Chapter 6 - The House Across the LakeWe escaped through the motel bathroom window.
By sunrise, we were hiding at a cabin Megan's friend owned.
Evan never followed.
That was the problem.
A man who had faked his own death should not have been this easy to avoid.
“He wants us to find something,” Megan said.
“What?”
“The ledger.”
“Then why doesn't he just take it?”
“Because he doesn't know where it is.”
I thought about the necklace.
Maybe Lauren had been right.
Maybe Evan believed the ledger was hidden inside it.
But if that were true, why had he given me the necklace twenty years ago?
“There's something else,” Lauren said.
“What?”
“Evan wasn't the one who gave you that pendant.”
I stared at her.
“What?”
“Eleanor gave it to you.”
I laughed.
“Eleanor was supposedly dead before I even met Evan.”
“Yes.”
“Then how could she?”
Lauren pulled out another photograph.
It showed my wedding day.
But on the reverse was a date.
Three months after the wedding.
Impossible.
Unless someone had altered the photograph.
I looked at Megan.
She was already searching the metadata.
“The original image was taken three months after your wedding.”
“What?”
Megan's expression changed.
“This wasn't your wedding.”
I stared.
“What are you saying?”
She zoomed into the background.
A house.
A lake.
A wooden dock.
I recognized it.
“My aunt's house.”
“No,” Megan said.
“Lake Monroe.”
“No.”
She pointed to a small sign near the dock.
A cabin number.
“Eleanor owned this property.”
I felt sick.
Twenty years ago, Evan had taken me there.
He told me it belonged to a family friend.
We had spent one weekend at the lake.
Just the two of us.
Or so I thought.
Megan found the property records.
The house was owned by a trust.
The beneficiary?
Caroline Whitaker.
My name.
I stared at the document.
“I've never owned this house.”
“Apparently you have.”
We drove there that afternoon.
The cabin had been empty for years.
Inside, everything was covered in dust.
Except one room.
The study.
There was a desk.
A lamp.
A locked drawer.
Megan forced it open.
Inside was a stack of letters.
All addressed to me.
I opened the first one.
Caroline,
If you're reading this, Evan has already lied to you.
My hands trembled.
The second sentence nearly stopped my heart.
You were never chosen by accident.
I read faster.
Eleanor explained that years earlier, she had identified a pattern in Evan's financial activities.
She believed he had been hiding money through women he trusted.
My husband had married me because my family had unknowingly inherited an old trust.
A trust worth millions.
The ledger was never the real prize.
The trust was.
Evan needed access to it.
The only problem?
He could not access it without me.
The final letter ended with one sentence.
The man you call your husband will eventually try to kill you.
I dropped the pages.
Megan looked at me.
“Caroline…”
A floorboard creaked upstairs.
We all froze.
Then footsteps.
Someone was walking toward us.
Lauren whispered:
“Evan.”
But the footsteps were too light.
A woman's voice floated down the stairs.
“Caroline?”
Megan raised her weapon.
I recognized the voice immediately.
Judith.
She stepped into the doorway.
May you like
And smiled.
“You really should have stayed in Florida.”
