Chapter 9 - A Woman in Two Messages

The messages had come from the same number. Collins looked at both, then asked for the phone without changing her expression.

"I want to scream at her," Owen said.

"Save it," Collins replied. "Somebody is using fear as a steering wheel. We need to know whose hands are on it."

Priya arranged a supervised meeting with Natalie at a downtown law office. Owen refused to go unless his lawyer stayed in the room. At noon Natalie arrived without her veil or wedding dress. Her hair was pulled into a tight knot, and the pale mark where her engagement ring had been shone on her finger.

She looked at Owen, then at the empty chair beside him. "Is Ivy all right?"

"You don't get to ask about her like you didn't try to ship her away."

Natalie's face folded. "My father arranged Westhaven. I told myself it was temporary."

"You recorded yourself agreeing."

"I know."

The admission startled him more than another lie would have.

Natalie explained that Martin had paid a private firm to collect every object Adam owned after his arrest. The firm missed the music-box house because it had been given to Ivy. Three weeks ago, a disgruntled warehouse employee had told Martin there might be a hidden memory card. Martin demanded that Natalie get close enough to the family to find it.

Owen laughed without humor. "Close enough? You dated me for two years."

"It didn't begin that way," she whispered.

"When did it begin?"

She stared at the table. "At your brother's preliminary hearing. I heard you tell the judge you would never stop fighting for him. My father sent me to learn what you had."

Priya closed her notebook slowly. "Are you prepared to say that on a recorded statement?"

Natalie flinched. "Not until I know my father can't reach me."

"Then you haven't come here to tell the truth," Owen said. "You've come to bargain with it."

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Natalie reached into her purse. Priya asked her to keep her hands visible. She placed a folded photograph on the table instead. It showed Martin Cross beside a man with a tattoo of mountain peaks on his forearm, standing in front of the music hall's east service door the afternoon before the fire.

"The man's name is Wade Oakes," she said. "And he's already been paid to disappear."