Chapter 13 - The Second Account
The line clicked dead.
The silence that followed was suffocating.
I stared at Claire.
"A sister?" I asked, my voice barely audible over the roaring in my ears.
"You told me you were an only child."
Claire collapsed onto the sofa, burying her head in her hands.
"She was institutionalized when we were teenagers, David," Claire sobbed hysterically.
"Her name is Evelyn. She was sick. She set fire to our carriage house when she was fourteen. My father had her records sealed and put her away in a private sanitarium in Switzerland."
"And she’s standing outside my daughter's school right now!" I roared.
I sprinted toward the door, pulling my phone from my pocket to dial Marcus, the guard at the school.
He answered on the second ring.
"Marcus! Get Emily out of the classroom immediately! Code red!"
"Mr. Vance, I’m at the main entrance right now," Marcus’s voice came back, calm and steady.
"The gates are locked. Nobody has entered the school grounds since drop-off."
"Look at the playground!" I yelled, throwing myself into the driver's seat of my SUV and turning the key.
"The playground is empty, sir. Recess ended twenty minutes ago. Emily is in Mr. Gable’s third-grade history class. I’m looking through the window right now. She’s sitting in the front row."
I stopped with my foot on the accelerator.
A diversion.
The call wasn't meant to take Emily from the school.
It was meant to pull me away from the house.
I looked into the rearview mirror.
Two black sedans had just pulled across the bottom of my driveway, blocking the electronic gate.
Behind me, on the front porch, Claire was standing frozen.
Four men in plain dark suits stepped out of the vehicles.
They didn't carry handguns openly, but their coats hung with the telltale weight of concealed sidearms.
From the passenger seat of the lead car, a tall woman stepped out onto the gravel.
She looked like an older, sharper, colder reflection of Claire.
Her hair was cut into a severe blonde bob.
She wore a long camel coat and sunglasses that hid her eyes.
Claire walked down the front steps like a woman walking to the gallows.
"Evelyn," Claire whispered.
The woman took off her sunglasses and looked past Claire, locking her gray, predatory eyes directly onto me through the windshield.
"Hello, little sister," the woman said.
"You thought three old men going to prison was going to save you from our father's contract?"
I stepped out of the car, slamming the door shut.
"Get off my property," I said, keeping my hand near my waist.
Evelyn smiled.
"Your property, Mr. Vance? You might want to check the deed that was registered in the county clerk’s office at nine this morning."
She flicked a legal document from her coat pocket and tossed it onto the hood of my car.
"This house was put up as collateral by your late father twenty-four years ago."
"He didn't own the land," she added with a cruel chuckle.
May you like
"Arthur Sterling did. And Arthur Sterling never forgives a default."
***
