Chapter 4 - The Morning Cameron Lost Everything
Cameron read the message twice.
Then he handed his phone to Brooks.
Brooks’s expression hardened.
“How does he know?”
Nobody answered.
That was the frightening part.
We were forty minutes from the penthouse.
Only four adults knew what we had discovered.
Unless someone had been watching us.
Cameron immediately called his company.
Not Mercer.
His chief legal officer.
“Disable Alan Mercer’s access credentials,” Cameron said. “Building, network, vehicles, everything.”
A pause.
“Do it now.”
He ended the call.
Brooks shook his head.
“If Mercer is involved, you just told him we’re onto him.”
“He already knows.”
“Then assume he prepared for this.”
I looked at Sadie.
“This is becoming dangerous.”
Cameron’s face changed.
He seemed to remember that my three-year-old daughter and I were standing in the middle of his nightmare.
“You’re right.”
He arranged for us to stay with my sister.
I refused at first.
Not because I wanted to play detective.
Because I needed answers too.
Sadie was at the center of something I couldn’t explain.
But Cameron was firm.
“You have a child to protect.”
The sentence hit him harder than me.
His eyes lowered.
Ten years ago, he had had a child to protect too.
And he believed he had failed.
Before leaving Dr. Bell’s house, Cameron asked him one final question.
“What exactly did Evelyn say when she called you Monday night?”
Bell thought carefully.
“She said she had made a mistake.”
“What mistake?”
“She trusted someone.”
“Richard?”
“She didn’t say.”
Bell paused.
“Then she said something else.”
Cameron waited.
“She said, ‘If Cameron knew what really happened before Lily was born, he’d understand everything.’”
Cameron frowned.
“Before Lily was born?”
Bell nodded.
That opened another mystery.
On the drive back, Sadie fell asleep against me.
Cameron sat across from us in the SUV.
For most of the journey, he watched the city pass.
Then he spoke.
“I almost didn’t kiss her.”
I knew immediately who he meant.
“Lily?”
“The morning she died.”
He stared through the window.
“I was late.”
His voice remained controlled, but his fingers tightened together.
“I had a board meeting. Richard had been pressuring me about an acquisition. Lily ran into the kitchen and asked if she could kiss me.”
He smiled painfully.
“I told her Daddy was busy.”
My chest hurt.
“But she wouldn’t leave.”
Cameron looked at Sadie.
“So I crouched down. She kissed my cheek and put a silver star on my jacket.”
The craft star.
Suddenly I understood why Sadie’s sticker had affected him so deeply.
“I forgot about it until after the accident.”
“What happened to it?”
“I don’t know.”
He swallowed.
“I remember sitting in the hospital. Someone told me Evelyn was gone. Then they told me Lily was gone too.”
His voice broke for the first time.
“I looked down and the star was still on my jacket.”
I didn’t know what to say.
There are griefs too large for comforting sentences.
So I said nothing.
After a while Cameron continued.
“I spent ten years wishing I had stayed home.”
“You couldn’t have known.”
“No.”
He looked at me.
“But grief doesn’t care what you could have known.”
That sentence stayed with me.
We arrived at my sister’s apartment shortly before noon.
Cameron assigned two security officers he trusted personally to remain outside.
Then he and Brooks left.
For six hours, I heard nothing.
At 7:14 p.m., my phone rang.
Cameron.
I answered immediately.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes.”
His voice sounded exhausted.
“We found Mercer.”
My stomach tightened.
“And?”
“He wants immunity.”
“For what?”
“For telling us what Richard did.”
I sat down.
Sadie was coloring at the kitchen table.
“Was Richard responsible for the accident?”
Cameron was silent.
“Cameron?”
“Yes.”
The word barely existed.
I closed my eyes.
Mercer had been a young detective drowning in gambling debt ten years earlier.
Richard discovered it.
He offered Mercer money.
Initially, Mercer’s job was simple.
Find out what Evelyn knew.
Then Evelyn discovered the inheritance secret.
Richard panicked.
He had followed her car that Tuesday morning.
He intended to stop her before she reached Dr. Bell.
According to Mercer, Richard forced Evelyn toward the shoulder of the road while trying to make her pull over.
He claimed he never intended to cause a crash.
But intention didn’t change what happened.
Evelyn lost control.
The vehicle left the road.
Richard called Mercer before calling emergency services.
Mercer arrived and helped manipulate evidence.
The witness was threatened.
Photographs disappeared.
The case became a tragic accident.
“And Mercer has lived with this for ten years?” I whispered.
“He says Richard threatened his family.”
“Do you believe him?”
“No.”
Cameron’s answer was immediate.
“But he kept records.”
“What records?”
“Payments.”
Mercer had hidden copies as insurance against Richard.
Bank transfers.
Messages.
Photographs.
Enough to prove the cover-up.
I felt sick.
“So it’s over.”
“No.”
Something in his voice changed.
“What?”
“Mercer says Richard wasn’t trying to protect only his inheritance.”
I waited.
“He was protecting a second secret.”
Dr. Bell’s words came back to me.
If Cameron knew what really happened before Lily was born, he’d understand everything.
“What secret?”
“Mercer doesn’t know.”
“Then who does?”
“Evelyn did.”
I looked at Sadie.
She had stopped coloring.
She was staring at the empty chair across from her.
“Sadie?”
She smiled.
“Hi.”
Every hair on my arms lifted.
“Who are you talking to?”
“The lady.”
I stood.
“What lady?”
“Lily’s mommy.”
My mouth went dry.
“What is she saying?”
Sadie listened.
Then frowned.
“She says Mr. Cameron is looking in the wrong place.”
I nearly dropped the phone.
Cameron heard.
“What did she say?”
I put the phone on speaker.
“Sadie, tell Mr. Cameron.”
Sadie leaned toward it.
“The lady says you’re looking in the wrong place.”
Cameron was silent.
“Where should I look?”
Sadie listened to something none of us could hear.
Then she said:
“Where you promised forever.”
Cameron inhaled sharply.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
But he already knew.
“The lake house.”
“What lake house?”
“Evelyn and I got married there.”
He was moving now.
I could hear doors opening.
“We owned a small house on Lake Geneva before the penthouse. It was where I proposed.”
“Do you still own it?”
“Yes.”
“Have you been there since the accident?”
A long pause.
“No.”
Cameron and Brooks drove there that night.
I stayed with Sadie.
Three hours later, Cameron sent me a photograph.
An old wooden house.
A porch facing dark water.
And beneath a loose floorboard in the bedroom, they had discovered a metal box.
Inside were letters.
Dozens of them.
All written by Evelyn.
But the most important object wasn’t a letter.
It was a birth certificate.
Cameron called me at 11:46 p.m.
His voice sounded unlike anything I had heard before.
“Claire.”
“Yes?”
“Lily wasn’t our only child.”
I stopped breathing.
“What?”
He looked down at the document in his hands.
“Evelyn gave birth to another baby before I ever met her.”
And according to the papers hidden beneath that floor, that child had never died as Evelyn had been told.
May you like
Someone had taken her.
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