Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN ON THE CAMERA
The alarm was not for the gate.
It was for the roof.
One of the security men shouted into his radio.
“North camera just went dark.”
Another answered, “Thermal picked up two bodies by the drainage ditch.”
Emily looked at Matthew.
“They followed us.”
“Not all the way.”
“You’re correcting me now?”
“Habit.”
“Bad one.”
The woman with the medical bag stepped sideways and opened a reinforced interior door.
“My name is Dr. Lena Ortiz,” she said.
“No one will touch you unless you say yes.”
Emily hesitated.
A third gunshot cracked somewhere beyond the fence.
She went inside.
The room beyond was not a hospital.
It looked like a disaster clinic built by someone who expected disasters to arrive armed.
White walls.
Steel cabinets.
Two examination rooms.
A bank of security monitors.
No logos.
No reception desk.
No paperwork asking for insurance.
Emily hated how much that frightened her.
Matthew stayed in the doorway.
Dr. Ortiz crouched near Emily’s feet.
“Can I take a look?”
Emily nodded.
The doctor cut away a strip of the torn dress that had wrapped around her ankle.
“You’ve got three deep cuts and a piece of gravel embedded here.”
“Just pull it out.”
“That usually sounds better before I do it.”
“Do it.”
Dr. Ortiz glanced at Matthew.
Emily saw it.
“Don’t look at him.”
The doctor looked back at her.
“Fair.”
That helped.
A little.
Emily gripped the edge of the examination table.
The gravel came out with a burst of white pain.
She hissed between her teeth.
Matthew turned away.
For some reason, that irritated her more than if he had watched.
“You can leave,” she said.
“I’m waiting for an answer.”
“To what?”
“Whether you want police.”
Emily stared at him.
“Of course I want police.”
Dr. Ortiz stopped wrapping her foot.
Matthew said nothing.
Emily saw the pause pass between them.
“What?”
Matthew walked to the security console.
He tapped a key.
A news website opened on one monitor.
Her photograph filled the screen.
It was a picture from her father’s funeral.
She was wearing black and looking down.
The headline beneath it read:
LOCAL HEIRESS MISSING AFTER MEDICAL EPISODE.
Emily slid off the table.
“No.”
Matthew opened the article.
Diane had given a statement twenty-three minutes earlier.
Emily read it twice.
Her stepmother claimed Emily had suffered “a severe emotional break” during a private family gathering and fled into dangerous weather without shoes, medication, or a phone.
Medication.
Emily’s stomach turned.
“I don’t take medication.”
Matthew nodded toward another line.
Diane was asking anyone who saw Emily to contact county authorities immediately.
The article quoted Sheriff Nolan Price.
He was “deeply concerned for Ms. Hale’s safety.”
Emily whispered, “Nolan.”
“You know him?” Matthew asked.
“He golfs with Diane.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“He was at Christmas dinner.”
Matthew’s mouth flattened.
Emily grabbed the phone from the counter.
“I’ll call state police.”
“Good.”
She dialed.
A dispatcher answered.
Emily gave her name.
The response was immediate.
“Ms. Hale, are you in a safe location?”
“Yes.”
“Are you injured?”
“Yes, but—”
“Can you tell me what medications you may have missed?”
Emily closed her eyes.
“I don’t take any medication.”
There was a pause.
“Ms. Hale, your family reported that you may be confused.”
“My family locked me in a bedroom with a man.”
“What man?”
“Graham Ambrose.”
The pause became longer.
“Ms. Hale, are you making an allegation of assault?”
“Yes.”
“Did an assault occur?”
Emily opened her mouth.
Her throat closed.
Mr. Ambrose’s hand reaching toward her.
Diane’s ring cutting her cheek.
The bathroom lock beneath her shaking fingers.
The drop into mud.
She could hear the dispatcher breathing.
“I got out before he could,” Emily said.
“Before he could what?”
She looked at Matthew.
He looked away this time for a different reason.
Emily swallowed.
“Before he could rape me.”
Dr. Ortiz’s hand tightened around a roll of gauze.
The dispatcher’s voice softened.
“Okay. I need you to stay where you are.”
“No.”
“Ms. Hale—”
“Is Sheriff Price being notified?”
“That would be standard protocol in your county.”
Emily hung up.
Her hand was numb around the phone.
Matthew said, “You made the right call.”
“Did I?”
“Yes.”
“You say that like you already knew what would happen.”
“I suspected.”
She threw the phone onto the counter.
“You suspect a lot of things you don’t mention until after I find out.”
“That’s fair.”
“Stop saying things are fair.”
He nodded once.
“That’s also fair.”
Emily stared at him.
Dr. Ortiz coughed into her fist.
It might have been hiding a laugh.
Then the security chief entered.
“Mr. Carter.”
Matthew turned.
“We caught one.”
“Alive?”
“Very annoyed about it.”
Emily pulled her feet off the table.
“I want to see him.”
Matthew said, “No.”
Her head snapped toward him.
“No?”
“You’re injured.”
“So?”
“He may be armed.”
“You have six men with guns outside.”
“Eight.”
“That did not help your argument.”
Matthew looked at her for a long second.
Then he stepped aside.
“Fine.”
The captured man sat in a utility room with a plastic zip tie around his wrists.
He was not one of Diane’s house staff.
Emily had seen him before, though.
At her father’s funeral.
Near the back.
He had worn a gray suit and spoken quietly to Sheriff Price beside the cemetery gate.
Now his wet hair stuck to his forehead.
Blood ran from a cut near his ear.
When Emily entered, he looked at her and smiled.
Not warmly.
“Miss Hale.”
She stopped.
“Who are you?”
He ignored her question and looked at Matthew.
“Mr. Carter, this isn’t your problem.”
Matthew leaned against the wall.
“It became my problem when someone shot my car.”
“That was a warning.”
“You damaged the paint.”
The man’s smile thinned.
Emily stepped closer.
“Did Diane send you?”
“No.”
“Ambrose?”
“No.”
“Then who?”
He looked at her bruised cheek.
“You really don’t know.”
The words chilled her more than the rain had.
“Know what?”
The man shifted in the chair.
Matthew’s security chief tightened his grip on the man’s shoulder.
He winced.
“Your father wasn’t stupid,” he said.
Emily’s pulse jumped.
“What does my father have to do with this?”
“He knew someone was draining Hale Systems.”
“Diane?”
The man laughed once.
“That woman couldn’t drain a bathtub without instructions.”
Emily felt an ugly flash of satisfaction.
It vanished when he continued.
“Your father started collecting documents.”
Matthew pushed away from the wall.
“What documents?”
The man turned his face toward him.
“Not for you.”
Emily stepped between them.
“For me.”
The man studied her.
“You look like your mother.”
Emily’s chest tightened.
“You knew her?”
“I knew what happened after she died.”
“My mother died when I was six.”
“I know.”
“What happened?”
He opened his mouth.
A phone began ringing in his jacket pocket.
The security chief removed it.
The screen showed UNKNOWN CALLER.
Matthew said, “Answer it on speaker.”
The man’s face changed.
For the first time, he looked afraid.
“Don’t.”
Matthew noticed too.
“Why?”
“Don’t answer that.”
The phone kept ringing.
Emily reached for it.
The man lunged so violently the chair tipped sideways.
“DON’T!”
The security chief pinned him down.
Emily answered.
“Hello?”
There was static.
Then a woman’s voice.
Calm.
Older.
Familiar.
“Emily?”
Emily’s entire body went cold.
May you like
Because the voice belonged to a woman she had watched being lowered into a grave eighteen years ago.
It sounded exactly like her mother.
