Chapter 9 - Claire's Game.
Wade Mercer asked for immunity before he would explain anything.
Prosecutors refused.
He talked anyway.
According to Mercer, Claire contacted him two months earlier using an encrypted email account.
She knew he had once worked for Eleanor.
She offered him money to tell her whether Eleanor had started watching Ethan's family.
Mercer took the money and lied to both women.
He told Claire he was helping her.
He told Eleanor he was loyal to her.
Then he sold information in both directions.
"So Claire knew Eleanor was coming to our house?"
Ethan asked the question twice.
Voss nodded.
"She knew before you did."
Lily's anger rose.
"Why didn't she warn us?"
Mercer claimed Claire wanted evidence strong enough to stop Eleanor permanently.
She believed that if she contacted Ethan too soon, Eleanor would deny everything and disappear again.
So Claire watched from a distance.
She waited.
And Lily became the person trapped inside the experiment.
"She used me."
Lily's voice was flat.
Ethan did not defend his sister.
"Yes."
The word hurt because it was true.
Mercer also claimed the warehouse scene had been staged.
Claire had cut her own palm and left blood on the floor.
The bracelet had been placed deliberately.
The threatening messages were sent from a phone Claire purchased.
She wanted Eleanor to believe Mercer had followed orders.
She wanted police to believe she was in immediate danger.
She wanted everyone moving exactly where she needed them.
Voss looked disgusted.
"Where is she now?"
Mercer smiled.
"She didn't tell me."
Police searched his motel room and found a handwritten list of addresses.
One belonged to Eleanor's attorney.
One belonged to the Carter family bank.
One belonged to Lily's sister, Rachel.
Lily nearly dropped the paper.
"Why is my sister on this list?"
Voss immediately called the patrol unit near Rachel's apartment.
No answer came from inside.
Rachel's car was gone.
Her phone was off.
Lily felt panic surge through her chest.
"Call her again."
Ethan did.
Nothing.
Then Lily remembered something Eleanor had said weeks earlier.
Rachel had called the house asking to visit.
Eleanor told Lily that Rachel sounded hostile and unstable.
Later, Rachel stopped calling entirely.
Lily had assumed her sister was angry.
What if Eleanor had threatened her too?
Detective Voss pulled Rachel's phone records.
There were repeated calls from a number registered to the Carter family trust.
The last call lasted eleven minutes and occurred the morning Eleanor moved into Lily's home.
Voss requested location data from Rachel's carrier.
The final ping came from a rural property outside Bellhaven.
The property belonged to a dissolved nonprofit called Safe Harbor Children's Foundation.
Ethan recognized the name.
His father had donated to it for years.
Police arrived before midnight.
The farmhouse was empty, but one upstairs bedroom had been recently used.
They found two coffee cups.
Women's clothing in two different sizes.
A medical kit.
And a corkboard covered with photographs of Eleanor, Ethan, Lily, Noah, and Rachel.
Across the center was a timeline stretching back twenty-two years.
Pinned beneath Claire's childhood photograph was a single sentence.
END IT WHERE IT STARTED.
Voss turned to Ethan.
"Where did it start?"
Ethan did not need to think.
"Our old house."
May you like
The house where Claire became sick.
The house Eleanor still owned.
