Chapter 4 - GRACE DID NOT DIE ALONE
Grace Whitaker's car had gone over a guardrail at 11:42 on a Tuesday night.
Nathan remembered every detail.
Rain.
Boston.
A state trooper standing beneath the entrance canopy of a hotel.
The trooper had removed his hat before speaking.
Nathan remembered thinking that was strange.
Why remove a hat?
Then the man said Grace's name.
Everything after that became fragments.
A hospital corridor.
A sheet.
Grace's wedding ring in a plastic evidence bag.
Noah crying because Nathan had forgotten to pick him up from his mother's house.
The funeral.
Rain again.
Always rain.
Three years later, Nathan sat inside an armored SUV with Noah asleep against his chest and Elena staring silently through the opposite window.
Grace was an accident.
She had to be.
Because if Grace had been murdered, Nathan had spent three years doing nothing.
“Where are we going?” Elena asked.
“A safe property.”
“Whose?”
“Mine.”
“That doesn't make me feel better.”
Nathan looked at her.
“Why?”
“Your last property almost killed Noah.”
He deserved that.
The SUV turned onto a private road.
Two vehicles followed.
Nathan had called men Carter did not control.
That decision mattered.
He had not told Carter where they were going.
For the first time in twelve years, Nathan did not trust his security chief.
The safe house was a stone cottage near Litchfield.
Elena looked at it.
“This is your idea of hiding?”
“Yes.”
“It has six chimneys.”
“Five.”
“That is not better.”
Noah stirred.
“Are we there?”
Nathan looked down.
“Yes.”
“Is Elena coming?”
“Yes.”
Noah relaxed.
Nathan felt the answer settle painfully inside him.
Is Elena coming?
Not Daddy.
Elena.
He carried Noah inside.
The cottage was warm.
Security had arrived twenty minutes earlier.
Nathan placed Noah on a couch.
Elena covered him with a blanket.
“Stay with him.”
She looked up.
“Where are you going?”
“To find out how my wife died.”
Nathan called Grace's brother.
Daniel Mercer answered on the fourth ring.
“Nathan?”
“I need the accident file.”
Silence.
“What?”
“Grace's accident.”
“It's three in the morning.”
“I know.”
Daniel exhaled.
“Why?”
“Did Grace ever tell you she was afraid?”
The silence changed.
Nathan stood.
“Daniel.”
“You should leave this alone.”
Nathan's entire body became still.
“What did you say?”
“I said leave it alone.”
“You knew.”
“I knew Grace called me two days before she died.”
Nathan could not breathe.
“What did she say?”
“She thought someone was following her.”
Nathan closed his eyes.
“Why didn't you tell me?”
“I did.”
“No.”
“I called your office.”
Nathan remembered nothing.
“Who answered?”
Daniel hesitated.
“Your assistant said you were unavailable.”
Nathan's assistant three years earlier had been Carter's sister.
She died eight months later from an overdose.
Another accident.
Nathan gripped the phone.
“Send me everything.”
“Nathan—”
“Everything.”
The call ended.
A floorboard creaked.
Nathan turned.
Elena stood in the doorway.
“You heard?”
“Yes.”
He looked away.
“I failed her.”
Elena approached.
“You were lied to.”
“I was absent.”
“Yes.”
He looked at her sharply.
Again, no comforting lie.
Elena folded her arms.
“Grace may have been afraid. Noah is afraid now. You can spend the night punishing yourself for the first one, or you can protect the second.”
Nathan stared at her.
“How do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Say exactly what I don't want to hear.”
“Years of cleaning rich people's bathrooms.”
He almost laughed.
Almost.
Then Elena's expression changed.
“What?”
She pointed at his phone.
“Grace's accident happened outside Boston?”
“Yes.”
“What road?”
“Route 2.”
Elena went pale.
“Why?”
“My husband died in a hospital in Boston.”
Nathan waited.
“Three years ago?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
Elena gave him the date.
Nathan stared.
The day after Grace died.
Elena sat.
“I was at Massachusetts General. Mateo had surgery.”
“What does that have to do with Grace?”
“I saw Vanessa.”
Nathan stopped.
Elena's face had gone white.
“I didn't know her then. But I saw her.”
“Where?”
“The hospital parking garage.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Three years ago?”
“Yes.”
Nathan's mind raced.
Vanessa claimed they met eighteen months ago.
At a charity gala.
“She was arguing with a man.”
“Who?”
“I don't know.”
“What did you hear?”
Elena closed her eyes.
“I remember because Mateo was sleeping and I went outside to cry.”
Her voice broke slightly.
Nathan waited.
“The woman said, ‘You promised the wife was the last one.’”
Nathan felt something inside him turn to ice.
Elena looked at him.
“The man said, ‘There is still the boy.’”
Upstairs, Noah screamed.
They ran.
Nathan reached the bedroom first.
The bed was empty.
The window stood open.
Curtains moved in the night air.
On the pillow rested Captain Buttons.
May you like
Noah's stuffed rabbit.
A knife had been pushed through its chest.
