Chapter 10 - Rachel’s Letter
I read the letter alone.
Daniel,
My real name is Rebecca Anne Hart.
I have wanted to tell you that every day since you asked me to marry you.
I was twenty-one when I discovered Adrian Vale was laundering money through the company where I worked.
At first, I copied records because I thought I was protecting myself.
Then I discovered what his money was funding.
People disappeared.
Families were threatened.
Officials were paid.
I went to federal investigators.
Three days later, my brother Ethan vanished.
Vale sent me a photograph of him tied to a chair.
He told me the next photograph would be my mother.
I stopped cooperating.
Then I ran.
I became Rachel Collins because Rebecca Hart was supposed to disappear.
I met you two years later.
You were kind to me before you knew anything about me.
That frightened me more than Vale ever did.
Because for the first time, I had something worth losing.
When Lily was born, I promised myself I would tell you.
Then Vale contacted me.
He knew I had a daughter.
He sent me a photograph of you leaving the hospital.
I stayed silent.
When Tommy was born, he contacted me again.
I kept copies of everything because I believed someday I could end this.
But I kept waiting for a perfect moment.
There is no perfect moment to tell your husband that your entire identity began as a lie.
If something happens to me, protect the children first.
Do not protect my reputation.
Do not protect our marriage.
Protect them.
Even from me if you have to.
I love you.
That is the only part of my life with you that was never false.
Rebecca.
I read the letter twice.
Then a third time.
It explained almost everything.
But not the hardest part.
Why had she left Lily and Tommy alone?
Why had she taught Lily secrecy for years?
Why had fear been allowed to become our children’s burden?
Love could explain why she lied.
Fear could explain why she hid.
Neither automatically forgave the consequences.
Agent Brooks entered quietly.
“We found something.”
I folded the letter.
“Rachel?”
“Possibly.”
Ethan had remembered one of Vale’s emergency properties.
An abandoned lakeside estate outside Millbrook.
Federal surveillance picked up three vehicles arriving there during the night.
One matched the van from Lily’s video.
“When are you going?”
“Teams are moving now.”
“Take the ledger.”
“No.”
“Vale wants it.”
“And giving it to him makes every person named inside vulnerable.”
“That includes my wife.”
Brooks looked at me.
“We’re going to get her.”
I had heard people say things like that in movies.
It always sounded reassuring.
It did not sound reassuring when the person you loved was actually missing.
My phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
A photograph loaded.
Rachel sat tied to a chair.
Bruised.
Terrified.
Alive.
Below it was a message.
BRING THE ORIGINAL LEDGER YOURSELF.
NO POLICE.
MIDNIGHT.
OR YOUR CHILDREN LOSE THEIR MOTHER.
Then another message appeared.
And Daniel?
Ask Ethan what really happened eleven years ago.
I looked toward the room where Ethan was recovering.
Something about Vale’s message was designed to divide us.
The problem was that it worked.
May you like
Because I suddenly realized Ethan had told us how he disappeared.
But he had never told us how he survived.
