Chapter 6 - The Traitor in the Shadows
I spent the next four days sequestered in a secure suite at a hotel in downtown Stamford, surrounded by stacks of financial records, bank records, and legal briefs. Detective Vance and the state prosecutor visited twice a day, their faces growing grimmer with every new piece of evidence we handed over.
The murder charges against Victoria were upgraded to include premeditated capital murder with special circumstances for financial gain. An exhumation order was also drafted for Richard Whitmore’s memorial urn to conduct chemical analysis on residual bone fragments.
Then, on the morning of December 23rd, my phone rang.
The caller ID displayed Trevor’s name.
I hadn’t spoken to him since the police station three months ago. I had blocked his number, but he was calling from a burner line or an unknown office.
I pressed accept. “If this isn’t about the final decree, Trevor, I’m hanging up.”
“Claire, please! Don't hang up!” His voice was ragged, desperate, and slurred. He sounded like a man who hadn't slept or eaten in weeks. “You have to listen to me. She knows.”
I stiffened. “What are you talking about?”
“My mother,” Trevor gasped. “She knows you opened the safe. She has someone inside the clerk’s office. She saw the unsealed warrants for the Zurich accounts.”
“Good,” I said coldly. “Let her know what’s coming.”
“No, Claire, you don’t understand!” Trevor sobbed into the receiver. “She’s not going to trial! She never planned on going to trial! She has a private jet chartered out of Westchester County Airport for tomorrow night—Christmas Eve. She has a counterfeit passport in the name of Victoria Laurent. She wired four million dollars out of a dummy account in the Bahamas this morning!”
I stood up from my desk. “She’s under house arrest. She has an ankle monitor. The marshals will arrest her the second she steps off the property.”
“She paid off one of the private security contractors monitoring the perimeter!” Trevor shouted. “Claire, she’s completely unhinged. She called me an hour ago. She told me… she told me everything. About my father. About the French developer. She told me I was a mistake she should have gotten rid of twenty-eight years ago!”
A sharp pang of sorrow pierced through my anger. As weak, cowardly, and complicit as Trevor had been, hearing a son realize his mother was a monster was a terrible thing.
“Where are you, Trevor?” I asked.
“I’m at my apartment in Greenwich,” he said, his breathing shallow. “Claire… she’s not just leaving. She blames you for everything. She told me she couldn't leave the country while you and Emma were still breathing to enjoy what was ‘rightfully hers.’ She hired two men. Men from Bridgeport. They’re coming for you tonight.”
The hair on the back of my neck stood up. “How does she know where I am?”
“She doesn't know you're at the hotel,” Trevor said, panic threading through every syllable. “She thinks you took Emma to your sister’s cabin in Litchfield. That’s where you always go for Christmas! She sent them there!”
My heart stopped.
My sister Sarah had taken Emma up to the Litchfield cabin that very morning so they could bake gingerbread cookies away from the grim reality of the city. I was supposed to drive up and join them tonight.
“Oh God,” I choked out. “Emma is there.”
“What?!” Trevor screamed through the phone. “You sent Emma there?!”
“Sarah took her there this morning!”
“Get the police, Claire! Get them now!”
The line went dead.
I didn't hesitate. I dialed Detective Vance’s direct line while throwing my coat on and grabbing my keys.
“Vance here.”
“Marcus! Victoria’s fleeing the country tomorrow night, but she sent men to my sister’s cabin in Litchfield right now! Emma is there!”
“Claire, stay where you are!” Vance barked. “I’m mobilizing the State Police tactical unit out of the Litchfield barracks immediately! Do not go up there yourself!”
“She’s my daughter!” I screamed into the phone.
May you like
I hung up, bolted out of the hotel room, and ran toward the parking garage. Outside, the sky was dark with heavy, bruised snow clouds. The first flakes of a major Christmas Eve blizzard were already beginning to fall.
***
