Chapter 8 - THE CHILD IN THE CAR
Maya collapsed against the wall.
“My daughter was with my mother,” she said. “She was supposed to be safe.”
Lucas looked genuinely confused, which meant someone else inside the family had taken the child.
The photograph carried no location data, but Claire recognized the stitched leather seat. Eleanor’s vintage Bentley.
Naomi warned them not to go.
Maya was already moving.
Claire caught her arm. “They want you panicked and alone.”
“That is my child.”
“I know. That’s why we do this carefully.”
Police placed a tracking device inside a duplicate flash drive and fitted Claire and Maya with hidden microphones. Rebecca insisted on coming because she knew the service tunnels beneath the vineyard estate.
They arrived near sunset.
The mansion looked peaceful from the road, its stone walls glowing gold beneath the California sky.
Inside, it was empty.
A child’s shoe lay in the foyer.
Maya picked it up and began to shake.
A speaker crackled above them.
Eleanor’s voice filled the house.
“Place the drive on the dining table.”
Claire looked toward the same room where the plate had shattered against her head.
They entered slowly.
The bloodstained linen was gone. The broken china had been swept away. Twenty chairs stood perfectly aligned as if nothing had happened.
Maya placed the duplicate drive on the table.
A concealed door opened near the wine cabinet.
Charles stepped out holding Maya’s daughter by the shoulder.
The girl was frightened but unharmed.
Behind him stood Eleanor with a revolver.
“You could have had a comfortable life,” Eleanor told Claire. “All you had to do was cooperate.”
“You ordered my husband to attack me.”
“No. I reminded him what failure would cost.”
Charles picked up the flash drive and inserted it into a laptop.
His eyes narrowed.
“This is not the original.”
May you like
The lights went out.
Then Rebecca screamed from beneath the floor.
