Chapter 6
Vanessa tried to retreat into technical language.
“I don’t know if she’s alive now.”
I stood across from her.
“When did you last see her?”
Silence.
“Vanessa.”
“Six months ago.”
Danielle made a sound behind me.
Not quite a sob.
Not quite anger.
I raised one hand before she could move.
This truth belonged to her, but I needed all of it.
“Where?”
Vanessa looked toward the windows.
“Caleb’s river property.”
My jaw tightened.
An old Hale house north of the city.
Mostly unused.
Mostly forgotten.
“Why was Relle there?”
Vanessa snapped:
“She forced this.”
There it was.
The victim’s fault.
“How?”
“She recorded something that wasn’t her business.”
Danielle stepped forward.
“Your father planned to use Julian through you.”
Vanessa’s face twisted.
“You don’t understand anything.”
“No?”
Danielle’s voice sharpened.
“My sister disappeared. Her daughter cried herself to sleep holding that rabbit for fourteen months.”
Vanessa looked at Amara.
Then away.
“She could have ended it whenever she wanted.”
I felt something cold settle through me.
“How?”
“By telling Caleb where she hid the recording.”
There.
Straight.
Clear.
Relle remained imprisoned because she would not surrender evidence.
I looked at the sapphire ring.
“And this?”
Vanessa touched her bare thumb instinctively.
“She threw it at me.”
Danielle stared.
“What?”
Vanessa’s voice hardened.
“The first night. She said if I was going to steal her life, I might as well take something pretty too.”
Danielle’s eyes filled.
“And you wore it?”
Vanessa looked away.
“For months?”
Silence.
“At our wedding fitting?”
Her face finally cracked.
“I liked it.”
That answer was worse than any complicated excuse.
May you like
My fiancée had worn a missing woman’s ring as jewelry.
And she had stood in front of that woman’s child expecting nobody to recognize it.
