Chapter 12 - The Place Where Rebecca DiedRebecca arrived under state protection shortly before midnight.
I expected an older woman. Someone visibly broken by four years of fear.
Instead, she looked much like the person in the old photograph: dark hair, sharp eyes, and a quiet determination that seemed to have survived everything Jason had done.
When she saw Sarah, both women began crying.
They held each other without speaking.
I stood nearby, feeling the strange weight of a story that had been unfolding around my daughter while I believed our biggest problem was a difficult custody arrangement.
Rebecca was the first to pull away.
"Where's Emily?"
"She's safe," I said. "At a protected location."
"Does she know about me?"
"She knows you're alive."
Rebecca looked toward Ortiz.
"Then you need to understand why Jason wants the original statement."
Four years earlier, Rebecca had discovered evidence that Jason and Bell were using false incident reports to conceal serious assaults. Jason had been working with a private security company that handled properties for wealthy clients. Several reports involving missing property and injured workers had disappeared after being submitted.
Rebecca initially believed it was fraud.
Then she found a recording of Jason threatening a woman who had worked for the company.
When she confronted him, he attacked her.
Bell arrived at the scene and convinced Rebecca that an official complaint would expose her to legal trouble because she'd accessed confidential company records without permission.
He promised to help.
Instead, he took her to the lakeside property.
Rebecca escaped before they could kill her, but she witnessed something neither man realized she'd seen.
Jason had hidden an original audio statement in the boathouse. It belonged to a man who had been injured during a violent confrontation at one of the company's properties.
The statement implicated Jason in the assault and Bell in the subsequent cover-up.
Rebecca copied the recording before she ran.
She kept the original statement, believing it might eventually help her prove what had happened.
Sarah discovered it years later while searching Jason's belongings.
Jason realized she had found the document and began threatening her.
"Where is it now?" Ortiz asked.
Rebecca looked at Sarah.
Sarah shook her head.
"I never saw the original. I only knew he was searching for it."
Rebecca turned toward me.
"But Emily did."
The room became silent.
I thought of the cage, the backyard, the black bags.
My daughter had been dragged into this because she'd seen something she was never supposed to see.
Rebecca continued.
"The first time I met Emily, she was six. Jason had brought her to the company office while Sarah was out. I was working late. He left a folder on his desk, and Emily opened it because she thought it contained coloring pages."
"What was inside?"
"The statement."
Rebecca's voice trembled.
"She took a small page from it and drew a picture on the back. Jason caught her. He told her it was a game and made her promise not to tell her mother."
I remembered Bluebird.
The drawings Emily used to make, the papers she tucked into books, the tiny treasures she hid around the house.
"Did she keep the page?"
Rebecca nodded.
"Jason searched for it for years. He believed it contained a code that would lead him to the original recording."
Sarah covered her mouth.
"Where would she have hidden it?"
Rebecca looked down.
"In a place Jason would never search."
Suddenly, I understood why Emily had been so protective of the stuffed bird.
Why she kept touching its wings.
Why Jason had been asking for it.
But the toy itself contained only the recordings Sarah had preserved.
The paper was somewhere else.
I called the shelter.
The staff confirmed Emily was asleep and safe.
Then I asked them to look for a drawing, something she might have carried from home.
The worker returned to the phone a few minutes later.
They had searched Emily's bag, her backpack, and the clothes she'd worn when I rescued her.
Nothing.
Then the worker remembered something.
Emily had asked for a glass of water before bed.
She had also asked whether the shelter had a freezer.
I stared at the phone.
"Why would she need a freezer?"
The worker said, "She told me she had a secret she needed to keep cold."
Rebecca went pale.
"I know where she put it."
Sarah grabbed my arm.
"Where?"
Rebecca answered.
"In the ice compartment of Jason's old fishing box."
Ortiz immediately sent a team to search the lakeside property.
But when the first officer arrived, he radioed an update.
May you like
The fishing box was missing.
And someone had left a fresh tire track leading away from the boathouse.
Related Stories
