Chapter 16 - Kate's Key.
I did not believe Voss.
Not immediately.
That was the strange thing about betrayal.
Even after a weekend full of lies, there were still some people your mind refused to place inside them.
Kate was my sister.
She had sat beside Emma in the hospital.
She had changed the locks.
She had brought soup.
She had cried when she heard what Diana did.
She had spent Monday morning at my house while I fought for custody.
She was the person I had listed in my will to take Emma if something happened to me.
Voss had every reason to poison that relationship.
So I told myself he was lying.
Then Detective Price showed me the neighbor's camera footage.
A white hatchback pulled onto my street at 2:11 Sunday morning.
Kate drove a white hatchback.
The image was grainy, but the plate matched.
The car stopped two houses away.
A woman in a hooded sweatshirt walked toward my house.
At 2:14, my rear keypad recorded a successful entry.
At 2:41, the same woman returned to the car carrying a rectangular storage box.
She also carried a smaller bag.
The music box would have fit inside it.
I stared at the video until Price stopped playback.
"I'm sorry," he said.
I did not answer.
Megan was beside me in the interview room.
She did not try to soften it.
"We need to talk to Kate before Diana does."
"She's with Emma."
My voice sounded far away.
"Not anymore," Price said.
I looked at him.
"What?"
"An officer is at your house. Emma is with the guardian ad litem and your father. Kate was asked to come here voluntarily."
I stood.
"You brought her in without telling me?"
"I brought in a person captured entering a possible crime scene and removing property."
"She's my sister."
"Yes."
That was the problem.
Kate arrived twenty minutes later.
She saw me through the glass and stopped walking.
Her face told me before she said anything.
She knew.
I wanted to ask why.
Instead, I sat on the opposite side of a table while Price advised her that she could leave unless her status changed.
Megan told Kate she should have her own lawyer.
Kate shook her head.
"I don't need one."
Megan's voice was firm.
"You do."
"I just want to tell Daniel."
"Then tell your lawyer first."
Kate started crying.
"Please."
I had seen her cry many times.
When our mother died.
At my wedding.
At Leah's funeral.
When Emma was born.
This was different.
This was shame.
Price allowed her to call an attorney.
An hour later, with counsel present, Kate finally spoke.
"Diana called me Saturday night."
I said nothing.
"After you took Emma to the hospital."
"What did she want?"
Kate looked at the table.
"She said you had attacked her and the police were going to search everything connected to Leah."
"So?"
"She said Leah had private journals and photographs at your house that Emma should never see."
"And you believed her."
Kate swallowed.
"At first."
"You knew Emma had been chained outside by then."
"Not all of it."
My voice rose despite myself.
"You knew enough."
Megan touched my arm.
I forced myself back into the chair.
Kate continued.
"Diana told me the enclosure story was being exaggerated. She said Emma ran into the garden and Mateo panicked."
"And the chain?"
"She said it was on the gate, not Emma."
I stared at her.
"You came to the hospital later. You heard me."
"After I had already taken the box."
The timeline hit me.
Kate entered my house at two fourteen.
She called me later in the morning when I asked her to retrieve the same box.
She had staged the discovery after already removing it.
"You lied to me on the phone."
"Yes."
"You said the door was open when you arrived."
"I left it open."
"You scattered my office."
Kate closed her eyes.
"Yes."
The answer hurt more than I expected.
Not because of the papers.
Because while I sat beside Emma in a hospital, my sister had been building another false scene around me.
"Why?"
Kate's voice broke.
"Because Diana raised me."
I looked away.
Our own mother died when Kate was fourteen and I was seventeen.
Our father worked long shifts and fell apart quietly.
Diana had been Leah's mother, but she had opened her house to Kate too.
She paid for summer programs.
Helped with college applications.
Bought Kate's first interview suit.
When Kate called Diana Mom, it was not a joke.
It was an old wound disguised as gratitude.
"She asked you to steal from me and you did it because she bought you a suit twenty years ago?"
"No."
Kate wiped her face.
"Because she told me Leah had asked her to protect certain things from you."
"Leah didn't."
"I know that now."
"You knew Leah loved me."
"I did."
"Then why?"
Kate looked up.
"Because Diana also told me you were falling apart."
I laughed without humor.
"And you believed that too."
"Part of me did."
That landed harder than the rest.
Kate continued quickly.
"After Leah died, you stopped sleeping. You forgot meals. You called me at three in the morning sometimes. You were grieving."
"I was not dangerous to Emma."
"I know."
"Did you know then?"
Kate hesitated.
Too long.
"I wasn't sure."
The room became silent.
I had trusted Kate with Emma more than anyone.
She had wondered whether I should have her.
"Did you help Diana with the custody petition?"
