Chapter 7 - THE TWO DEAD FATHERS
-7
“Dad.”
Michael looked at me.
“Is Robert lying?”
“No.”
“Did he restart the policies?”
Silence.
Robert stood.
“Claire—”
“Sit down.”
He did.
Michael rubbed his jaw.
“Robert did not restart the murders.”
“Mark says he did.”
“Mark believes he did.”
“What does that mean?”
Michael looked toward the loading bay.
“Five years ago, Robert reinstated the old policy infrastructure.”
My stomach turned.
“That sounds like restarting it.”
“For bait.”
Daniel laughed bitterly.
“Of course.”
Robert said:
“We needed whoever had taken over to believe the program was active.”
“So you issued fake policies?”
“Yes.”
“On real people?”
“No.”
“Synthetic identities.”
“Yes.”
“Then why did real deaths happen?”
That stopped them.
Michael spoke.
“Because someone copied the bait structure.”
“So your operation triggered actual murders.”
His face tightened.
“Yes.”
My stomach turned.
“Three people died because you were running a trap.”
“Yes.”
Robert whispered:
“And that is why I disappeared.”
Not heroism.
Failure.
Guilt.
Maybe both.
Mark’s voice remained on my phone.
“Ask them who the three victims were.”
I did.
Michael closed his eyes.
“Claire.”
“Who?”
Robert answered.
“People tied to the original investigation.”
My skin went cold.
“Names.”
“Elaine Porter’s former assistant.”
“One.”
“An insurance auditor.”
“Two.”
Robert swallowed.
“And Jenna Moss.”
I stopped breathing.
My operations manager.
The woman listed REMOVE AFTER AUDIT.
“No.”
Daniel stared.
“Claire.”
“No.”
I gripped the counter.
“Jenna moved to Phoenix.”
Robert shook his head.
“No.”
“What happened?”
“Her car was found in New Mexico.”
“Body?”
“Yes.”
“How did she die?”
“Carbon monoxide.”
I remembered goodbye drinks.
Jenna crying.
Saying she was excited for a fresh start.
Had she known?
“Why was she tied to the investigation?”
Michael answered.
“She recognized Hearthstone payments.”
My entire body went cold.
“She worked for me.”
“Yes.”
“Because you placed her there?”
“No.”
“She discovered it accidentally?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Three years ago.”
“When she left.”
“Yes.”
“She didn’t leave for her husband’s job.”
“No.”
I had been lied to by everyone.
“Who killed her?”
Mark spoke through the phone.
“Ask Robert.”
Robert looked toward the glass.
“I don’t know.”
Mark laughed.
“Liar.”
Police negotiators tried approaching him.
He raised the gun but pointed it downward.
“I said stay back!”
I asked:
“Mark, what do you know?”
“Jenna called me.”
“What?”
“When?”
“Two days before she died.”
“Why?”
“She found my number in an old Hearthstone file.”
“What did she say?”
“She asked why the same accounts funding Hearth & Pine were connected to dead policyholders.”
My stomach turned.
“She knew.”
“Yes.”
“What did you do?”
“I called Robert.”
Robert closed his eyes.
There it was.
“Why?”
“He was family.”
Mark’s voice broke.
“I trusted him.”
“What did he say?”
“That he would protect her.”
Silence.
Two days later she died.
Robert whispered:
“I tried.”
Mark screamed through the phone:
“You sent her to New Mexico!”
“To meet a federal contact.”
“Who?”
“Elaine Porter.”
Michael stood.
“That was never the plan.”
Robert turned.
“What?”
Michael’s face changed.
“You told me Jenna was meeting Laura Chen.”
The private investigator Patricia later hired.
Robert stared.
“No.”
“I remember.”
“You’re wrong.”
“No.”
Michael stepped closer.
“You said Laura had a secure contact.”
Patricia whispered:
“Laura.”
The investigator who disappeared after finding Robert.
Too many lines converging.
I asked:
“Where is Laura Chen?”
Nobody knew.
Mark said:
“I do.”
We all turned toward the loading bay camera.
“Where?”
“She’s in my truck.”
Silence.
“What?”
“Alive.”
Police moved.
Mark shouted:
“Don’t!”
I went cold.
“You kidnapped her?”
“I rescued her.”
From whom?
“Robert.”
Robert shook his head.
“No.”
Mark laughed.
“Open bay two.”
Police refused.
I asked:
“Why is she in the truck?”
“Because she has evidence.”
“What evidence?”
“Jenna’s last recording.”
My chest tightened.
“Let police take it.”
“I tried.”
“They’re compromised.”
“Who?”
Mark whispered a name.
Detective Alan Pierce.
The same officer standing near the warehouse entrance.
I looked through glass.
Pierce had been first to arrive at our house after the power outage.
He was outside now.
Robert’s face changed.
Michael whispered:
“Claire.”
I stepped away from the window.
“Why?”
“Pierce was on the original insurance task force.”
Twenty-two years ago.
Still around.
Still positioned near us.
I texted a different officer inside:
REMOVE PIERCE QUIETLY.
Too late.
Pierce looked at his phone.
Then drew his weapon.
Chaos erupted.
He fired toward the glass.
Everyone dropped.
Police returned fire.
Mark disappeared behind the truck.
Daniel pulled me down.
Glass shattered.
Pierce ran toward bay two.
Not away.
Toward Laura.
He knew.
A shot.
Then another.
Police tackled him before he reached the vehicle.
He screamed:
“You have no idea what she has!”
That answered everything.
Laura was important.
Mark dropped his gun and raised his hands.
Police surrounded him.
The truck opened.
Laura Chen lay inside on a mattress.
Alive.
Bruised.
But conscious.
She had not been Mark’s prisoner.
She had been hiding with him.
At the hospital three hours later, Laura gave us Jenna’s recording.
I listened alone first.
Jenna’s voice.
Nervous.
“Claire, if you ever hear this, I’m sorry.”
I started crying.
“I found something inside Hearthstone.”
Papers rustled.
“The money supporting Hearth & Pine is clean.”
Relief, tiny.
“But the structure around it isn’t.”
She continued.
“Someone has been using your vendor network to move policy data.”
My skin crawled.
My catering vendors.
Food distributors.
Rental companies.
Venues.
Thousands of names and addresses.
People.
“Event guest lists,” Jenna whispered.
“Weddings. Funerals. Corporate dinners.”
My stomach turned.
Large events generated personal data.
Names.
Addresses.
Relationships.
A perfect source.
“They’re using hospitality companies to identify targets.”
Hearth & Pine had unknowingly fed data into an insurance-death network.
I nearly vomited.
Jenna continued:
“I traced the access.”
Pause.
“It comes from someone inside the Bennett family.”
I stopped.
A name.
Finally.
“It isn’t Daniel.”
Another pause.
“It isn’t Mark.”
My heart hammered.
“Then who?”
Jenna whispered:
“It’s Megan.”
The recording ended.
I stared at the device.
Daniel looked stunned.
Patricia stopped breathing.
Megan?
The younger sister.
Wedding planning.
Guest lists.
Centerpieces.
The person everyone treated as harmless.
I remembered her correcting “Lauren—sorry, Megan” in Patricia’s earlier speech.
Why had Patricia almost called her Lauren?
I looked toward her.
“Megan.”
She went pale.
Patricia covered her mouth.
And suddenly I realized something I had ignored for years.
Megan Bennett’s legal first name was not Megan.
It was Lauren.
She had started using Megan in college.
Why?
She whispered:
May you like
“I can explain.”
And the most horrifying secret of all began with a name she had stopped using twelve years earlier.
