Chapter 13 - The Seventy-Two-Hour Deadline
Police began searching for Derek.
I stayed inside my parents’ house.
Every door remained locked.
Every curtain remained closed.
The protective order suddenly felt like paper.
Michael believed Derek was angry enough to do something reckless.
Rebecca believed he might simply be trying to frighten us.
Neither possibility comforted me.
At noon, my employer called.
I worked as a senior forensic accountant for a healthcare investment firm.
My supervisor sounded uncomfortable.
“We received an allegation this morning.”
“From Derek?”
“He claims you used confidential company information to conceal marital assets.”
It was absurd.
But corporate investigations did not disappear merely because accusations sounded malicious.
I was placed on paid administrative leave.
Derek had found the one thing outside my family he could attack.
My reputation.
By evening, blogs were repeating his version of events.
New Bride Vanishes After Wedding Amid Financial Dispute.
One story described me as an heiress.
Another called me unstable.
A third claimed I had emptied Derek’s bank accounts.
None mentioned the locked bedroom.
None mentioned the forged signature.
None mentioned the greasy rag.
For several hours, I felt defeated.
Not legally.
Emotionally.
Derek could not reach me physically, so he was throwing mud from a distance.
And people were willing to watch.
That night, my father placed the original cashier’s-check receipt on the kitchen table.
I had forgotten he still possessed it.
The memo line read.
SOLE AND SEPARATE EMERGENCY FUNDS FOR CHLOE BENNETT.
My father had insisted the bank include those words.
I looked at him.
“You expected trouble?”
“No.”
“Then why?”
He sat beside me.
“Because before you got married, Derek asked me a question.”
“What question?”
“He asked whether your inheritance became jointly accessible after marriage.”
My stomach tightened.
“When?”
“Three weeks before he proposed.”
I stared at him.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I did.”
“No.”
“I told you Derek asked too many questions about money.”
I remembered.
I had dismissed him.
I had said Derek was simply trying to plan responsibly.
My father looked ashamed.
“I should have pushed harder.”
“No.”
The word surprised both of us.
Derek had spent two years making ordinary concern sound reasonable.
That was how manipulation worked.
It rarely arrived wearing a sign.
At 11:30 that night, police found Derek’s abandoned vehicle near the airport.
The gun was not inside.
His passport was gone.
A flight manifest showed he had booked a ticket to Toronto.
But he had never boarded.
Then investigators checked security footage.
Derek had entered the terminal.
He had walked toward international departures.
And twenty minutes later, he had exited through another door wearing a baseball cap.
The airport had been a distraction.
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At 12:06 a.m., my father’s motion sensor activated behind our garage.
Someone was standing in the backyard.
