Chapter 8 - The Photograph Toby Drew
Three days later, Toby asked for crayons.
The nurses brought him a box.
He drew our house.
Then me.
Then Isabelle.
Then himself.
But across the street he drew a black car.
“Who is that?” I asked.
Toby pointed at it.
“The man who watched me.”
My pulse stopped.
Andrew hadn’t been the only one.
The surveillance network was larger.
And Toby remembered a license plate.
Four numbers.
That was enough.
Investigators traced the vehicle to someone none of us expected.
A woman named Margaret Cole.
Richard Beaumont’s personal assistant of twenty-two years.
When police reached her apartment, it was empty.
On the kitchen table sat one envelope.
My name was written across it.
Inside was a photograph of Toby as a baby.
And on the back:
ASK ISABELLE WHO TOOK THIS.
I brought it to my wife.
Her face drained of color.
“I did.”
“What?”
“I took that picture.”
“Then how did Margaret get it?”
Isabelle stared at me.
“I sent it to my father.”
The photograph was eight years old.
Which meant Project Hearth had begun watching Toby almost from birth.
And the deeper investigators dug, the clearer one terrifying truth became.
Richard hadn’t suddenly decided to use my son.
May you like
He had been preparing to use him his entire life.
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