Chapter 5 - HANNAH'S CONFESSION
The military police had placed Hannah in an empty consultation room adjacent to the ICU.
When I opened the door, she leaped up from her chair like an animal trapped in a snare. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her face smeared with mascara, her hands twisting her trench coat belt into knots. She looked barely twenty-two, the youngest of the sisters, and the only one who had ever visited Rosalie when we bought the farm.
"Alex," she whispered, her voice cracking. "Thank God... please, you have to tell your men to let me go before Amanda finds out I’m here."
I closed the door behind me, locked it, and pulled out a chair.
"Sit down, Hannah."
She swallowed, trembling, and sank back into the chair. "I shouldn't have come. If mother knows I’m talking to you, she’ll destroy me. You don't know what they do to people who cross them."
"Your mother just tried to burn my house down twenty minutes ago," I said coldly. "Two men are sitting in zip-ties on my back porch. So don't tell me what she’s capable of. Tell me what happened to my wife."
Hannah pressed her hands over her face and began to sob. It wasn't the theatrical, manipulative crying of Catherine or Amanda. It was the gut-wrenching wail of someone whose conscience had completely collapsed under the weight of guilt.
"We were never supposed to hurt her," Hannah gasped between ragged breaths. "I swear to God, Alex! I swear on my life! Mother said we were just going to get the files back!"
"What files?"
"The metallurgical test reports," Hannah said, her teeth chattering. "Miller Aerospace won the five-hundred-million-dollar turbine rotor contract for the Army’s new heavy transport helicopters last year. But Brad... Brad and mother used low-grade cast titanium from a black-market supplier in Eastern Europe instead of military-spec forged alloy. They skimmed seventy million dollars off the top."
The room seemed to turn to absolute zero.
"Those rotors are installed on the very aircraft my unit flies in," I said, my voice dangerously soft.
Hannah nodded frantically. "Rosalie found out. She was working in the corporate accounting department before you married her. An old engineer sent her the original safety logs two months ago because he knew Rosalie was the only one in the family who had a soul. She was compiling a federal whistleblower dossier to take to the Justice Department. She told mother last week that she was submitting it the day you returned from deployment."
"So Catherine came to her house."
"We all went," Hannah wept, hiding her face. "Mother told us we had to show family solidarity. She said Rosalie was an ungrateful traitor who was going to send her own mother to federal prison. We went there last night at nine. Mother, Amanda, Charlotte, and Brad."
"Who opened the door?"
"Rosalie did. She thought... she thought maybe mother had come to talk. But Brad had two security guys with him. They pushed their way inside. Mother demanded the drive. Rosalie refused. She told mother she was disgusted to share her blood."
Hannah’s breath hitched. She looked up at me, terror shining in her eyes.
"Amanda slapped her. Rosalie fought back. She pushed Amanda into the kitchen table. And then... then Brad grabbed her from behind. He pinned her arms behind her back."
"And who picked up the fireplace poker?" I asked. Every muscle in my body turned to steel.
"Mother told Amanda to teach her a lesson," Hannah whispered, tears dripping off her chin onto the linoleum floor. "Amanda took the poker from the hearth. She... she hit Rosalie’s legs first so she couldn't run. And then... Rosalie was screaming your name, Alex. Over and over. *Alex, Alex, Alex.* Mother just stood there, drinking water from Rosalie’s glass, telling Amanda not to hit her in the heart because it would look too much like murder instead of a burglary."
Hannah choked, vomiting a small mouthful of bile into the trash can beside her chair.
"I tried to stop them," Hannah cried, clawing at her own hair. "I grabbed Amanda’s arm! Amanda shoved me into the hallway and told me if I said a word, they’d tell the police I was the one who did it! They staged the kitchen. They took her jewelry. They left her bleeding on the floor to die, Alex! Mother locked the back door from the inside, unscrewed the bolt, and we left!"
I stood up.
The silence in the room was deafening. My fists were clenched so hard the skin across my knuckles stretched white.
"Where is the gala tonight?" I asked.
Hannah looked up, trembling. "The Miller Manor in Buckhead. The annual Defense Charities Ball. The governor is supposed to speak at nine o'clock. Everyone is there. The mayor, the judges, the state senators."
"Good," I said.
I opened the door. Master Sergeant Cole was standing right outside.
"Cole," I said.
"Sir."
"Take Hannah into protective federal custody. Put her in the secured military holding room at Fort Moore. Nobody touches her. She is our primary state witness."
"No, please!" Hannah begged, grabbing my sleeve. "Alex, you can't go to that house alone! Catherine has forty private security guards with automatic weapons! They own the county sheriff! You’ll be killed!"
I gently peeled her fingers off my sleeve.
May you like
"Hannah," I said, looking down at her. "Your mother spent fifty years buying politicians. I spent twelve years fighting in the mountains. Tell your sisters they should have checked to see if I was dead before they touched my wife."
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