Chapter 4 - THE WOMAN IN THE FIREWe escaped through the roof.
Neither of us spoke until we reached an abandoned warehouse two blocks away.
My mind was breaking under the weight of one impossible sentence.
Your mother isn’t dead.
For fifteen years, I had visited her grave.
I had held flowers.
I had cried there.
I had believed her final moments were trapped inside the wreckage of that old sedan.
But now the idea of her being alive was worse than her being dead.
Because if she lived, why had she abandoned us?
Mason spread the photographs across a table.
“Mom’s name was Elaine.”
“I know.”
“She wasn’t killed in the crash.”
“You said—”
“I said the crash was staged.”
He pulled out another photograph.
A woman stood outside a hospital.
Older.
Thinner.
But undeniably familiar.
My knees weakened.
“That’s her.”
“Yes.”
“When was this taken?”
“Two years ago.”
I stared at him.
“You’ve seen her?”
“No.”
“Then who took it?”
“I don’t know.”
He pointed to the corner of the photograph.
There was a logo.
Black Compass Shipping.
The company my husband had acquired six months after our wedding.
I laughed bitterly.
“Of course.”
Mason looked at me.
“What?”
“Every road leads back to Julian.”
My phone vibrated.
A message.
UNKNOWN NUMBER.
A photograph appeared.
My mother.
Alive.
Sitting inside a dark room.
Beside her was a newspaper dated three days earlier.
Underneath the photograph were six words.
COME ALONE TO STERLING.
Mason shook his head immediately.
“It’s a trap.”
“It could be her.”
“It is a trap.”
“What if it’s really Mom?”
He stared at me.
“What if it is?”
The question hung between us.
Then I realized something.
Mason wasn’t afraid of the trap.
He was afraid of the answer.
We went to Sterling anyway.
The shipyard had been abandoned for years.
Broken cranes stood against the night sky.
Rust covered the shipping containers.
Wind moved through the empty buildings.
We found the main warehouse unlocked.
Inside was an old steel elevator.
Mason inserted the brass key.
Nothing happened.
Then he turned it backward.
A hidden panel opened.
A keypad appeared.
Mason entered our father’s birthday.
The doors opened.
We descended.
The underground vault was still intact.
Rows of boxes lined the walls.
Files.
Tapes.
Photographs.
And in the center stood a chair.
Someone was sitting in it.
A woman.
Gray hair.
Thin face.
A scar across one cheek.
She slowly lifted her head.
“Valerie.”
My knees almost collapsed.
“Mom?”
Her eyes filled with tears.
“I’m sorry.”
I ran toward her.
Mason grabbed me.
“Wait.”
Too late.
The woman smiled.
Then the lights came on.
She wasn’t tied up.
She wasn’t afraid.
And behind her stood Julian.
With a gun pointed at Mason.
May you like
Julian looked at me and said:
“You should have stayed dead.”
