Chapter 7 - The Man Named Trent
Lily hid behind Claire.
“I came by myself!” she shouted.
Amanda ignored her.
The tall man beside Amanda watched Ethan with flat gray eyes.
Claire recognized him.
“Trent.”
He smiled slightly. “Morning, Claire.”
Ethan whispered, “Who is he?”
Amanda answered before Claire could.
“My brother.”
The name from the phone call.
Trent.
Officer Martinez was not among the responding officers. These two knew only that a mother had reported her six-year-old daughter missing and named Claire as a possible abductor.
Claire raised both hands.
“I did not take them. Ethan called me from this station.”
Amanda pointed at the gray box. “Then why are you going through my husband's private property?”
“Because Daniel told Ethan to give it to me.”
Trent's eyes dropped to the box.
For the first time, his calm expression cracked.
Amanda saw it too.
“Give me that.”
Claire closed the lid.
“No.”
One officer stepped between them.
“Everyone stop.”
Ethan pulled the folded note from his shoe.
“My dad wrote this.”
The officer read it twice.
That slowed everything down.
Amanda's kidnapping accusation collapsed when station cameras showed Ethan and Lily arriving alone on a bicycle nearly twenty minutes before Claire.
By sunrise, Officer Martinez had been called back to the scene.
He listened to Ethan's story, took custody of the gray box as evidence after Claire showed him Daniel's attorney letter, and called the child-welfare emergency line again.
This time, the children did not go home with Amanda.
They went with Claire.
Amanda stood in the parking lot, furious.
“This is temporary,” she shouted. “Lily is my daughter!”
Lily cried into Claire's coat.
Ethan looked at Amanda through the car window.
Trent stood behind her.
He wasn't watching Lily.
He was watching the evidence box in Martinez's trunk.
At Claire's apartment, Ethan finally saw what Daniel had written.
Three months earlier, Daniel discovered withdrawals from Lily's college account that he had not authorized.
Then he found a loan application using his electronic signature.
Then a second mortgage inquiry tied to the family home.
Every document led back to a financial consulting company owned by Trent Walker.
Amanda's maiden name was Walker.
Daniel had confronted her once.
She denied everything.
After that, Daniel started noticing smaller things.
Ethan's school lunch account mysteriously going empty.
Clothes Daniel bought for him disappearing.
Amanda insisting Ethan was “acting out” whenever Daniel traveled.
Daniel had installed the recorder system after Ethan told him he sometimes went to bed hungry.
Claire stopped reading.
Her eyes filled with tears.
“He knew.”
Ethan stared at the floor. “Why did he leave?”
“He had to go to Alaska for work.”
“He could've stayed.”
Claire had no answer that didn't hurt.
Her phone rang.
Fairbanks area code.
She answered immediately.
“Yes?”
Her face drained of color.
“What do you mean his brakes?”
Ethan looked up.
Claire listened for ten seconds, then whispered, “Oh my God.”
She hung up.
“What happened?” Ethan asked.
Claire sat down slowly.
“The crash wasn't caused by ice.”
May you like
She looked at both children.
“Someone cut your father's brake line.”
