Chapter 8 - The Woman on the Phone
I did not tell Daniel what the caller said.
Not immediately.
That was the worst part.
After three years of marriage, one whispered sentence was enough to make me hide something from him.
Maybe because he had already hidden so much from me.
Marcus traced the call to a prepaid phone near Lake Forest.
Daniel wanted to come with us.
I told him no.
His face tightened. “You think I’m involved.”
“I think I do not know what to think.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the only honest one I have.”
I left with Marcus and Rebecca.
The location was a small grocery store beside a gas station. Security footage showed a woman in sunglasses buying the prepaid phone with cash.
She wore a scarf over her hair.
But when she turned toward the camera, my knees weakened.
I knew that face.
Older. Thinner. A scar along the jaw.
But I knew it.
My mother.
Alive.
Rebecca covered her mouth.
Marcus froze the frame.
“She knows cameras are there,” he said. “She wanted to be seen.”
The cashier remembered her.
“She asked if the pay phone at the old Lakeshore Motel still worked.”
We drove there.
Room 17 was unlocked.
Inside, no one was waiting.
On the bed sat a shoebox.
In it were years of newspaper clippings about me.
My college graduation.
My first design award.
My wedding announcement.
Photographs of Daniel and me taken from a distance.
At the bottom was a flash drive.
Marcus plugged it into an isolated laptop.
The first file was an audio recording.
A man’s voice said, “Laura knows about the offshore transfers.”
Another voice answered, “Then make sure she never reaches the auditors.”
I knew the second voice.
Charles Whitmore.
My stomach dropped.
Rebecca whispered, “Oh my God.”
Then the recording continued.
Charles said, “I am not killing anyone. Do you understand me? Stop this before it gets worse.”
A third voice laughed.
“Too late, Charlie.”
The file ended.
Marcus replayed the third voice.
I had heard it before.
At weddings. Christmas dinners. Board events.
Grant’s father, Thomas Whitmore.
Dead for eleven years.
My phone buzzed.
A text from the same unknown number.
IF YOU WANT THE REST, COME ALONE.
Beneath it was an address.
May you like
And then another message appeared.
DO NOT TELL YOUR HUSBAND. HE IS BEING WATCHED.
