Chapter 19 - The Last Door
Claire's blood turned cold. “Where are you?”
“Closer than your security team thinks,” Sloane replied. “You always were careless about doors.”
Ethan reached for the phone, but Claire shook her head. She switched it to speaker and tapped the emergency alert Ortiz had set up after Nico's rescue.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“Money. A car. The passwords to the account your husband forgot I control.”
“You tried to drown me.”
Sloane gave a small, exhausted laugh. “And somehow you're still making this about yourself.”
“It was about you all along. You stole from families who needed safe homes. When I found out, you tried to kill me and my daughter.”
“Your daughter wasn't the target.”
“You pushed a pregnant woman into the deep end. You don't get to separate us now.”
Silence. Then Sloane said, “Meet me on the third level of the parking garage. Alone. If I see Ethan or the police, I'm gone.”
Claire looked at Ethan. They both knew she wasn't walking into another trap.
“You'll have to come to me,” she said. “I'm not leaving the hospital.”
A bitter breath crackled over the line. “You still think people will save you.”
“No,” Claire said. “I know some people will. That's different.”
The call ended. Ortiz arrived less than a minute later. Hospital security had spotted a blonde woman in stolen staff scrubs entering the service elevator. Officers were sealing the exits.
Sloane reached Claire's floor before she realized it was a trap. She stepped from the elevator with a small utility knife in her hand and found Ortiz waiting beside two uniformed officers.
“Put it down,” Ortiz ordered.
Sloane looked toward Claire's room. For one flash of a second, her old confident face returned. “Ethan, tell them I helped build everything you have.”
Ethan stood behind Ortiz, near the doorway. “You helped hide what we did. I'm done hiding.”
Sloane's expression broke. She dropped the knife. The officers cuffed her without a struggle.
As they led her away, she turned to Claire.
“You have no idea what it'll cost to tell the truth.”
Claire rested a hand against her healing incision. “I'm finding out.”
That night Ortiz returned with news that Sloane and Rusk had begun blaming each other. More records were being recovered. Other witnesses were coming forward. Ethan's company was under investigation, and no one could predict how long the cases would take.
May you like
Ortiz handed Maya one final envelope recovered from the company archive. It was addressed to Elena Torres.
Across the front, in Ethan Bennett's handwriting, were three words: NO ACTION NEEDED.
