Chapter 7 - The Sister Who Was Dead.
Ethan called Claire Morgan from the cemetery parking lot.
A woman answered on the fourth ring.
"Hello?"
Ethan could not speak.
Lily watched him press the phone harder against his ear.
"Claire?"
Silence.
Then a breath.
"Who is this?"
"It's Ethan."
The line went dead.
Ethan stared at the screen.
Voss told him not to call again.
"If she's spent twenty years hiding, an unexpected call could terrify her."
By evening, Bellhaven police had confirmed Claire's address.
Detective Voss asked a local officer to make quiet contact.
The report came back fifteen minutes later.
Claire's apartment door was open.
Her lights were on.
Her purse and keys were inside.
Claire was gone.
Ethan's face hardened.
"My mother knows."
Eleanor was still in county custody, but that did not mean she was powerless.
Within an hour, investigators discovered three calls from Eleanor's attorney to a private security consultant named Wade Mercer.
Mercer had worked for the Carter family years earlier.
His company claimed to specialize in "executive protection and domestic risk management."
Voss called it what it was.
"A fixer."
Police found Mercer's SUV on a highway camera heading toward Bellhaven.
The timestamp was forty minutes after Eleanor's arrest.
Lily felt sick.
"He went after Claire."
"We don't know that."
Voss paused.
"But we're going to find out."
Ethan wanted to drive to Bellhaven immediately.
Voss forbade it.
"If Mercer is involved, you make yourself another target."
Ethan looked at Noah asleep against Lily's chest.
He stayed.
At 10:43 p.m., Lily received a text from an unknown number.
The message contained no words.
Only a photograph.
It showed a dark room with a single chair.
On the floor beside the chair was a red leather bracelet.
Ethan recognized it from one of Claire's public work photos.
A second message arrived.
TELL ETHAN TO STOP DIGGING.
Lily handed the phone to Voss.
Voss immediately called the cyber unit.
A third message appeared before she finished speaking.
YOUR SON HAS ALREADY BEEN SICK ONCE.
Lily's entire body went rigid.
Ethan took Noah from her and moved away from the windows.
The house that had felt like a prison that morning now felt exposed from every direction.
Police placed a patrol unit outside.
Voss ordered officers to search every room again.
At midnight, Officer Bennett found a small magnetic device beneath Ethan's car.
It was a GPS tracker.
At twelve twenty, they found another tracker inside the lining of Noah's diaper bag.
At twelve forty, Voss returned to the kitchen carrying a third device.
This one had been taped beneath Lily's phone case.
"She's been tracking all of you."
Ethan stared at the tiny black square.
"How long?"
"We don't know."
The cyber unit traced the threatening messages to a prepaid phone activated near Bellhaven.
A highway camera finally caught Mercer's SUV entering an abandoned industrial district.
Police units converged.
They found the SUV beside an empty textile warehouse.
Inside the warehouse, they found the chair from the photograph.
They found Claire's bracelet.
They found blood on the concrete.
But they did not find Claire.
On the wall above the chair, someone had written a sentence in black marker.
May you like
Ethan read the photograph sent by police and felt his knees weaken.
MOTHER ALWAYS WINS.
