Chapter 19 - Two Days Later
Ethan entered the interview room before anyone could stop him.
“You saw Rachel alive?”
Harold leaned back. “Yes.”
“Where?”
“At a private clinic in Pennsylvania.”
Ethan grabbed the table. “Why was I told she was dead?”
Harold’s eyes shifted toward Detective Kim.
Kim looked equally stunned.
Harold said, “Because the body in the crash was burned beyond visual identification.”
“DNA confirmed it was Rachel.”
“DNA from what sample?”
Kim answered slowly. “Her hairbrush. The family provided it.”
Ethan thought of who had collected Rachel’s personal items after the crash.
His mother.
“No,” he whispered.
Harold continued. “Rachel asked Elena to help her disappear. She believed the people stealing from the company would kill her and then go after Sophie. She wanted time to build a case.”
Ethan’s grief turned into something harder to name.
“She let me bury her.”
Harold looked away. “I don’t know what happened after the clinic.”
Detective Kim left the room to make calls.
Within twenty minutes, she found the clinic.
It had closed nine months earlier.
One former nurse agreed to video chat.
Ethan sat in silence while the woman studied an old photo of Rachel.
“Yes,” the nurse said. “She was there. Head injury. Stitches. She refused to use her real name.”
“How long?” Ethan asked.
“Three days.”
“Where did she go?”
The nurse hesitated. “A woman picked her up. Older. Dark hair. She called her Elena.”
Ethan turned toward Daniel.
Daniel’s mother.
Elena was being questioned down the hall.
They brought her in.
Ethan could barely speak. “Where is my wife?”
Elena looked at him for a long time.
Then she began to cry.
“I promised her I would not tell you until Harold was exposed.”
“Where is she?”
“She went into hiding.”
“Where?”
Elena shook her head. “I haven’t seen her in six months.”
Ethan slammed his palm on the table. “Is she alive?”
Elena flinched.
“I don’t know.”
Then Daniel’s phone rang.
He answered.
A woman’s voice spoke one sentence.
Daniel went completely still.
He handed the phone to Ethan.
May you like
On the line, a voice Ethan had mourned for eleven months whispered:
“Don’t hang up.”