"No."
"Did you sign anything?"
"No."
"Did she ask?"
Kate nodded.
"Thursday."
"What did she ask you to say?"
"That you drank too much. That you left Emma with me without warning."
"And?"
"I refused."
"Why refuse that but steal Leah's box two nights later?"
Kate started crying again.
"Because stealing the box felt like protecting Leah's privacy."
"You searched my office."
"Diana told me the journals might be there."
"You took the accident file too."
"She told me it contained photographs Emma should never see."
That part almost made sense.
Almost.
Diana used fragments of truth to make the lie easier to carry.
There were crash photographs in the file.
She made Kate believe she was removing trauma from Emma's reach.
"Where did you take it?"
"The Holloway estate."
"Who met you?"
Kate looked at her lawyer.
He nodded.
"Victor."
My pulse quickened.
"Diana's brother."
"Yes."
"Was Diana there?"
"I didn't see her."
"Did Victor know what was inside?"
"He opened the blue box right away."
"The accident file?"
"Yes. He removed the phone records."
There it was.
"And the music box?"
"He took it into Diana's study."
"Did he open the bottom?"
Kate shook her head.
"Not while I was there."
"What did he say?"
Kate frowned, remembering.
"He said, 'If Leah was half as paranoid as Diana thinks, this isn't enough.'"
Megan wrote the exact words down.
"Anything else?"
Kate nodded slowly.
"He asked whether you kept old phones."
"Whose phones?"
"Leah's."
My skin prickled.
"What did you say?"
"I said I thought police had kept hers."
Victor apparently knew otherwise.
"Did he mention Locker 418?"
"No."
"Northstar?"
"No."
"Voss?"
"He said Charles would handle Monday."
Price leaned forward.
"Exact words?"
"He said, 'Charles will handle the father. We just need the paper trail clean before Tuesday.'"
Megan and I exchanged a look.
The paper trail.
The audit.
Again.
"Why didn't you tell me any of this Sunday?" I asked.
Kate's face crumpled.
"Because when I got to the hospital and saw Emma, I realized Diana had lied to me."
"So you lied to me instead."
"I was scared."
"Of what?"
"That you'd never let me see Emma again."
I did not answer.
Kate whispered, "And I thought if I helped you after, maybe I could fix it."
The sentence felt painfully familiar.
Everyone in Diana's orbit seemed to believe the next action could erase the last one.
Rachel fabricated evidence, then recanted.
Voss built the structure, then cooperated.
Kate stole the box, then helped me find the clue.
Maybe that was how Diana controlled people.
She did not need them to be evil.
She only needed them to make one compromised decision.
After that, shame did the rest.
I stood.
"Are you going to charge her?" I asked Price.
Kate's lawyer objected before he could answer.
Price said the investigation would determine that.
I did not care in that moment.
I walked into the hallway.
Megan followed.
"Daniel."
"Don't."
"I'm not going to tell you how to feel."
"Good."
"But I am going to tell you not to decide Kate's place in Emma's life while you're standing outside a police interview room."
I looked at her.
"She helped Diana."
"Yes."
"She stole from my house."
"Yes."
"She wondered if I should keep my daughter."
Megan did not soften her answer.
"Yes."
I looked through the glass at Kate.
She sat alone now, shoulders folded inward.
"I trusted her."
"That's why it hurts."
My phone rang.
Detective Price's partner, Lena Ortiz, was calling from the Holloway estate search team.
I answered.
"Mr. Mercer, we found another device."
"What kind?"
"Old prepaid phone."
My heartbeat stopped for half a second.
"Where?"
"Not in Diana's study."
"Then where?"
"Victor Holloway's guest suite."
Megan moved closer.
"Is it the same model Rachel described?"
"Yes."
"Can you turn it on?"
"Battery is dead. Digital unit will image it."
"Any identifying marks?"
Ortiz paused.
"There is a strip of tape on the back."
"What does it say?"
"L."
Leah.
I gripped the phone.
"Victor had it."
"Looks that way."
"Where is Victor now?"
Silence.
"Detective?"
"That's the problem."
My stomach tightened.
"What problem?"
"Victor left the estate sometime before the warrant team arrived yesterday."
"His car?"
"Found at the regional airport."
"Did he fly out?"
"No commercial record under his name."
"Private plane?"
"We're checking."
I closed my eyes.
The man who had taken the phone records from my stolen file and apparently kept Leah's prepaid phone had disappeared.
Then Ortiz added one more detail.
"We also found a printed itinerary in his room."
"For what?"
"A flight scheduled tonight."
"To where?"
"Cayman Islands."
Megan's face hardened.
May you like
The money trail was about to leave the country.
And Victor already had a head start.
