Chapter 4: The Price of a Daughter
“Elena!” I shouted.
“She was beside me!” Elena dragged herself toward the gate.
“Chloe came through the shed.
She pulled Lily away while you ran.”
My phone rang inside my discarded jacket.
Chloe’s name glowed on the screen.
“Put Lily on,” I said.
“Daddy?” Lily’s voice trembled.
“Chloe locked the doors.”
“Listen to me, sweetheart.
Stay calm.
I’m coming.”
Chloe took the phone.
“You have forty minutes, Marcus.”
“If you frighten her again—”
“You’ll do what?
Call the police and explain why your legally de@d wife climbed out from under your swimming pool?”
“Elena is alive.
That’s all they need to know.”
“No, it isn’t.
Her signature is on the insurance claim, and yours is on a statement saying she was unstable before the accident.”
I looked at Elena.
She shook her head.
“I never signed an insurance claim,” she said loudly.
Chloe laughed.
“Thank you, Elena.
I needed to know you were listening.”
“What do you want?” I asked.
“The original trust document in your office safe.
Bring it to Northpoint Marina.
Come alone.”
“You staged the accident for a document?”
“That document is worth eighteen million dollars.
Don’t pretend your family never ruined anyone for less.”
The call ended.
Elena seized my wrist.
“You cannot give her the trust.
It protects Lily.”
“She has Lily.”
“And if Chloe controls that money, Lily will never be safe.”
The side gate creaked.
Our elderly neighbor, Ruth Calder, stood there holding a garden spade in one hand and her phone in the other.
“I called emergency services,” she said.
“And before either of you tells me to go home, I saw Chloe force Lily into that car.”
“Ruth, this could become dangerous.”
“I spent thirty-two years as a court clerk.
Dangerous people depend on polite witnesses looking away.”
Elena covered her mouth, and her knees buckled again.
Ruth dropped the spade and caught her.
“Easy, dear.”
“I left Lily with her,” Elena sobbed.
“I trusted Chloe because she was my friend.”
Ruth wrapped a cardigan around Elena’s shoulders.
“You survived long enough to come back to your daughter.
Now let us help you keep her.”
Detective Adrian Shaw arrived with two officers.
He crouched beside Elena while a paramedic examined her ankle.
“Tell me one thing Chloe won’t expect us to know,” he said.
Elena pointed toward the house.
“She recorded everything.
Chloe made me read messages to Marcus so he would believe I planned to leave him before the boat trip.”
“Where are the recordings?”
“In Grant’s workshop.
A black drive marked pool invoices.”
Ruth lifted her phone.
“I have something too.
Chloe admitted the trust was worth eighteen million while I was standing at the gate.”
Shaw looked at me.
“Make the exchange.
We’ll follow at a distance.”
“No,” Elena said.
“Chloe knows his car.”
“I’m not risking Lily without a plan,” Shaw replied.
Elena gripped my hand.
“There’s something I have to tell you before you go.
On the boat, Chloe said you had chosen her.
She showed me messages from your phone.”
“I never sent them.”
“I know that now.”
“What did you believe then?”
Her eyes filled.
“I believed you wanted me gone.”
A uniformed officer hurried from the house carrying my laptop.
“Detective, the office safe is open.
The trust is missing.”
My phone buzzed with a photograph of Lily sitting inside Chloe’s car.
May you like
Beneath it were six words:
BRING ELENA, OR YOU LOSE LILY.
