gun from her hand.
Ruiz rushed forward.
Within seconds, Diane was pinned to the floor.
As officers handcuffed her, she stared at me with pure hatred.
“You think this is over?”
“It is for you.”
“No,” she whispered. “Ryan knows where the rest of the money is.”
Ruiz’s radio crackled.
An officer’s urgent voice filled the room.
Ryan had disappeared from court-ordered monitoring.
His ankle device had been cut off and left beside a highway.
Then my phone buzzed.
A message from Ryan appeared.
It included a photograph of Brooke tied to a chair.
May you like
Beneath it were six words.
Trade the evidence for my sister.
