Chapter 9 - Ten DaysEveryone Thought Claire Was Dead
The body wasn't Vanessa.
It was another woman.
A brunette named Lisa Grant.
Former employee of Daniel's.
Someone who had worked for Northlake.
Someone who knew too much.
The clothes were mine.
My missing coat.
My scarf.
Even my shoes.
Daniel had dressed another woman as me.
He hadn't just prepared a financial story.
He had prepared a death.
Rachel looked at me.
“He wanted everyone to think you were dead.”
“And now?”
“Now he has a problem.”
“What problem?”
“You're alive.”
We returned to Chicago secretly.
The FBI had become interested in the financial network.
Suddenly, everything was moving faster.
Federal investigators opened files.
Bank subpoenas went out.
Accounts were flagged.
Daniel's real estate holdings were being examined.
Yet he remained free.
For the moment.
Then Rachel found something in Lisa Grant's records.
A hidden folder labeled C.H.
My initials.
Inside were photographs.
Taken over years.
Me at work.
Me leaving restaurants.
Me shopping.
Me entering my mother's old neighborhood.
I stared.
Lisa had been watching me.
Why?
The last photograph had been taken two weeks before the airport.
It showed me standing outside a bank.
Beside the photograph was a handwritten note:
She remembers.
I looked at Rachel.
“Remembers what?”
She pointed to another file.
My mother's old accident report.
I read every page.
There was a witness statement I'd never seen.
A mechanic.
He claimed the brakes had been tampered with.
His statement had disappeared from the final police report.
His name was Samuel Price.
We found him in Indiana.
Alive.
Barely.
He was living in a nursing home.
When we arrived, he refused to speak.
Until I showed him my mother's photograph.
His eyes filled with tears.
“You're her daughter.”
“Yes.”
“I was afraid they'd come back.”
“Who?”
He looked at Rachel.
Then at me.
“Your husband.”
I felt my pulse spike.
“Daniel?”
“He was a boy.”
“What did he know?”
“Everything.”
Samuel told us he'd discovered the brake line had been cut.
He had reported it.
Then someone from the Hale family visited him.
He was offered money.
He refused.
His workshop burned down three days later.
He disappeared.
He had never spoken again.
Until now.
“Why help me?”
He looked at me.
“Because your mother asked me once to protect you.”
I cried.
Not because of the words.
Because I'd spent years thinking no one had known how much she'd feared for me.
Before we left, Samuel gave me a key.
“She told me never to use it unless the Hales came for you.”
“What does it open?”
“I don't know.”
I recognized the key.
It matched a safety deposit box.
My mother had left one.
At a bank in Boston.
I had never known.
We flew there that night.
The box contained one envelope.
My name was written on it.
Claire.
If you are reading this, they finally found you.
I couldn't breathe.
Rachel stood beside me.
I opened it.
My mother's handwriting continued.
Do not trust Robert.
Do not trust Daniel.
But most importantly, do not trust the person who tells you Daniel is dead.
I stared at the sentence.
“What does that mean?”
Rachel frowned.
Then I turned the page.
There was a photograph.
Daniel.
Not as a teenager.
As a child.
Standing beside my mother.
On the back:
He was never the victim.
He was the reason they needed me silent.
My hands shook.
Below the photograph was another note.
Claire, the truth about your father is inside Northlake.
I looked at Rachel.
“Hold on.”
“My father?”
“My father died before I was born.”
Rachel turned the photograph over.
There was one more name.
A name I knew.
Robert Hale.
My mother had written:
Your father trusted him.
Then I remembered something.
A phrase Daniel had used years ago.
Your mother knew my family better than you think.
At the time, I had assumed he meant socially.
Now I understood.
She knew them financially.
And personally.
The final page contained an account number.
Rachel recognized the bank immediately.
“Swiss.”
“What?”
“This is an offshore account.”
“Whose?”
Rachel stared at me.
“Yours.”
My heart stopped.
“My mother's account?”
“No.”
She pointed at the beneficiary name.
“Claire Bennett.”
I looked at the date the account had been opened.
Three weeks before I met Daniel.
Someone had created an offshore account in my name before my marriage had even begun.
Then I saw the current balance.
$8,421,903.11.
I sat down.
“What?”
May you like
Rachel whispered,
“Claire, I think your husband has spent five years stealing from you.”
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