Chapter 8 - THE NIGHT EVERYTHING CHANGEDI couldn't move.
Christopher arrived minutes later and found me standing alone in the parking garage.
Dwight was gone.
He had left the folder behind.
Inside were medical records.
Jared had suffered a severe poisoning event.
The doctors believed it was accidental.
My father had been listed as the person who brought him to the hospital.
I stared at the records.
“How could my father do this?”
Christopher shook his head.
“We don't know that he did.”
But the photograph showed him there.
The more we investigated, the more complicated it became.
The poisoning happened at a company dinner.
Jared had collapsed after drinking wine.
Several people had access to the table.
One of them was Daniel Cross.
Another was Susan.
Another was my mother.
I stared at the list.
“My mother?”
Christopher nodded.
“She was there.”
I had spent years believing my mother had stayed home.
She hadn't.
She had been at the dinner.
And something else was strange.
The official report had been sealed.
Why?
We requested the file.
Most pages were missing.
But one page remained.
A handwritten note from my father.
The person who poisoned Jared is not the person who wanted him dead.
Christopher looked at me.
“What does that mean?”
“I don't know.”
Then we found the answer.
In the hospital archives was a nurse's statement.
She remembered Jared saying one sentence before losing consciousness.
“Daniel knows.”
Daniel.
Again.
Daniel Cross.
But the problem was that Daniel had disappeared from the city two days before the incident.
He couldn't have been there.
Unless he had been using another identity.
Christopher investigated his credentials.
The man representing Jared's family had passed the bar under a different name.
His original name was not Daniel Cross.
It was Nathan Hale.
A fugitive from a financial fraud investigation.
I stared at the document.
“This isn't an attorney.”
Christopher shook his head.
“No.”
“Then why is he representing them?”
“Because Jared hired him long ago.”
“Before my father's death?”
“Before your father even met Dwight.”
The entire conspiracy suddenly stretched backward decades.
This wasn't a family secret.
It was a criminal network.
And somehow my father had hidden the proof inside my marriage.
That afternoon, the police contacted me.
They had found Ashley.
She was unconscious inside her apartment.
Beside her was a note.
She knew too much.
I drove to the hospital.
Ashley was alive.
Barely.
When she woke, she grabbed my arm.
“Don't trust Dwight.”
I froze.
“Why?”
“He didn't tell you everything.”
“What did he hide?”
She struggled to speak.
“Your father…”
“What about my father?”
“He wasn't killed.”
I stared at her.
“What?”
Ashley looked at me with tears in her eyes.
“They faked his death.”
The room seemed to tilt.
“That is impossible.”
“I saw him.”
“When?”
“Three years after the funeral.”
My heart stopped.
“Where?”
“Baltimore.”
“Who was he with?”
Ashley closed her eyes.
“Your mother.”
I stepped back.
Both of my parents had supposedly died years ago.
Ashley whispered:
“They've been alive this entire time.”
And then the hospital monitor began screaming.
Ashley had stopped breathing.
Doctors rushed in.
Christopher pulled me away.
I stood in the hallway, staring at the closed doors.
If my parents were alive…
May you like
Then who had my family buried?
And why had everyone, including Dwight, let me believe they were dead?
