“They have a good mother.”
“And father.”
I didn’t answer.
By midnight, investigators had traced Marcus’s burner phone.
He hadn’t gone to the airport.
He had driven north.
Toward an abandoned Vale construction property.
Claire recognized it immediately.
An unfinished resort complex purchased during the financial crisis.
Police found Marcus there before dawn.
There was no dramatic shootout.
No cinematic chase.
No heroic confrontation.
Just a frightened, desperate man sitting alone in an unfinished lobby surrounded by documents he had planned to destroy.
And one laptop.
That laptop contained everything.
Emails to Gavin.
Payments.
Surveillance photos.
Corporate records.
Draft narratives blaming me.
Instructions for the man who resembled me.
And one message that shocked even Eleanor.
Marcus had never intended for Eleanor to d/i/e.
Her medical condition had been discovered months earlier after he gained access to private scheduling information.
He knew stress could trigger a severe episode.
