Chapter 6 - The Road That Led Back.
Officer Harlan drove without speaking, but the patrol car never turned toward town.
Instead, he followed a service road that curved back through the Vale forest.
Amelia watched the manor lights reappear between the trees and understood that no official arrest had been made.
The second patrol car carrying Lucas vanished at the north fork.
“Where are you taking me?”
Harlan adjusted the mirror.
“Somewhere your questions cannot embarrass important people.”
Amelia studied the steel partition, the door handles removed from both sides, and the evidence case on the front seat.
The jade pendant lay inches beyond her reach.
She unfolded Gideon's strip of paper inside her cuffed fist.
The ink had bled in the rain, revealing faint numbers beneath the sentence.
3-1-9-12.
The numbers matched the letters C-A-I-L, which meant nothing until she remembered the carved snail.
Its shell spiraled clockwise through four chambers.
Each number might identify a pressure point.
Harlan stopped beside an abandoned gatehouse and stepped out to make a call.
Amelia slid to the edge of the seat and kicked the evidence case against the partition.
The pendant bounced inside its plastic bag.
She caught the bag with two cuffed fingers, tore it on a sharp bolt, and pulled the necklace free.
Her thumbs pressed the shell at the third, first, ninth, and twelfth grooves.
The jade split along an invisible seam.
Inside was a tiny memory card.
Headlights appeared behind the car.
Amelia hid the card inside the tear at her dress hem and snapped the pendant together.
Harlan opened the rear door with a syringe in his hand.
“This will make the bruises easier to explain.”
Before he could reach her, another vehicle struck the patrol car broadside.
Metal screamed across wet pavement.
Harlan fell into the mud, and the syringe disappeared beneath a tire.
Ruth jumped from the driver's seat of an old estate truck.
She grabbed Harlan's keys, freed Amelia, and pulled her into the cab.
“Lucas?” Amelia asked.
“The other officer released him.”
“Why?”
“Because he was never a police officer.”
Ruth accelerated while Harlan fired into the rear window.
The glass burst inward, but neither woman was hit.
Ruth explained that Gideon had recruited two private investigators after learning Margaret controlled the county sheriff's office.
One had posed as the second officer to extract Lucas safely.
The plan had failed when Margaret moved Gideon earlier than expected.
Amelia revealed the memory card.
Ruth's relief lasted only a moment.
“Margaret has a program that will erase it if it connects to the estate network.”
They drove to an abandoned train depot where Lucas waited beside a portable computer.
His blue tie was gone, and blood marked his collar, but he embraced Amelia without hesitation.
For the first time, she allowed herself to believe she might have a brother.
The investigator inserted the memory card into an isolated reader.
Folders appeared containing bank records, medical reports, and security footage from the night of the fire.
One video file was labeled ELEANOR EXIT.
Lucas opened it.
The grainy image showed his mother escaping the nursery with an infant in her arms.
She handed the baby to Ruth beside a waiting car.
Then a second woman entered the frame and struck Eleanor from behind.
Margaret looked directly into the camera.
Beside her stood Vanessa, not as a baby, but as a little girl nearly six years old.
Lucas stared at the date stamp.
Vanessa was supposed to be twenty-four.
The footage proved she was at least twenty-eight.
Then the screen showed something worse.
May you like
Young Vanessa took the jade pendant from the infant's blanket and placed it in her own pocket.
THE JADE SNAIL | A VALE FAMILY THRILLER
