Chapter 2 - Someone Was Upstairs
“Claire, don't move.”
Detective Daniel Reyes knelt beside me in the mud.
I almost laughed.
“With these legs? Wasn't planning on it.”
His expression didn't change.
He pulled off his raincoat and draped it over me while two paramedics hurried up the driveway.
Behind him, Vivian stood frozen beneath the porch light.
The red dot remained centered on her coat until an officer reached her.
“Hands where I can see them!”
Vivian raised them slowly.
“You don't understand,” she said. “My niece is unstable.”
I closed my eyes.
Of course.
Even now.
Even surrounded by police.
She was still building the same story.
Reyes leaned closer.
“Did she push you?”
“Kicked the chair.”
He looked toward Vivian.
Something hard passed across his face.
“Witnesses?”
“Doorbell camera.”
Vivian heard me.
Her head snapped around.
“What camera?”
I looked at her.
“The one Mom installed last spring.”
That was a lie.
Mom's old camera hadn't worked in months.
But Vivian didn't know that.
And her reaction told Reyes everything he needed.
“She attacked me first!” Vivian shouted.
Reyes stood.
“You may want to stop talking.”
Two officers handcuffed her.
Then Reyes looked toward the upstairs window.
“You saw movement?”
“Yes.”
His hand went to his radio.
Within seconds, the officers changed formation.
The atmosphere shifted.
This was no longer an arrest at the front door.
Someone unknown was inside.
“Police! Come out with your hands visible!”
Nothing.
A second command.
Still nothing.
Then glass shattered upstairs.
An officer shouted.
Three tactical officers moved around the side of the house.
Vivian suddenly twisted against the officer holding her.
“No!”
Everyone looked at her.
She wasn't trying to escape.
She was staring at the house.
“Don't go upstairs!”
Reyes turned slowly.
“Why?”
Vivian shut her mouth.
That terrified me more than anything she'd said.
Paramedics lifted me onto a stretcher.
Pain tore through my legs as they repositioned them.
I gripped the blanket.
Then a shout came from inside.
“Clear!”
Another.
“Second floor clear!”
A third voice called from the rear.
“Suspect running!”
Reyes sprinted toward the side yard.
I couldn't see what happened next.
I heard boots.
A crash.
Someone shouting.
Then silence.
Minutes later, officers emerged with a man in handcuffs.
He was perhaps forty-five, lean, shaved head, wearing dark work clothes.
I'd never seen him before.
But Vivian had.
The instant she saw him, she whispered one word.
“Eddie.”
The man turned toward her.
And smiled.
That smile chilled me more than the rain.
“You said she'd be dead.”
Every person on the porch seemed to stop breathing.
Vivian's face collapsed.
“Shut up.”
Eddie laughed.
“You said both of them would be dead.”
Reyes looked at me.
Then at Vivian.
Vivian began shouting.
“He's lying!”
But Eddie wasn't finished.
“You owe me fifty grand.”
“Stop talking!”
“You promised me fifty.”
“I said shut up!”
Reyes stepped between them.
“Separate them.”
Officers pulled Eddie toward another vehicle.
Vivian struggled against her handcuffs.
For the first time since the crash, she didn't look elegant.
She looked desperate.
And desperate people made mistakes.
“Claire!” she screamed.
I turned.
“You think your mother was innocent?”
My chest tightened.
Reyes immediately said, “Vivian, don't.”
But she smiled at me.
“You don't know what she did.”
I stared at her.
“My mother is dead.”
“Exactly.”
The paramedics began moving me toward the ambulance.
Vivian shouted after me.
“Ask why she changed the beneficiary!”
I froze.
“What?”
Reyes stepped into my line of sight.
“Claire. Hospital first.”
“What beneficiary?”
“Later.”
But Vivian's words followed me into the ambulance.
Ask why she changed the beneficiary.
At the hospital, doctors confirmed that none of the surgical repairs had failed, though the fall had aggravated the fractures.
I spent six hours under observation.
Reyes arrived shortly after midnight.
He carried two coffees.
I took one.
“Who is Eddie?”
“Edward Pike. Former mechanic. Multiple fraud convictions.”
“Connected to Vivian?”
“We're working on it.”
“You already know.”
Reyes sighed.
“Financial records show payments from a company linked to your aunt.”
“How much?”
“Twenty thousand so far.”
My stomach turned.
“Payment for killing us?”
“We can't establish that yet.”
“But he was in my house.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“We found gasoline.”
I stared at him.
Reyes didn't soften it.
“Several containers. Upstairs and in the basement.”
My fingers tightened around the coffee cup.
“She was going to burn the house.”
“That's one possibility.”
“With me inside?”
He didn't answer.
He didn't have to.
I looked toward the dark hospital window.
“What did Vivian mean about the beneficiary?”
Reyes hesitated.
Then placed a document on the blanket.
It was a life-insurance amendment.
Mom's name.
Her signature.
Three months before the crash, she had changed the beneficiary on a substantial policy.
From Vivian Mercer.
To me.
I stared at the amount.
Two million dollars.
“Why was Vivian ever the beneficiary?”
“The policy predates you.”
Mom had purchased it when she and Vivian jointly owned their first design business decades earlier.
Mom apparently forgot about it.
Until three months ago.
“What happened three months ago?”
Reyes asked.
I remembered.
Mom and Vivian had fought.
Not argued.
Fought.
I had heard Mom say, “If you ever come near my daughter again, I'll tell her everything.”
At the time, I'd assumed it involved money.
Now I wasn't sure.
“What was she going to tell me?”
Reyes reached into his folder.
“We found something else.”
He placed a photograph beside the insurance form.
A storage locker.
Inside were tools, gasoline cans, copies of my mother's financial records—
and a photograph of me.
Taken through the window of my office.
On the back, someone had written:
DAUGHTER — SECOND PROBLEM.
My hands started shaking.
Reyes leaned forward.
“Claire, your mother's crash may not have been the beginning.”
“What do you mean?”
“We pulled archived records involving your family.”
He placed another file on the bed.
Twenty-six years old.
My birth year.
Across the front was a name I had almost never heard.
THOMAS BENNETT.
My father.
Officially, he'd abandoned us when I was an infant.
According to the police file, that wasn't what happened.
Thomas Bennett had disappeared.
And my mother had reported him missing.
May you like
The primary person interviewed in his disappearance had been Vivian Mercer.
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