Chapter 5
The search for Eric became an emergency.
He had no experience caring for an infant.
He had abandoned his phone, bank cards, and car.
Caroline was arrested at a bus station two counties away.
She carried two false passports and nearly four hundred thousand dollars in cash.
Grace was not with her.
At first, Caroline refused to speak.
Then Detective Brooks placed photographs of the empty nursery in front of her.
“Your daughter is alone with a man suspected of three murders.”
Caroline began shaking.
“He loves Grace.”
“He planned to use her in an inheritance scheme.”
“She is still his child.”
“So was Daniel his brother.”
Caroline finally admitted that Eric kept a hunting cabin near the Canadian border.
Police raided it before dawn.
The cabin was empty.
A warm bottle stood beside the sink.
Grace’s blanket lay on the floor.
Eric had left minutes earlier.
Tracks led to a frozen road where another vehicle had been waiting.
Security cameras at a gas station captured a black truck heading north.
The driver was Helen Cross, the director of Westbridge.
She had been released pending trial after claiming she did not know Noah’s records were false.
Now she was helping Eric escape.
Federal agents closed the border crossings.
Eric turned south.
Hours later, the truck was found abandoned beside a reservoir.
There was blood on the driver’s seat.
Helen lay injured in the trees.
Eric had struck her and taken her phone.
“He said I failed him,” she whispered to paramedics.
“Where is the baby?”
“He found another car.”
Helen gave police the license number.
It belonged to one of my company vehicles.
Eric still had access to Mercer Development’s internal systems.
He used an employee code to unlock the car remotely.
I canceled every company credential connected to him.
Then our chief financial officer discovered twelve million dollars missing from an emergency account.
Eric had transferred it through foreign companies during the months before Dad died.
The theft explained why Dad removed him from the will.
Eric was not running only because of murder charges.
He had enough stolen money to disappear forever.
That evening, an encrypted video arrived on my phone.
Eric stood inside a dark room holding Grace.
The baby was crying.
“You destroyed everything,” he said.
“You killed Emily and Dad.”
“They chose you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Dad gave you the company. Emily gave you Noah. Everyone gave you what should have been mine.”
“You had your own life.”
“I had your leftovers.”
His jealousy had been growing since childhood, and I had never seen it.
Eric turned the camera toward a window.
Outside, I saw shipping containers and a line of cranes.
He was near a port.
“Transfer control of Mercer Development to me,” he said. “Withdraw your statement against Vanessa, and I’ll leave Grace somewhere safe.”
“She is your daughter.”
“She is leverage.”
The video ended.
Noah had been listening from the hallway.
He looked up at me.
“Is Grace my sister?”
“She is your cousin.”
“Is Uncle Eric going to hurt her?”
“I won’t let him.”
He held out Emily’s old phone.
“There’s another recording.”
Noah had found a file I missed.
It showed Eric telling Vanessa about a cargo ship owned by one of Mercer Development’s contractors.
The ship departed every Friday at midnight.
May you like
It was Friday.
The port in Eric’s video was less than an hour away.
