Chapter 10 - The Call to Lily
Lily had answered because the number looked like Daniel’s.
Nora had spoofed it somehow, or someone had done it for her.
The call lasted forty-three seconds.
Owen recorded most of it from another phone after he realized what was happening.
Daniel listened in the hotel security room.
Nora’s face filled the screen, pale and furious.
“Where is the rabbit, Lily?”
Lily clutched it tighter. “Why?”
“You took something that belongs to me.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Listen carefully. Adults are in trouble because you told stories.”
Lily’s eyes filled with tears, but she did not answer.
Then Nora said the sentence that changed everything.
“Your mommy would still be alive if your father had listened to me.”
Owen stepped into frame and the call ended.
Daniel replayed that line three times.
“She knew Claire?” he asked.
Mara pointed at the old photograph from the lake house. “We already know she did.”
“No. I mean personally.”
Daniel went through old memories with new eyes.
After Claire’s accident, Gavin had handled everything Daniel could not. He spoke to the insurance company. He found a mechanic to examine the car. He helped organize the funeral. He changed Daniel’s phone because the old one had been damaged when Daniel threw it against a wall.
“What happened to the old phone?” Mara asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Backups?”
Daniel’s company automatically archived executive devices.
By evening, an IT technician recovered a four-year-old cloud image of Daniel’s old phone.
There were dozens of corrupted files.
One voicemail survived.
Claire’s voice came through the speaker, breathless and tense.
“Daniel, call me when you get this. I found payments I don’t understand. Gavin told me to stay out of the company books, and Nora Vale was at the house today. She said she was dropping something off for him, but she knew things about us she should not know. Please call me before you sign anything with Gavin. I’m serious.”
The timestamp was 5:48 p.m.
Claire died at 9:12 that night.
Daniel sat down hard.
“I never heard this.”
The technician checked the archive.
“The voicemail was marked deleted at 6:03.”
“From my phone?”
“Yes.”
Daniel remembered exactly where he had been at 6:03.
Onstage at a company banquet, giving a speech.
His phone had been sitting on the table beside Gavin.
Mara’s expression darkened.
“Daniel, who arranged Claire’s car inspection after the crash?”
He already knew the answer.
“Gavin did.”
The technician clicked another recovered item.
A calendar note Claire had created for the next morning.
May you like
Three words appeared on the screen:
MEET EVELYN. BRING PROOF.
