Chapter 13 - VERONICA'S SECOND PHONE
Daniel disappeared for fourteen hours.
Police found his car near O’Hare.
Empty.
His phone was inside.
For once, I felt sorry for him.
Not enough to forgive him.
Enough to hope he was alive.
Sebastian’s security team traced Martin’s private plane.
It had filed no flight plan.
That did not mean it had moved.
Martin was too smart to make the obvious mistake.
Veronica’s second phone finally opened under warrant.
The messages were worse than expected.
Veronica had been paid for months.
Not only to photograph me.
To create incidents.
A broken stroller wheel.
A missing formula delivery.
A complaint to my landlord about noise.
A false report that I had left Lily alone.
Things I had blamed on bad luck.
Veronica had been building a file.
One message from Lucia read:
SHE NEEDS TO LOOK EXHAUSTED.
Another:
MAKE SURE THE BABY IS AT WORK TUESDAY.
My blood went cold.
Mrs. Ortiz’s health scare.
I called her doctor.
No information.
Privacy.
Then Mrs. Ortiz herself called me.
“Maya, I remembered something.”
“What?”
“The tea.”
She had found a gift basket outside her door Monday night.
No card.
She drank the herbal tea Tuesday morning.
Then her blood pressure dropped.
Police collected the remaining packets.
I wanted to throw up.
They had not only watched me.
They had manufactured the exact emergency that forced Lily into the restaurant.
Sebastian looked at the messages.
His voice was flat.
“They poisoned your sitter.”
“We don’t know that.”
“No.”
He corrected himself.
“We don’t know yet.”
That mattered.
He was learning too.
Then investigators found a location record on Veronica’s phone.
A house on Belmont.
Not the church archive.
A private residence.
Owned through an LLC connected to Martin.
Police obtained a welfare check.
The house was empty.
But one upstairs bedroom belonged to a child.
Books.
School uniforms.
A violin.
On the desk was a photograph of Sofia.
Current.
Elena saw it and cried.
Then police found a hidden camera.
The child had been monitored.
Controlled.
Moved.
Not missing.
Managed.
A neighbor gave them the name of the woman who lived there with her.
“Natalie.”
No last name.
A black sedan had picked Natalie and Sofia up that morning.
The neighbor had heard the girl arguing.
“She said she didn’t want to go.”
Sebastian asked where.
The neighbor pointed toward downtown.
Then remembered something.
The driver wore a Calder Foundation badge.
Martin was not taking Sofia out of Chicago.
He was taking her somewhere he controlled.
That evening, the Calder Foundation was hosting its annual donor dinner.
Three hundred guests.
Press.
Politicians.
May you like
And Martin Calder was scheduled to give the keynote speech.
