Chapter 4 - The Man Everyone TrustedPolice moved Emily before sunset.
Nobody told Jason where.
I wasn’t allowed to know every detail either, and for the first time in my life I was grateful for that.
Emily and I were placed temporarily in a secure family facility connected to the county.
Sarah remained under hospital protection.
Meanwhile, police searched for Jason.
His utility truck was eventually found abandoned behind a grocery store twenty miles outside town.
Inside, investigators discovered a change of clothes, several thousand dollars in cash, and a handwritten list.
My name was on it.
Sarah’s name.
Mrs. Harris.
And Detective Reyes.
When Reyes told me, I felt the same cold sensation that had hit me when Mrs. Harris first mentioned the black bags.
“What was the list for?”
“We don’t know.”
“Come on.”
“I’m not going to speculate.”
“Was Emily’s name there?”
“No.”
That should have comforted me.
It didn’t.
Jason had controlled nearly everything about our lives without me realizing it.
Over the next two days, investigators uncovered pieces of the truth.
He had been borrowing money.
A lot of it.
He had lost his previous contracting job months earlier but never told Sarah.
He had created fake invoices, taken deposits from homeowners for work he never completed, and used Sarah’s financial information to open accounts.
Sarah knew none of this.
Then police found something more disturbing.
Jason had installed hidden cameras around the house.
Not in bedrooms.
Not for anything sexual.
They were positioned in hallways, the kitchen, garage, and backyard.
Control.
He wanted to know who entered, who left, and what people said when he wasn’t nearby.
The recordings became evidence.
And they showed something Sarah and I both had to confront.
Emily had been afraid for longer than either of us understood.
Jason rarely touched her.
That was how he hid what he was doing.
Instead, he threatened.
He took away her phone.
He told her nobody would believe her.
He made her stand silently for long periods whenever she “talked back.”
He convinced her that telling me would cause another custody fight and that I might disappear from her life forever.
That was why she had stayed quiet.
Not because she trusted him.
Because she loved me.
The realization nearly destroyed me.
One afternoon, Emily and I sat together in the safe house.
She was drawing.
For the first time since Sunday, she seemed almost like herself.
“Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you mad at me?”
I stared at her.
“What?”
“For not telling.”
I put down my coffee.
“Emily, come here.”
She climbed beside me.
“I could have told you.”
“No.”
“But—”
“No.”
I took her hands.
“You were scared. Adults were supposed to protect you. This is not something you were responsible for fixing.”
She looked down.
“I thought you and Mom would fight.”
“We probably would have.”
“See?”
“But that would have been our problem. Not yours.”
Her eyes filled.
“Jason said if I made you fight, you might stop coming.”
“I will never stop coming.”
“What if Mom gets mad?”
“Your mom isn’t mad at you.”
“She cried a lot.”
“So did I.”
That earned a tiny smile.
Then Emily asked something harder.
“Are you mad at Mom?”
I looked out the window.
“Yes.”
She became nervous.
“But I also know your mom tried to protect you when she understood what was happening.”
“Do you hate her?”
“No.”
That answer surprised me.
It was true.
I was furious with Sarah.
But hate would have been easy.
Reality was harder.
Sarah had missed warning signs just as I had.
She had trusted Jason just as I had.
She had also confronted him when she finally saw the truth.
And nearly paid for it with her life.
My phone rang.
Reyes.
“We may have something.”
“What?”
“Jason used an ATM.”
“Where?”
“Indianapolis.”
“Can you find him?”
“We’re working on it.”
Indianapolis was less than two hours away.
“Why would he use his own card?”
“He didn’t. He used Sarah’s.”
That didn’t make sense.
“He knows you’re tracking him.”
“Probably.”
“Then why?”
Reyes paused.
“Maybe he wants us to.”
A trap.
Jason was no longer simply hiding.
He was directing attention.
Police traced nearby cameras.
Jason appeared wearing a baseball cap, moving deliberately enough that his face could be seen.
Then he walked toward a bus station.
But he never boarded a bus.
An hour later, another camera recorded someone matching him entering a stolen sedan.
The car headed east.
Police followed.
That evening, Sarah called me from the hospital.
“I remembered something.”
“What?”
“Jason has a brother.”
“I know.”
“No. Another one.”
I frowned.
“Another brother?”
“Half brother. They don’t speak much.”
“Where does he live?”
“Ohio.”
My stomach tightened.
“Where?”
“Near Columbus.”
Sarah continued.
“He owns a cabin outside the city.”
“Does Reyes know?”
“I just told him.”
Police searched property records.
The cabin existed.
Officers were dispatched.
They found the building empty.
But Jason had been there.
Fresh food.
A recently used shower.
A burner phone.
And photographs.
Dozens of printed photographs.
Sarah entering work.
Emily getting off the school bus.
Me leaving my apartment.
Mrs. Harris collecting mail.
Jason had been preparing long before Friday night.
Among the photographs was one image that changed everything.
It showed Sarah talking to a man outside a coffee shop.
Reyes identified him as an accountant.
The accountant had been helping Sarah review strange charges on one of her accounts.
She had begun discovering Jason’s fraud before she ever confronted him about Emily.
Jason knew.
That meant Friday hadn’t been a spontaneous loss of control.
He had been preparing to silence Sarah.
Maybe even preparing to disappear.
Then another item was recovered from the cabin.
A prepaid phone containing one saved draft message.
It wasn’t addressed to Sarah.
It wasn’t addressed to me.
It was addressed to Emily.
Reyes read only part of it to me.
This is all your fault. If you had stayed quiet, your mother would still have a normal life.
I felt something in me turn cold.
“Where is he?”
“We don’t know.”
“But he’s still nearby?”
“Possibly.”
Emily walked into the room while I was talking.
I forced my expression to soften.
“I have to go.”
Before I ended the call, Reyes said one more thing.
“Daniel.”
“What?”
“The cabin has a landline.”
“So?”
“It received a call thirty minutes ago.”
“From where?”
Reyes hesitated.
Then said:
“From Mrs. Harris’s house.”
I turned toward Emily.
Because Mrs. Harris had supposedly been staying with her sister since the investigation began.
If someone had called Jason from her empty house, then one of two things was true.
May you like
Either Jason had found a way inside.
Or someone we trusted had been helping him all along.
